Haitian church located on Blue Hill Ave.

Haitians have settled in various sections within the Boston city limits and its surrounding area. The location and diffusion of the population has mirrored the growth of the community. Highly concentrated in the city at first, Boston’s Haitians slowly expanded to neighboring municipalities and, most recently, to far flung suburbs. There are, for example, significant numbers of the population in Brockton, Randolph and Stoughton.

The area of greatest Haitian concentration in Boston proper is in Mattapan, followed by Dorchester, Hyde Park and Roxbury. Blue Hill Avenue is an important Haitian thoroughfare. The street runs through Roxbury and Dorchester, but it is along its last section, in Mattapan, that Boston’s Haitian ‘downtown’ is located. There, the street is dotted with several Haitian businesses. Many Haitian churches and organizations have their headquarters along Blue Hill Avenue also.

On the north bank of the Charles River, Haitians settled in Cambridge in the1950s and 60s. The population in this area now numbers approximately 7,500. Interestingly, although Haitians did not arrive in nearby Somerville until the early 1990s, the community there today is almost as large as the one in Cambridge. Currently, however, increasing costs of living in both Cambridge and Somerville are beginning to drive out people of modest means. The result has been the relocation of many of these area’s Haitians to the more affordable neighboring towns of Revere, Everett and Lynn.

Greater Boston	Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury	Boston, Cambridge and Somerville