Lack of affordable housing is focus of May Day rally outside Worcester City Hall

WORCESTER ― Dozens of people gathered in front of City Hall on Wednesday, rallying for fair, living wages, fair contracts and affordable housing in honor of "May Day," or International Workers' Day, commemorated each year on the first day of May.

Union carpenters stood together in hard hats near the stairs while other attendees held signs requesting fair wages and affordable housing.

Lew Finfer, director and community organizer at Massachusetts Communities Action Network, said that although progress has been made since the first May Day in the 1800s, there is still work to do.

According to a study from Forbes, Worcester was ranked as the third most competitive rental market along the East Coast, based on pricing, availability and population.

Worcester had the second-lowest rental vacancy rate among the areas Forbes looked at, and local renters faced the third-highest year-over-year rent increases. Forbes put the median rental price in Worcester at $1,995 per month.

The publication said the ranking is due to "extremely low vacancy rates and some of the worst availability of rental units."

The Worcester Together Affordable Housing Coalition was one of the groups that pushed for an inclusionary zoning law in April 2023. Rob Bilotta, co-chair of the coalition, said affordable housing should be a guarantee for city residents.

"What good is housing for all of us if none of us in Worcester can afford to live here?" Bilotta asked.

On a local level, Bilotta said, there needs to be a push for more affordable housing for seniors and disabled people, noting many of the new apartment complexes in Worcester do not qualify.

"We're not doing enough of that in Worcester and we need to do better," Bilotta said. "We need to be sure as we're building more housing that we're hiring local people. We also need to be sure that housing is affordable."

Kawanee Dozier spoke about her housing experience in Worcester. When she and her partner moved to the city they stayed with some "old friends," she said.

"We were in such a good place," Dozier said. "I was so proud of us."

On April 24, 2023, everything changed. Her bed's headboard caught fire from a candle while she was napping. It spread quickly, and Dozier lost everything.

"We ended up living with my mother-in-law for a while. We were looking for a new place to move to. Application after application, wasting money we didn't have," Dozier said. "No one was willing to take us. According to my research, landlords generally prefer a minimum credit score of 670 to 730. Imagine that for 20-year-olds trying to go out on our own."

Finfer also pushed for money from the Community Development Block grant and the Community Preservation Act to be used for affordable housing in the city.

"I think the groups really [should] look at those budgets and those two funding sources, and they're not majorly going to affordable housing," Finfer said. "You want to push them to change that because that's the top issue clearly in your city, how those funds should be used."

"We're in the middle of a housing crisis, not just here in Mass, but in the nation," Dalída Rocha, executive director of Neighbor to Neighbor Massachusetts, said. "On April 20, NBC reported that for a family of four to live comfortably in Massachusetts, you need to make over $300,000 a year. I'm a single mother of three, so a family of four, and I make nowhere near that."

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2021 the median household income in Massachusetts was $56,746. Median earnings for Worcester residents are in the bottom five percent of Massachusetts' 351 municipalities.

"Renters make up the bulk of Worcester residents," Dozier said. "If income increases remain stagnant and housing costs continue to soar, it's no wonder our unsheltered population continues to grow."

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: May Day rally focuses on lack of affordable housing in Worcester