波士顿唐人街正在发生变化  居民们担心他们会因为房价上涨而被迫搬离

【中美创新时报2025年12月25日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）在无情的城市改造浪潮冲击下，唐人街的工薪阶层和贫困居民忧心忡忡，他们熟悉的世界似乎正处于崩塌的边缘。近年来，这里的租金平均上涨，远远超过了工资的增长速度。一些居住在紧邻市中心的低收入租户担心，他们所居住的楼宇的所有者最终无法抵挡住开发的诱惑。《波士顿环球报》记者丹尼·麦克唐纳对此作了下述报道。

对于74岁的退休人士邓玉英来说，波士顿的唐人街就是她的世界。

她在这里购买食物、与人交往以及进行医疗预约。

“这里应有尽有，”她最近用粤语说道。“唐人街什么都有。”

但住了几十年后，她最近收到公寓物业管理公司的一封信，信中说她住房的负担能力限制将在未来几个月内到期。现在，她和许多人一样，担心自己会因为房价过高而被迫搬离。

在无情的城市改造浪潮冲击下，唐人街的工薪阶层和贫困居民忧心忡忡，他们熟悉的世界似乎正处于崩塌的边缘。近年来，这里的租金平均上涨，远远超过了工资的增长速度。一些居住在紧邻市中心的低收入租户担心，他们所居住的楼宇的所有者最终无法抵挡住开发的诱惑。

邓女士在广州长大，20年来一直住在波士顿海滩街的廉租房里。她靠固定收入生活，每月领取441美元的政府补助。她自己支付的房租微乎其微。她说，算上水电煤气等费用，她每月在这里的生活费大约只有110美元。

但情况可能会有所改变。物业管理公司的信函告诉她，她所在单元的租金限制将于三月底到期。

如今，她担心自己再也找不到像以前那样好的地方了。

“我们不知道发生了什么事，”她说。

这篇报道在网上发布后，市住房官员向《环球报》提供了文件，表明有相应的保障措施，允许像邓这样的居民继续住在该楼里直到 2033 年。

在唐人街，人们对社区的变迁感到困惑和不安。人口结构的变化已经开始改变社区的面貌。

邓先生位于海滩街的公寓里，窗户上贴着一张海报，上面写着：“我们将长期居住在这里。”

根据亚裔美国人法律辩护与教育基金会最近的一份报告，2010年至2020年间，唐人街的亚裔人口减少了约1200人。报告显示，此后，亚裔人口占唐人街总人口的43%。此外，报告还指出，唐人街的租金中位数在过去十年间上涨了55%，达到每月约1800美元。

这些数字反映了社区中弥漫的焦虑情绪。居民们，其中许多是移民，担心他们在波士顿的立足点正在流失。

38岁的单身母亲李绍义（音译）和邓住在同一栋楼里，同样依靠第八条款住房补贴。想到春天到来时，她所在单元的收入限制即将到期，她不禁情绪激动。之前她一直和父母住在一起，现在终于拥有了自己的房子，她为此感到高兴和自豪。

“每当我谈起这件事，我就想哭，”她说。“我女儿对我说，‘妈妈，我不想流落街头。’”

她在一家餐馆工作，住在海滩街，每月房租和水电费大约400美元。她7岁的女儿在唐人街上学。她的父母住在附近的养老院。

她15年前从台山移民到美国。她当时认为美国是一个经济富裕的地方。但现在，她有时会想，自己是不是应该留在中国，当个农民。

“现实很残酷，”她用粤语谈到美国的生活时说道。

记者联系了李和邓的物业管理公司和房东，但均未收到回复。

林克奇住在牛津街。他今年67岁，已经退休。他说，他以前在福建做会计，但现在几乎没有收入了。他搬到这里是为了照顾孙子，现在和女儿住在一起。他怀念在故乡的那种“归属感”，但也庆幸能在邻里间和说他母语的人们交流。

