About ETC

Incorporated in 1969, ETC Development Corporation is a non-profit owner and developer of affordable housing that encourages economic and ethnic diversity. We pursue opportunities throughout Massachusetts with a particular focus on neighborhoods that have a significant or increasing Latino population.

ETC undertakes its development activities alone or in partnership with for-profit or other non-profit developers. ETC is an experienced developer with significant capacity having more than 200 units currently in development and more than 1,000 units of housing completed. ETC owns and oversees a rental housing portfolio of approximately 500 units as well as commercial space.

Through its affiliate relationship with Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción, ETC offers a unique community building model that goes beyond bricks and mortar to support and empower residents by providing access to educational, economic and cultural services and programs.

History

In 1968, a group of primarily Puerto Rican residents of the South End of Boston formed The Emergency Tenants Council of Parcel 19 to challenge the urban renewal plan that threatened their displacement from Boston’s South End of Boston and preserve housing for low-income residents of that area. Rallying to the cry, “No nos mudaremos de la Parcela 19” (“We will not be moved from Parcel 19”).

One year later, in 1969, ETC Development Corporation was formed as a non-profit charitable organization to undertake real estate development, ownership and management activities. The Emergency Tenants Council of Parcel 19 was renamed Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción in 1974 with a focus on the social, economic, cultural and educational needs of residents.

The community-organizing efforts led by the residents conducted a multi-year campaign that won them the right to control the redevelopment of their community.

The collaboration of ETC as a developer, owner and manager and IBA as a resident-controlled community-building agency became a unique and innovative model in the affordable-housing community.

During the mid-1970s and through 1990, ETC working collaboratively with IBA and Villa Victoria residents, developed the Villa Victoria community, a 895- unit low and moderate-income neighborhood that includes:

  • Unity Tower a turnkey high rise developed for the Boston Housing Authority in 1974, containing 192 units serving elderly and disabled individuals.
  • Bradley Properties developed 1972 as 71 units of low-income family housing.
  • Viviendas Associates completed in 1976 with 181 units and retail space.
  • Casas Borinquen Apartments: nine historic brownstones with 36 units (108 bedrooms) gut rehabbed and substantially completed in 1977.
  • Victoria Associates consists of 170 units in a mid-rise building (with ground floor commercial space) and townhouses developed in 1992 on vacant land and eight historic brownstones.
  • South End Apartments, located between Lower Roxbury and the South End, these two brownstone buildings, renovated in September 1988, contain 28 units.
  • Taino Tower involved the conversion of a former church into 56 affordable homeownership condominiums and ground-floor commercial space in 1990.
  • Residencia Betances, a single-room occupancy building with 11 units was acquired and rehabilitated in 1993.