Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America’s Housing Crisis

ST. AIDAN’S CATHOLIC CHURCH, built in 1911, sat in the middle of a relatively dense and highly desirable residential area in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was, among other things, President John F. Kennedy’s childhood church and the site of his baptism. In 1999, the Archdiocese of Boston merged the shrinking parish with one across town and sought to redevelop the land to create new housing. About one year after closing the church, the diocese was working on a plan to raze the structure and build a six story, 140-unit residential building with 92 affordable units and 48 market-rate units.1 Roughly three years after St. Aidan’s closed, in response to neighborhood concerns, the town and developer proposed preserving the church building and converting the rest of the site into 74 units, of which 58 would be affordable housing and 16 sold at market rates.2 The intervening decade featured a multitude of rancorous public hearings, lawsuits, studies, and costly alterations. About eight years later, the permitting process resolved, and work began in earnest. In June 2010—after almost 11 years of battling with project opponents in the community—Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Congressman Barney Frank, local officials, and others celebrated the completion of a 59-unit, mixed-income development on the site, with 50 affordable units and nine luxury condominiums.3 Despite almost uniform agreement from town officials that the redevelopment of St. Aidan’s Church into dense multifamily housing was desirable—and a relatively favorable regulatory environment in Brookline—it took more than a decade and multiple alterations for a project to come to fruition.