他通过翻译用普通话表示，他最担心的是房东会把他和家人赶出去，以便进行更多开发。

与林在同一栋牛津街大楼里的是 43 岁的匡建义，她在 Needham 一家餐厅的厨房工作，餐厅提供上下班交通。

她也担心会被迫搬迁。她对目前的居住条件颇有微词；她还播放了一段视频，视频中一只蟑螂爬过她史努比主题的床单。她说，在台山的时候，她从来不用检查床上有没有虫子。她现在每月要付450美元的房租。

她说，每当有东西坏了，房东（记者未能联系到他置评）都不会及时修理。

尽管居住条件恶劣，她仍然担心会被迫搬离与两位室友合住的家。她害怕房东想把这栋楼改建成其他用途，以赚取更多利润。

她说，六年前她搬到这里，期待着一个发达国家和更美好的未来。

“但是，更好的未来是什么呢？”她用粤语说，“没人知道。”

她说，如今住在唐人街就是“生存”。

最近，包括邓先生所在公寓楼在内的唐人街居民和租户协会联名致信吴钊政府，表达了他们对潜在的区域规划变更的担忧。他们担心，这些变更可能会使唐人街更加开放，从而将他们排除在外，因为这些开发项目不会考虑到工薪阶层的利益。

信中写道，他们担心开发商和房东提出的分区规划方案“优先考虑少数人的赚钱，并将像我们这样的工薪阶层居民赶走”。

“我们恳请您考虑制定分区法规，以保护唐人街，并帮助其以工人阶级的需求为中心发展，”这封致市长吴弭和吴弭的规划主管沈凯罗斯的信中写道。

几个月来，市政府一直在考虑重新规划该街区的用途。城市规划人员力推一项多方面的建筑法规更新方案，他们表示该方案将支持更多经济适用房的建设和小企业的发展。但该街区居民对此反应不一，新规的实施时间表仍不明朗。

沈在一份声明中表示，政府将在推进新的分区规划之前“努力达成共识”。

沈女士表示：“唐人街重新规划的最终目标是创造更多住房选择，并扶持社区的小企业。提高建筑密度，包括建造经济适用房，将有助于解决居民流离失所的问题，我们知道这是居民们非常关心的问题。”

与此同时，住在海滩街的74岁老人邓女士表示，她搬到这里是因为很多亲戚都住在这里，她在中国感到很孤独。

她在2016年退休前从事过日托和家政服务工作。她说，她听说这里的政府对儿童和老人很好，而且这个国家基本上符合她的期望。

但她也清楚地认识到该社区面临的住房挑战。

“这对我们来说真的会很困难，”她说。

题图：74岁的邓玉英在她位于海滩街的公寓里看书。（莱恩·特纳/环球报工作人员摄）

附原英文报道：

Boston’s Chinatown is changing. Residents fear they are being priced out.

By Danny McDonald Globe Staff,Updated December 19, 2025 

Yuying Deng, 74, read a book inside her Beach Street apartmentLane Turner/Globe Staff

For Yuying Deng, a 74-year-old retiree, Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood is her world.

It’s where she shops for food, socializes, and has medical appointments.

“It’s all in here,” she said recently in Cantonese. “Everything is in Chinatown.”

But after decades of living there, she recently received a letter from her building’s property management team saying her affordability restrictions for her home will expire in the coming months. She is now among the many worried she’ll be priced out.

Buffeted by a relentless tide of gentrification, working-class and poor residents in Chinatown are expressing alarm that the world they know seems on the precipice of being swept away. On average, rents here have climbed in recent years, far outpacing wage increases, and some low-income tenants in the neighborhood, nestled right next to downtown, fret that the people who own the buildings they live in will not be able to resist the allure of development.

Deng, who grew up in Guangzhou, has lived in her Section 8 apartment on Beach Street in Boston for 20 years. She’s on a fixed income: She receives $441 a month in government assistance. Her out-of-pocket rent payment is a pittance. Including utilities, she pays about $110 a month to live here, she said.

But that could change. The letter from property management told her the affordability restrictions for her unit will expire at the end of March.

Nowadays, she is concerned she won’t be able to find another comparable place.

“We don’t know what’s going on,” she said.

After this story was published online, city housing officials provided the Globe with documents showing there are guardrails in place that would allow residents such as Deng to stay in the building until 2033.

