Resident expert

Charlotte Golar Richie was a State House rising star. Now, she's leaving to tackle Boston's housing crisis.

by Ben Geman

CITY HALL

One day soon, Dorchester state representative Charlotte Golar Richie will pack up her office and move her stuff a quarter-mile downhill from the State House to the city building at 26 Court Street. There, in an 11th-floor office overlooking City Hall, she'll begin her first day in a job that's not only new to her, but new to the city: Cabinet Secretary for Housing and Neighborhood Development.

For Mayor Tom Menino, this appointment represents something of a coup. With rents in the city spiraling upward, he has made a lot of noise about housing of late, pledging to swell the city's housing budget and to double the number of city-constructed units this year. Bringing an up-and-coming state legislator aboard as his new housing czar -- the chair of the House committee on housing and urban development, no less -- is both a PR boost for the mayor and a momentum-builder for his plans.

For the 40-year-old Golar Richie, the job is an interesting change of direction, a swerve from the policymaking world of state government to the nitty-gritty of city dealmaking. She frames it as a chance to implement laws and budgets, not just write them. And she's got her work cut out for her. Rent control is long gone, and in a red-hot market, landlords get pretty much what they want. Governor Paul Cellucci seems indifferent to the issue -- last year, for example, he vetoed a bill that would give cities and towns more control over affordable housing. Don't look for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to increase its commitment to new housing anytime soon, either.

Golar Richie's main job will be trying to create more housing amid forces that have coalesced to make the city less and less affordable. "Her challenge," says Aaron Gornstein, director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Association, "will be an aggressive agenda to bring a lot of housing on line quickly, with real diminished resources at the state and federal level. The city will not be able to do it alone."

Golar Richie is a hard-to-miss figure -- she's about six feet tall, with an angular face and wide smile -- but she's surprisingly low-key for a politician. Last week, at a press event hyping new affordable housing in Mattapan, Menino arrived with much fanfare, flanked by aides. Golar Richie showed up alone, parking her Toyota wagon off to the side, all but unnoticed. She's so low-key, in fact, that it's hard to get a bead on her ideas. But Menino has given her a lot of power, and it's clear that what happens in Boston housing will depend greatly on what she brings to the job.

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Why are people just sitting on these properties?" asks Golar Richie, driving her car down a Roxbury street and pointing out an abandoned house. "Why haven't they moved to develop them?"

She's speaking rhetorically -- within her district, friends and colleagues say, there's not much she doesn't know. She seems familiar with the history of every lot she sees; she understands what nearby residents want to see developed, what's holding it up.

For a woman with public service in her blood -- her father is a judge on the New York State Supreme Court, and her mother worked for New York City's department of housing preservation and development -- Golar Richie's path to politics wasn't exactly direct. She majored in English at college, spent two years in the Peace Corps teaching high school in Kenya, then returned and got a master's degree in journalism before moving to Boston and working as a neighborhood journalist and as a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency.

In 1994, she entered politics the high-minded way: she was all but drafted. A neighborhood activist, Golar Richie was helping other Dorchester residents search for a suitable candidate to run against incumbent state rep Althea Garrison. None materialized, but soon residents -- and Golar Richie herself -- realized they had one under their noses. "I think there were any number of people who were better prepared and knew the community better who could have won," she says. But they didn't run. She did, and won the seat. Late in her first term -- after casting a controversial vote for Tom Finneran in his fight for the Speakership -- she was appointed chair of housing and urban development.

Colleagues from the House say Golar Richie has been a hard-working and thorough legislator. "She's a quick study and doesn't like to deal with things she can't get into completely," says state representative Byron Rushing (D-Boston). "She does not tend to want to commit herself one way or the other until she has a firm grasp." Adds Dave Barry, a friend and adviser: "She's a bit guarded. She goes through a real decision-making process and that's one of the most important things about her. . . . She does not have the mindset of a politician in a lot of ways. She's a lot less self-serving and a lot less self-absorbed."

That translates into both a low public profile and a cooperative approach in her district. The Fifth Suffolk spans parts of Dorchester and Roxbury. It's a mix of blacks, Asians, Latinos, and a small number of whites; it also has many new Haitian and Vietnamese immigrants. After taking office, Golar Richie established an advisory committee of neighborhood and community leaders that serves, she says, as a board of directors, with her as the corporation.

"Charlotte has brought a different model of representation to constituents, and it's based on consensus and consultation and debate on issues," says Carin Schiewe, executive director of the Commonwealth Coalition, an organization of nonprofit groups and labor unions that has endorsed and supported Golar Richie in her state races. "She believes deeply in democracy."

