The Globe today has an article on Boston’s residency requirement (the requirement that city workers live within Boston city limits). The article looks at the numbers and contracts and concludes that most city workers are exempt from the rule.
Just 4,836 of 16,695 city employees are subject to the residency ordinance, and most of those are workers who can least afford Boston’s skyrocketing housing costs — clerks, secretaries, laborers, and others at the bottom of the salary scale.
Meanwhile, higher-paid employees who are members of more powerful unions often have found ways to remain largely unaffected.
In the course of exploring this two-tier policy, the article does seem to rely on some weak generalizations - like its latching onto the anecdote of a custodial worker who lived in a car for two years. And I was struck by the reason the article claimed was behind the rule: "Enacted in the 1970s, Boston’s residency rules were touted as a way to boost property values by stemming the exodus of middle-class workers from declining neighborhoods."
I was just a tot in the early 70s, and not living in Boston to boot, but to me calling the rules simply an attempt at gentrifying inner Boston strikes me as a misreading of what the residency requirement is about. By the 1970s, those comprising the (mostly Irish) political machine were either established in the inner suburbs or were in the process of fleeing the city. A poorer, heavily minorty inner city was therefore at conflict (potential or realized) with the city’s ruling elite and with city government - policemen, teachers, clerical workers. The race riots of the late 60s and busing crisis of the early 70s focused attention on the need for measures to align interest of city workers with the shifting political base of the city. In general - despite the emergence of quasi suburbs within the city limits like Hyde Park and West Roxbury - the policy has worked reasonably well. Furthermore, I think the spirit behind would be well imitated in other areas. I can almost guarantee that MBTA honchos do not take the T into work, and that if they did, public transit would run a lot better.
Still, one dynamic in particular is putting pressure on the residency rules and will likely put an end to it: the skyrocketing cost of housing within Boston. Of course, the problem of high rents or purchase cost doesn’t affect city workers alone, but the rise has been disproportionate in the city and the requirement has meant an effective, sizeable paycut for large portions of the city’s workforce. And given that the housing boom has been matched at its tail end with a fiscal crunch in the city and state, there are few funds and less political will to compensate workers for increased housing costs. So I expect that it’s just a matter of time before the city council and even the mayor realizes that scrapping the requirement is essentially "free money" in its dealings with labor force. The sense - portrayed in the Globe article - that the rule is unevenly and unfairly applied will only speed the process.
Given that political machines - or an ethnic monopoly - don’t run this city the way they used to, a relazing of residency requirements won’t likely be a catastrophic thing, but hopefully the spirit of why they aided city unity and functioning governance won’t be fatally lost in the transition.
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