After dangerous housing violations in Chinatown drove many residents out of their apartments, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino launched the You Have Rights campaign that aims to increase awareness of tenant rights.
The city’s campaign includes brochures and community posters that address specific problems for that community in different languages, said José Rios, the community outreach coordinator in the Office of New Bostonians.
“Whether people know them or not, or they believe that they have them or not,” Rios said, “it’s that they have rights and that they deserve a safe place to live because many of the tenants in Boston suffer from different violations of their rights.”
The campaign urges tenants with housing issues to call the mayor’s hotline for assistance, according to the press release. More than 70 community organizations and city departments will work in the campaign.
“The great thing about this campaign is that . . . a lot of these organizations, they do a lot of workshops in the community, and they do fight already for tenants rights,” Rios said.
The city asked the Boston Tenant Coalition, which has been doing similar work for the past four years, for support in the campaign, said Magalis Troncoso, the BTC’s main organizer.
“With the city helping us, it’s going to be really, really helpful,” Troncoso said.
Although people call looking for attorneys to help them, the BTC has not had enough lawyers on staff because of a lack of funding, she said.
Troncoso said hopefully the city will provide more resources, and at some point the BTC can have more staff providing legal advice.
The campaign’s brochures, available in seven languages, list the “Top 10 Things New Bostonian Tenants Should Know,” including the legal fees charged upon move-in, proper eviction procedures and entitlement to a 30-day notice of rent increases.
The Office of New Bostonians, which will be coordinating and organizing the campaign’s resources, tries to meet the needs of the immigrant community and seeks to ensure people know the process of city government and their rights, Rios said.
Rios said although it is difficult to create an initiative in seven languages, Menino pushed this aspect of the campaign and argued that the city cannot address tenant rights in just one or two languages.
Troncoso said many people do not know how to speak English, so they do not know how to confirm any housing conditions.
The BTC focuses on the Latino community, and all of their activities and outreach efforts are bilingual, she said.
The campaign follows the evacuation of a Chinatown building in February, according to the press release.
When firefighters responded to the call in Chinatown, they found that columns were missing from the building occupying 19-25 Harrison Ave. The tenants evacuated the building and moved to various living spaces throughout the city.
“I want people to know that there are resources available to help them,” Menino said in the release.
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