It takes one city to inspire a change for the whole of a state to turn a new leaf to aid it's people.

Fall River's motto is "We'll Try"

Well, it's time that Fall River delivered on the trying and actually did something. 

The future of Fall River will no longer be Fall River if the Bostonian real-estate moguls, and the like, keep buying up our properties and doubling/tripling the rent, to where it is impossible for our people to afford living in the city where we were born and raised.

How many of you came from working-class families, just scraping by, honestly?

Do you remember your familiar and good landlords who were also neighbors to you and showed care and understanding by recognizing that you, and the rest of their tenants, cared for their spaces? Did they forget you during holidays, and forsake you in sickness and betray bonds set by years of loyal tenancy?

No.

This is a city of and for the working class, built on the justly prideful foundations of blue collar strength paired with some noble, empathetic white collar knowhow. A city where such people, who suffer(ed) together are/were bound together, in a place where home owners of a not so far off yesteryear saw true that their tenants work(ed) hard and need(ed)/deserve(d) to eat, as well as have enough money to save, to move on to own their own properties as well in time. We were united by a common goodness and fairness. Fall River, a true community blanket patched of many yarns, bearing different colors and creeds was/is knit tightly and singularly by hard labour endured, fastened by hands, soaked and stiffened by the ages. 

But now, I tell you, this unity is dying. 

Real estate opportunists, by and large, who come from out of our city, don't give a damn about how hard you work or how little you see your partners/spouses, family, sons and daughters. They do not care how old or sick you are or if you are doing it all on your own with the world against you. They do not care how clean you keep your home or if you have a long standing of dignity, pride and a neighborly attitude. Most are as distant from you, by the capital and elsewhere, in thought and function, so much so that you might as well be worlds apart. Your plight and pleas of justice are alien to them, as if you speak another language entirely. They are mostly blind and deaf to your just need, for the sake of their greed. 

They come into our city, to flip and occupy, tossing law abiding people out left and right. They take what's ours as we have worked for decades ceaselessly for a space we do not even own. 

What's worse is the fact that some of our own, in this community, have betrayed us. They buy homes here and charge the same as those who do not know us. They are inspired by this Hellish inflation of unethical rent and have forgotten where they come from.

This land is our piece of the world, and belongs to those within who understand our way, our economy and our culture.

We are not to be thrown from the place we belong, on the grounds of having too little, when the prices are soaring too high beyond our reach, untethered to an anchor of just and reasonable charge.

Where will the elderly go if they can no longer afford the city they have existed in for generations on meager pensions? An early grave, that's where, without the coin for a stone to be remembered.  

Where will the young adults, at last going it alone, go?

Too long has the rental system been gaged to force people into cramming within uncomfortable heaps with a bunch of strangers, in houses ill insolated, maintained and secured. People have been reduced to eating cheap unhealthy diets, because that's all they can afford. The sad truth is, if this continues, many will never know what it's like to have true independence or a breath of freedom because they will always live in fear. The majority are being lashed to overworking themselves, fearing for their lives during a pandemic.

Many people restrain themselves from making logical complaints when something in the home goes awry, such as plumbing, vermin, lack of heat, noise or terrible neighbors, for fear that their rent will increase having irritated the landlord and still, many times, the voicing of such important things are ignored altogether because of the foreign attitude and unattainable audience of the landlord who's number and residence is guarded in ranks of so called "care takers" and business associates.

The question was posed; How then do these people keep filling up their rental properties if the people can not afford them?

Answer: I have found, through experience and by direct word of property managers that such people increase the rents to where it either forces the resident to pay the massive sum by the skin of their teeth, apply for rental assistance via section 8 (which they would have even more reason to charge outrageous sums) or flush out the residents financially and replaced them with residents of their other properties (which pay double or triple comparatively to this town). The residents we are replaced with are mostly trades people who work for the house flippers directly. So, in essence, our people are to be cut out and replaced by equally desperate persons already paying a massive rent to their bosses elsewhere and are entirely relieved to pay what our local economy would consider an absolutely insane expense. Their exodus from great metropolitan areas will not be noticed as the numbers of this town compared to theirs are staggeringly different. 

How is this just?

Where will the single person and single parent go when jobs are scarce and times are hard, when hardly any trade thinks to train you and demand years of experience all the same? In this precise time, now, more than ever, a time that need be spent with family, because there's no one to care for them but themselves/yourself, a time where we have not yet been graced with a living wage, we need to fight for our right to live.

More will be homeless because of greed, if we do not do something. People will be shoved out into the cold during a pandemic. You're annoyed by pan handlers now? Just wait until you see the lines if this type of robbery continues.

You may find yourself being shoved out, as our city turns to utter ruin, blazing in a mirage of metropolitan light and laugher, enjoyed only by those turning their noses up to the wallowing majority scraping by, at a peasants, peasants sum totaling little more than $21,000 a year. Divided up by 52 weeks, which makes a year, the average person is making $412.5 a week after tax, totaling to $10.31 an hr. for a full time job. 

They expect that your rent reflect a quarter of your monthly income and yet they charge you nearly the whole of it for your rent for any decent living space. The average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment apartment in Fall River, MA is currently $1,214. This is a 35% increase compared to the previous year, when in Massachusetts, as a whole, the average monthly mortgage payment is $1,333 (according to Lending Tree). Though, looking for yourself at homes here in the city most rental properties go for $1,500 a month (which includes the tax rolled in). Comparatively this is a laughable fraction more than what you pay for a one bedroom apartment as opposed to a whole house.

How is this just?!

The answer is simple. We must Rent Control Fall River and save the common people, that includes yourselves.

It's the fair shake we all deserve.

Now is the time to have heart and remember if we don't do something the outcome will effect all people, regardless of political stance on the right, left and in between. This is about remembering where you come from and who we all are!

Remember that this is a community effort. Those who sign must live in Fall River, MA.

Unite and petition to Rent Control our city

Remember your loved ones who struggle(d) and those who are to come

Remember there are those unseen and unheard who suffer in silence

Remember yourself 

We make the change

 

I thank you all.