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Tenant’s success fighting crime prices her out of her home

Posted on October 31st, 2004 at 19:04 by John Sinteur in category: ¿ʞɔnɟ ǝɥʇ ʇɐɥʍ -- Write a comment

[Quote:]

For most of the 10 years she has lived in her three-bedroom apartment on Codman Park in Roxbury, Betty Smith has been fighting to keep the drug dealers off her street.

     Lately she’s been winning.

     But her efforts to make her block safer have had the perverse effect of helping to price her out of her home.

     A few months ago, her landlord told Smith he was raising the rent from $825 a month to $1,600 a month. Smith is now afraid she’ll have to leave the neighborhood she worked to make safer for her two boys, 17 and 12 years old, as well as two foster kids placed with her by the state.

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