When I was growing up in the South End and Roxbury in the 1990s, my family (and most of the families around us) lived in affordable housing run by Tenants’ Development Corporation — first behind Rosie’s Place, then across from the Piano Craft Building on Tremont Street. Our neighborhood was almost exclusively Black, and almost exclusively low-income. The South End back then was segregated by block; as you walked toward downtown, Black faces were replaced by Latino faces, and then Asian faces. These groups largely didn’t engage with one another.

Change came to the South End slowly at first, then accelerated over time. As wealthier residents began to buy the brownstones around us, my twin brother and I suddenly had more customers for our fledgling dog-walking and snow-shoveling businesses. At home, we heard our dad talk about how much he wished he could buy our house. Eventually, I realized what he meant: not only would it mean owning our home, but it would prevent us from being displaced by rising rents, as so many of our neighbors were.

As I got older and entered high school, I came to understand a different side of my neighborhood’s changing demographics. I often went to a local cafe after school to do my homework. I would sit, for hours on end, and observe the melting pot that my neighborhood had become. Lebanese families sat next to young gay couples, drinking coffee. A group of Latino young men from Villa Victoria waited in line in front of a couple of White empty-nesters. All were sharing the same (small) space, coexisting as only cities can make people do.

When I went away to college, I remember thinking that the change in my neighborhood had prepared me well for the mix of cultures I found on campus — certainly better prepared than if I had stayed in the homogenous South End of my younger years. But when I returned to Boston years later, I also saw what can happen when gentrification goes too far, and a neighborhood becomes inaccessible to its lifelong residents.

The author pictured, center, with her cousin and her twin brother, Andre, at a playground behind 1850 Washington Street. (Courtesy)

We see this change happening on a citywide level today.

Boston has added 275,000 new jobs in the last 12 years — that’s more than two-and-a-half times the number of new homes that have been built. Earlier this month, a report by The Boston Foundation revealed that even as Boston’s population has surged by more than 100,000 over the past two decades, the city now has 10,000 fewer school-aged children than it did in the year 2000.

As condos sell for $35 million in Downtown Crossing, the median household income in Roxbury and Mattapan is just about $33,000 per year. It’s become a struggle for long-time residents, families and those not earning six figures to make a life here. The reasons for this are myriad: skyrocketing rents and home prices, schools that aren’t meeting their needs, traffic-clogged streets and an unreliable, inequitable public transit system.

Elected officials can’t wave a wand and stop market forces from changing neighborhoods over time. But we don’t have to stand idly by, either. If we’re willing to ask hard questions and articulate a clear vision, we can shape the future of our city for generations to come.