On the ground in Chinatown, there is confusion and trepidation about a shifting neighborhood. Demographic shifts have already been changing the face of the neighborhood.

The neighborhood’s Asian American population dropped by 1,200 residents roughly between 2010 and 2020, according to a recent report from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. After that drop, the demographic comprised 43 percent of Chinatown’s population, according to the report. Additionally, the median Chinatown rent increased by 55 percent to about $1,800 a month over a recent 10-year period, according to the report.

Those numbers reflect an anxiety that is palpable in the neighborhood. Residents, many of them immigrants, worry their foothold in Boston is slipping.

Shaoyi Li, 38, a single mother who lives in the same building as Deng and similarly relies on Section 8 for her housing, becomes emotional when contemplating the unknown that the spring could bring, when the income restriction for her unit expires. She was happy and proud to have her own place, after having to live with her parents.

“When I talk about this, I want to cry,” she said. “My daughter said to me, ‘Mom, I don’t want to be homeless.’ ”

She works in a restaurant and pays roughly $400 for rent and utilities to live on Beach Street. Her 7-year-old daughter goes to school in Chinatown. Her parents live in senior housing nearby.

She emigrated from Toishan 15 years ago. She thought of the United States as a land of economic abundance. But now, sometimes she wonders whether she should have stayed in China and become a farmer.

“The reality is cruel,” she said in Cantonese of life in the United States.

Messages left with Li and Deng’s property management firm and landlord were not returned.

Keqi Lin lives on Oxford Street. At 67, he’s retired. He worked in accounting in Fujian, but now has no income to speak of, he said. He moved here to take care of his grandson, he said, and he lives with his daughter. He misses the sense of “rootedness” he had in his homeland, but appreciates that he can socialize in the neighborhood with those who speak his native tongue.

His main fear, he said in Mandarin through an interpreter, is that the landlord will kick him and his family out to make way for more development.

In the same Oxford Street building as Lin is Jianyi Kuang, a 43-year-old who works in the kitchen of a Needham restaurant that provides her transportation to and from work.

She is also worried about displacement. She has her gripes about her current living conditions; she showed a video of a cockroach crawling across her Snoopy-themed sheets. Back in Toishan, she never had to check her bed for bugs, she said. She pays $450 a month to live here.

Whenever something breaks, the landlord, who could not be reached for comment, doesn’t fix it in a timely fashion, she said.

While the conditions are bad, she is still worried about being forced out of her home, which she shares with two roommates. She fears the property owner wants to develop the building into something else, to make more money.

She moved here six years ago expecting a developed country and a better future, she said.

“But what’s a better future?” she said in Cantonese. “Nobody knows.”

Nowadays, living in Chinatown, she said, is “survival.”

Most recently, a collection of resident and tenant associations representing Chinatown residents, including Deng’s complex, penned a letter to the Wu administration. They expressed worry about potential zoning changes that they fear could box them out by opening up the neighborhood to more development — the kind that won’t take working people into account.

They worry the zoning vision offered by developers and landlords “prioritizes money making for the few and drives out working-class residents like us,” according to the letter.

“We implore you to consider zoning codes that protect Chinatown and help it grow in a way that centers working-class needs,” read the letter, which was addressed to Mayor Michelle Wu and Kairos Shen, Wu’s chief of planning.

The city has considered rezoning the neighborhood for months. City planners have pushed a multifaceted update to building rules they say will support more affordable housing and small business development. But the reception in the neighborhood has been mixed, and a timeline for the new rules remains unclear.

Shen, in a statement, said the administration will “work to build consensus” before advancing new zoning.

“The ultimate goals of rezoning Chinatown are to create more housing options and support the neighborhood’s small businesses,” Shen said. “Allowing more density, including affordable housing, will help combat displacement, which we know is a concern for residents.”

Meanwhile, Deng, the 74-year-old on Beach Street, said she moved here because many relatives were already here and she felt alone in China.

She worked providing day care and cleaning houses before she retired in 2016. She had heard that the government here treats children and the elderly well, and the country has mostly met her expectations, she said.

But she is also clear-eyed about the housing challenges facing the neighborhood.

“It’s going to be really difficult for us,” she said.