To build housing, Boston gives away land Black and brown families once owned

by External Media Posts · 07/29/2024

On a spring afternoon, Pamela Saucer-Richardson stood in a grassy vacant lot on Erie Street, a block from Franklin Park in Dorchester, and remembered when her father owned the property more than 30 years ago.

“It was a beauty salon here,” she said. “My stepmother used to do hair. It was a building … a building with storefronts.”

In 1992, the city of Boston notified her father, James Saucer, it planned to take the two-lot property because he owed nearly $5,000 in unpaid taxes and interest. Four years later, the city boarded up the buildings and then bulldozed them — and sent Saucer the bill — leaving the urban landscape abandoned for years.

Paul Singer July 29, 2024

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