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This approach may prove important in her new job, which will involve some juggling -- she'll work with developers, nonprofit agencies, and the government. Maybe the biggest challenge, though, will be the housing market itself. Prices have jumped sharply citywide in the past four years, according to the Greater Boston Real Estate Board. In Charlestown, for example, the median home price soared from $147,900 in 1994 to $280,000 in 1998 -- an increase of nearly 90 percent, only slightly steeper than the figures for Boston as a whole. Other neighborhoods also saw huge leaps, leading the mayor to fret publicly that the middle class may be priced out of Boston.

But the most acute crisis may be among the poor. More and more private owners of subsidized housing are becoming eligible to pay off the balance of their HUD-backed mortgages and convert their buildings to market-rate rental properties. According to Aaron Gornstein of the Citizens Housing and Planning Coalition, a substantial number of the city's roughly 20,000 HUD-subsidized units are at risk of going market-rate in the next few years.

The city's weapon against the growing crisis is the Department of Neighborhood Development. But with more than 265 members and a $235 million budget, "it still needs a lot of administrative tightening up," says Barry. "Like any city bureaucracy, there's a lot of administrative weight to deal with."

The department's mandate is broad: everything from supervising construction (Menino has announced plans to build 2000 new affordable units this year) to coming up with new ideas about how to keep subsidized housing from becoming market-rate property.

Golar Richie offers few concrete proposals at this point, but she says she hopes to accelerate the transition of city-owned land to nonprofit developers for the creation of new housing, especially affordable units for first-time buyers.

And ultimately, the department's work extends beyond just housing, into constructing public buildings, revitalizing storefronts, and more.

"I think that with this department there will be a lot of competing demands on me," she says, "whether groups that want me to focus on the homeless or expiring use or whatever the case may be, these are all urgent and need attention. In developing my list of priorities, it will be important to . . . assess city finances, the mayor's position, and my ability to deliver.

"I can't walk on water," she adds. "I didn't as state rep and I won't as director of DND. It won't be Charlotte Golar Richie working in a vacuum. It's working with the mayor, with elected officials, with housing advocates, with unions, with community residents and community organizations."

Her deliberate, nonconfrontational style has brought criticism from more-confrontational community activists -- including some on her district advisory committee -- who have wanted to see Golar Richie be more confrontational herself. "There are so many people around her who are activists," Barry says, "and they see her as a fellow activist."

Then again, her balanced approach may work. Local journalist Brian Wallace, with whom Golar Richie once worked at Neighborhood Network News, calls her "just what Menino needs."

"She moves well in all circles," says Wallace. "It's a perfect fit for the mayor. Boston's parochial. People tend to shut you out if they don't agree with you, and she gets along well with everyone."

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Golar Richie's departure from the State House has touched off a fair amount of speculation as to why she would leave behind, at least for now, such a promising career as a legislator. She is, after all, the first African-American ever to become a committee chair as a freshman representative.

Some speculate that she became frustrated with the powerful and autocratic House Speaker Thomas Finneran. Indeed, one legislator thinks that as a progressive on a conservative leadership team, Golar Richie was in a no man's land, alienated from ideological allies who criticize Finneran's refusal to allow progressive legislation (such as a proposed minimum-wage hike) to come to the House floor. As part of the leadership, says one legislator, "Charlotte has to vote with the Speaker, and that means frequently voting against the way her natural allies vote."

Golar Richie herself says her decision has nothing to do with Finneran. She admits that she'll be making more money, important for someone with two children who eventually will need college funds. And working with Menino was an appealing prospect, she says: "Here you have the leading elected official in the City of Boston saying, `Charlotte, we want you to head the department that oversees development for every neighborhood in this city.' How do you turn that down? It's a wonderful, wonderful opportunity.

"I come back to the city feeling like I've done what I can to deliver resources to my district and my city," she says as she drives through her district. "Now I'm back at the micro level. That's something I want to focus on. These houses. These lots."

Her ascension to Menino's cabinet has bred whispers that perhaps one day she could move across the street into City Hall itself -- as the city's first black, and first woman, mayor. It's something she downplays without ruling out.

"We are talking way down the road if I ever gave it a thought," she said. "I don't have a crystal ball."

But Golar Richie says her interest in this job is rooted in something much deeper than personal ambition.

"To see people out in the streets with no place to go, " she says, "that just does not show our good sides as human beings."

Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.