Keep the Ladies in the House

From Dave Brigham:

I saw the plaque above and figured it was a historic marker or relic from a time gone by. But, just as with every single thing that Donald Trump has ever said, I was wrong. And what I assumed would be a simple blog post about a historic institution for women turned out to be something much more complicated.

Located on the outskirts of Boston's Kenmore Square, Our Lady's Guild House (OLGH) is a short-term residence in Boston for women, including students, according to its web site. The residence contains 137 single-occupancy rooms, along with a chapel, a lounge, a conference room and two shared kitchens. In operation since 1947, the house is run by the Daughters of Mary of the Immaculate Conception and is open to women of all faiths and national origins.

So far, so good.

In the early 2010's, though, there was a change in the Daughters' leadership, and the group "essentially stopped running OLGH as a charity," according to a September 15, 2021, article from The Boston Sun. "The Daughters hired Boston realtor Marc Roostaie (known as Marc Roos) to run the property. They raised rents, set time limits on the tenancies of residents, and began evicting long-term residents," the Sun article continues. "....[T]he Daughters rented vacant rooms as high-priced Air BNB (sic) units until Boston outlawed the practice....They set an illegal age limit of 50 years old for applicants and used discriminatory language to discourage applicants with disabilities. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) found probable cause to conclude that these actions discriminated on the basis of age and disability."

Not so good.

In late 2021, seven residents of Our Lady’s Guild House submitted a bid on the 20 Charlesgate West property, according to a December 14, 2021, article from Banker & Tradesman. Greater Boston Legal Services represented the group and asked the attorney general’s office to block any sale that would convert the building into market-rate apartments, attorney Margaret Turner told B&T.

"The charitable purpose of OLGH Inc. is to provide permanent [single-room occupancy] housing for low and moderate-income women," Turner said in the article. "The proposed sale to the highest bidder will undermine this purpose."

A Boston Globe article posted on the web site for the Fenway Community Development Corporation indicates that Fenway CDC and the Planning Office of Urban Affairs, an affordable housing developer affiliated with the Archdiocese of Boston, were interested in purchasing the Guild House and turning it into permanent affordable housing.

I've seen articles indicating that the Daughters agreed to sell the building, but I haven't seen confirmation that a sale went through, nor have I seen anything about who the purchasers might be.