A new documentary on Boston argues that decades of city policy, big development deals, and sports-stadium projects are quietly pushing black families out of the neighborhoods they built, and the pattern is bad news for working-class and black residents while benefiting developers, universities, and wealthy newcomers.

• Boston's black population has been pushed further from downtown for decades, from Beacon Hill and Back Bay to the South End and now out to Roxbury, Dorchester, and beyond the city limits to Brockton and Taunton.
• The city used Boston's $135 million deal to hand the public White Stadium to private investors (who are also tied to the Red Sox and Celtics) while cutting hundreds of teacher jobs, which the filmmakers call a transfer of public wealth to private hands.
• So-called "affordable housing" often isn't affordable, with income rules set so high that units sit empty, while past programs like urban renewal and housing vouchers tore down black-owned homes and sent families to apartments elsewhere instead of building the promised replacement housing.
• A legal challenge by Roxbury residents to block the stadium deal lost at Massachusetts' highest court, and the city's Boston mayor has reportedly refused to meet with the community group fighting the project.
• The documentary says the same pattern — displacement tied to new stadiums, university expansion, or disaster recovery — shows up in cities like Washington D.C., Los Angeles, New Orleans, Charleston, and Harlem, where elderly black homeowners are also targeted by deed theft schemes.

Outlook: The filmmakers expect the displacement to continue as more developments move forward, with legal options largely exhausted and city officials showing little sign of changing course.