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Boston2024 would create budget problems for many Boston families

BostonGlobe:

The tales of past Olympics’ adverse effects on poor residents have become almost legendary. Homeless people arrested or bused out of town in Atlanta. Rental prices soaring in Sydney and London. More people on the streets in Vancouver. Homes knocked down in Beijing, Sochi, and Rio de Janeiro.

IMAGE(http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk143/nfsagan/Boston2024-poor-family_zpsemsckfmv.jpg~original)
Rene Bernal, Dora Sandoval, and Alexander and Dulce Bernal

As Boston gears up to bid for the 2024 Olympics, advocates for low-income residents are starting to mobilize in an attempt to keep the city from suffering the fate of past Olympic Games. People struggling to pay their bills are an unlikely group to take on a mega-event like the Olympics, given all the obstacles in their lives...

Rising rents are already an issue for many tenants, forcing them to move far from their jobs, schools, and neighborhood resources. And if Boston wins the Olympics, the gentrification that often accompanies the Games could drive prices even higher.

For the past eight years, Dora Sandoval, Rene Bernal, and their two children have lived in a cramped apartment in Roxbury. But the couple said they have been threatened with eviction and with having their rent doubled to $1,800 a month and could be forced out. If an Olympic event takes over nearby Franklin Park, as has been discussed, their neighborhood could become even less affordable.

The only solution that Sandoval, who cleans houses, and Bernal, a maintenance man, have come up with is to move out of the city, which would mean pulling their 14-year-old daughter out of the esteemed Boston Latin School, dimming her hopes of college. Or they could split up the family and move into a rooming house.

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