Debate over the future of the South End's Harriet Tubman House grows heated

"Oops!" indeed. While I provided facts (link to the deed), you offered unfounded rumors. Can you provide a source for your story? Even if USES sold to TDC (Tenants Development Corporation), or another non-profit, for less than New Boston Ventures offer, it would in no way be "on the cheap". The intention of many of those opposed to the sale to NBV is to instead repair the building and maintain its vital services to the community.

Here's the opening to TDC's history on their website: Founded in 1968, TDC has been operating for over 40 years, developing affordable housing in Boston’s historic South End neighborhood. TDC was conceived and organized by low income renters, principally African-American tenants, who were distressed over the sub-standard and hazardous housing conditions to which they were subjected to live in many areas of the South End.

Respectfully, Mr. Keith, is it correct that you're a real estate broker? If so, you're not exactly an unbiased observer, as your field profits off of this type of development. Furthermore, your cavalier attitude towards TDC reveals a lack of empathy for the deep pain felt by many (particularly African-American residents), who have seen themselves largely erased by "urban renewal", or more accurately "urban removal". The late, great South End artist Allan Rohan Crite referred to it as "Negro removal", and he was right.

Harriet Tubman did not live at the current Tubman House location, though it's certainly not a "random building with her name slapped on it" either. The mural on the side of the building highlights the history of the location, including the Hi Hat club. The South End (and this area in particular, with its prevalence of jazz clubs) was home to a large African-American population.

Some of Tubman's history in Boston, as well as the establishment of the Tubman House (from tubmanboston dot org):

"Tubman's connection with Boston continued until the end of her life. She was an invaluable contributor to the abolitionist and women's rights movements, in Boston and elsewhere, and played an essential role in making Boston a focal point of these movements.

In the early 20th Century, responding to the discrimination in their own community, six Black women of Boston opened the Harriet Tubman House at 37 Holyoke Street in the South End. A personal friend of Tubman, Julia O. Henson rented the Tubman House as a place of lodging for Black females who had recently migrated from the South. Later on, the Harriet Tubman House was moved to Mrs. Henson’s own home at 25 Holyoke Street. There, she and her friends, Cornelia Robinson, Annie W. Young, Fannie R. Contine, Jestina A. Johnson, Sylvia Fern, and Hibernia Waddell, organized a settlement house for the purpose of “assisting working girls in charitable ways.”

The Harriet Tubman House took in young female boarders, providing them with food, clothing, shelter, and friendship while they adjusted to their new environment. In 1906, the six founders incorporated their organization according to the dictates of Massachusetts state law. Cornelia Robinson was elected President of the Board and Matron. By this time, the Harriet Tubman House had grown into an important community institution, gathering support from neighborhood churches and women’s clubs. Harriet Tubman was made Honorary President of the Harriet Tubman House during one of her visits to Boston four years before her death in 1913.

Today, the legacy of the Harriet Tubman House continues in the work of the United South End Settlements".

The name was first given to an earlier USES location elsewhere in the South End, and kept when the current structure was built and services relocated. Harriet Tubman has no direct connection to the current building or location, though many would say that the symbolic connection is significant, and nobody is using a historical connection to Tubman herself as a reason to oppose this development, so it kind of doesn't matter.