There’s a year’s worth of frustration in Karen Hofreiter’s voice. Ever since last April, Hofreiter and her husband, Matt Walker, along with a dwindling number of their fellow tenants at 580 Commonwealth Ave., have been battling their landlord to avoid eviction.
“This place is a train wreck,” Hofreiter says as she leans on the rotting banister of the building’s fifth floor hallway. “We took it because it was affordable.”
Everywhere, paint peels, molding warps. Four floors below, soiled mattresses lie on the ground; Hofreiter says they’ve been there for months. In the building’s basement, Hofreiter and Walker point out loose electrical wiring, water damage and rusty pipes.
In their own apartment, they point to where the tub from upstairs fell through their ceiling last year, and where the toilet leaked for three weeks, covering the bathroom floor in human waste. The foundation on this side of the building has settled considerably, giving the floors a 30-degree slant as if they were the deck of a ship wallowing in rough seas.
For all its flaws, the building has one virtue: it’s cheap. A one bedroom here goes for around $500 a month, a rare price for even the least expensive Boston neighborhoods, let alone the Back Bay.
However, Boston’s largest and wealthiest landowner, Boston University, owns the building, and it wants its tenants out.
The University gave the building’s tenants until August 31 to vacate the building. Although the deadline has passed, BU has yet to take action against the few remaining tenants, even though it has the power to evict them.
Walker and Hofreiter, along with a handful of other tenants, say they’re not going anywhere, even if evicted.
Hofreiter says she moved into the building in desperation; after she graduated from BU two years ago, astronomical rents forced Hofreiter to move out of her Allston apartment.
“And then we found this jewel,” she says half-seriously, glancing around the dilapidated landing outside her fifth-floor apartment. She looks tired and pale, and speaks of the building as if it were a terminally ill relative.
Boston University has owned this building since 1993, although the residents say they didn’t know that until the University took over the actual management of the property last year.
BU agreed with Hofreiter’s assessment of the building’s condition. Its solution: evict all residents, pending total renovation, or possible demolition of the building, which BU spokesman Kevin Carleton says, “May or may not be able to be saved.”
Residents of the building say when the school took over management of the building, their quality of life was last on BU’s priority list.
“BU came in, and they were very high-handed,” recalls resident Frederick Kellerman, who says he’s lived in the building for more than five years.
The tenants’ guard went up when, as its first act as landlord, BU banned pets from the building. Soon, the meager maintenance efforts of the building’s previous management company had trailed off into nothing. Other than sending a BU maintenance worker to clean the windows in the lobby once a week, BU did nothing to make the building livable despite repeated requests for repairs, residents say.
“They hear 580 [Commonwealth Ave.] and go ‘pffff,’” Kellerman says. “Their whole plan is to kick us out and renovate the building.”
“It’s gotten worse since BU took over the management,” Walker says.
On April 9, 2001, BU sent a letter to each of the building’s remaining tenants, mostly students and recently graduated singles, informing them the new leases they had signed would not be renewed.
“The building is in need of extensive repairs and shall not be available for occupancy,” the letter said. “All personal property must be removed from the premises and all keys returned to our office.”
“One of their ideas is that they can kick us all out so they can fix the building,” Kellerman says. BU, he says, has a responsibility to the community to provide affordable housing, “not by destroying existing housing, just by providing their own housing for their own students ... Everyone gives lip service to affordable housing. It already exists. We have 40 units, and they’re just going to get rid of 40 units.”
BU spokesman Colin Riley said the apartments were never designated by city or state governments as affordable housing, a term he claimed the tenant’s association has misused.
“It has nothing to do with affordable housing. They just happen to be below market rates because the building is not in the best condition,” he said.
BU has remained tight-lipped about its plans for the dilapidated apartment building. Asked if BU had any plans for the building, Carleton said any discussion would be “pointless” until a final decision has been made.
Ten years ago, BU had a good idea of what it wanted to do with 580 Commonwealth Ave, despite the fact it didn’t yet own the property. In a 1986 proposed development plan, BU predicted the building could add housing for 90 students, and factored it in as part of the school’s housing supply.
Under the school’s 1980 cooperation agreement with the city of Boston, which affords it protection from local property taxes, BU retains full authority to evict residents from its property. However, it is not allowed to invoke that right as “a pretext to displace tenants in order to house University students,” the agreement says.
Whatever the future of the building, those who now live there say it’s not likely BU will include them in it.
“Ideally, it would be perfect if we could get BU ... to keep this as affordable housing. But that’s probably not going to happen,” Hofreiter says. Failing that, Hofreiter says the tenants’ association wants BU to relocate the residents of 580 Commonwealth Ave. to other apartments the school owns during renovations and then put them back in 580 with a slight increase in rent.
BU has said it would be willing to give residents in good standing on-campus apartments. However, with the exception of two BU grad students and John O’Neil, a 95-year-old resident who has lived in the building most of his life, all the others would be expected to pay market rate for any housing BU would provide.
Riley was unsure exactly how many tenants chose to remain in their apartments after receiving the eviction letter, but said the majority were behind on their rent payments.
While several of the residents had ceased paying rent to protest BU’s actions, Hofreiter says within the past few days the remaining tenants have mailed rent checks to the University.
Some of the building’s residents took BU up on the relocation offer, while others have simply chosen to find housing somewhere else.
“We’re just waiting to see what happens ... There’s only about 11 of us left,” Hofreiter says.
In the meantime, the tenants have enlisted the support of several Boston city councilors, including mayoral hopeful Peggy Davis-Mullen. They also hired structural engineers of their own to inspect the building, who said that although BU has allowed the building to fall into disrepair, there is no need to condemn or demolish the building.
In recent weeks, BU has taken steps to correct the most blatant code violations in the building, such as the crumbling railings on the staircase, the exposed electrical wires and the fire exits blocked by refuse. The school only undertook these repairs after tenants — only 11 of whom are left in the building — ceased paying rent and threatened the school with a lawsuit.
To date, BU has given no indication that it’s willing to compromise or negotiate with the residents of 580 Commonwealth Ave. Both sides are now in a holding pattern, trying to decide what to do with each other. Walker says if BU does decide to evict him and Hofreiter, the high cost of housing in the city will leave them only one option:
“We’re just going to have to leave Boston,” he says.
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