We all have these chemicals in our heads that can take control without warning. A good spontaneous joke makes you immediately laugh. Reading BMG gets the ole angry molecules swimming around up there. Anger is far the largest motivator of comments and posts on here. Read something and boom!, there it goes. Think sports to try and take your mind off it.
Then there’s disappointment. Not the due-to-illness—the-role-of-Maria-Von-Trapp-will-not-be-played-by-Miss-Andrews-this-evening-but-instead-her-understuder-Mary-Szczbinski-will-perform-in-her-absence-disappointment.
I mean the real kind. The visceral kind. The I-can’t-believe-my-girlfriend-is-dating-the-entire-foorball-team-disappointment.
Disappointed not at a situation but in people.
The kind of disappointment that causes you take a step back and question your own perceptions.
The kind of disappointment that leaves a big pit in your stomach.
The kind of disappointment I feel when reading the words of few MA elected officials, residents, and even Howie Carr – can you believe it, I even thought Howie Carr, the guy that sent his kids to Catholic school, would not have made something of this – yelling because a few hundred children with no money, no friends, no family, and nowhere to go will be housed, fed, clothed, entertained, schooled as much as possible, and hidden for less than a year at zero cost to the community or the state inside a secured military base somewhere near them.
susantruitt says
jimc, you are so on target. There is no other choice. As a resident of the Cape, I hope we have a chance to show how we can step up to the plate. (Too many metaphors, I know). Who ARE we if we can’t help children?
susantruitt says
eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii , you are so on target. I credited the wrong author!
And the system wouldn’t let me edit!
Jasiu says
I keep hearing those who say we have to “send these kids back” to send the message that people have to stop sending their kids unaccompanied to our border. To which I ask the question: Would you sacrifice YOUR child to send that message?
farnkoff says
He’s a nasty, nasty guy, who often panders to the angriest, dumbest and meanest instincts among us. I doubt he cares that much for his own grandkids, if he has any- he’s not gonna give a damn about refugees from Mexican drug wars, no matter how young and vulnerable they are.
shillelaghlaw says
I bet mike_cote still finds an excuse to condemn you for this diary, call you classless, and demand your permanent banishment from BMG.
shillelaghlaw says
Even if one is inclined to believe that “we should take care of our own before we take care of them” and we shouldn’t reward illegals for breaking the law, there is still the matter of due process.
When suspected illegal aliens are caught, they are still afforded due process. The government can’t simply “send ’em all back” until the questions of where they came from, eligibility for asylum, and all the other myriad bureaucratic issues are sorted out. Given the sheer volume of kids coming over the border, of course it’s going to take time.
If we want to say that we are a nation of laws, then due process is part of it.
kbusch says
It seems as if modern conservatives have reached the no sense of decency stage.
And what do their resentful comments about innocent kids say about their compassion for needful people less obviously sympathetic?
sue-kennedy says
During the time my family was immigrating the same underlying arguments were made. Good people pushed back.
Lincoln’s letter to Joshua Speed.
Under our Constitution all men are created equal and are born with equal rights. The notion that we ask for proof of citizenship before offering aid is inhumane and un-American.
retired-veteran says
I have been watching the reaction of the elected officials in Western Mass and on Cape Cod. The answer is a simple NO. Cape Edwards is a training base for our troops. Where will they stay when they are at Cape Edwards? Will theirmassuschetts
training be canceled? What will the residents on Cape Cod do when a Hurricane comes up? The barracks are to be used for shelter for the Cape Residents.
At Westover, They presently have a National Security Mission at the base. Who is going to provide the extra Security needed there and at Camp Edwards?
New Mexico is now flying these people back on charted flights. It a waste of taxpayers’ money shipping these people up here to Massachusetts. But we who oppose this have no compassion according to the Liberals, yet they will complain when they have to open their pockets with the coming tax increase that will result from this. Stop it before it starts. You must remember they are illegal and the law must be upheld, something new to the Liberals.
eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii says
a few more if any of those little bastards get anywhere near The National Security Mission. Who will protect the National Security Mission? Oh wait, the Chicopee police of course. That’s a local problem.
And where will our troops train? The base will have to shut down now.
And the waste of money. If only the liberals spent money in an efficient and transparent way the military when it buys pencils, mattresses, and rifles. And if only they spent money on perks for their bigs hots like the military does for it officers.
Question for retired veteran: Are you a WW2 vet? Iraq 1? Other than those two wars our military hasn’t one shit. Oh wait, Grenada. We won that one.
Anyway , I can’t blame you. You joined the military and they did we the taxpayers pay them to do: turn you into tool. They did a great job, and remember It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault…
eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii says
The law requires due process to return these kids to where they cam from. So everyone is following the law. You don’t like that law I guess. If you respect the constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment and the oath you took in service to our country you should be out front supporting this move.
Why not?
That doesn’t make sense. Your opinion violates the law. And as we all know, two wrongs do make a right.
kbusch says
The cost of housing these kids is rather minimal compared to the overall size of the state budget — never mind the federal budget.
The fact that one is experiencing a particularly large and ugly case of resentment does not mean that the cause of that resentment is big, expensive, or even material.
matthewjshochat says
A great example is Rep. Shaunna O’Connell’s constant attack over the Welfare portion of the State Budget, which is actually a debate “regarding less than 1%” of the budget.
We have the ability to make a difference in these children’s lives, and that really matters.
SomervilleTom says
If you want to live in a state that turns it’s back on children’s suffering while loudly proclaiming it’s “Christian values”, then perhaps you will feel more at home in New Mexico.
As a long-time Massachusetts resident, you embarrass me.
ryepower12 says
Plenty of these kids fall under provisions we have in our law to protect refugees and those who fall under protections for asylum. These are issues which have been long codified by law — and expanded without any controversy by that super liberal guy George W. Bush.
Many of these kids would be forced into becoming child soldiers for drug cartels, forced to work for those drug cartels in other ways, girls sent into the sex trade… and many of them could be murdered.
They are risking their lives to come here and none of these kids in question are “sneaking” into the border. They’re showing up at the border and begging for help.
We have a duty, a moral obligation, to take a look at these kids, find out where they’re from and try to verify their stories.
If any of them meet the standards for refugee status or asylum, they should be granted those statuses, as we have been doing for millions upon millions of people throughout the history of this country.
This isn’t rocket science. Logistical issues arise for any situation where more-than-typical amounts of refugees or people seeking asylum show up at a border and ask for help, but our logistical issues — several you mention — are small potato compared to the logistical nightmares of dozens of war-torn areas around the world, where millions upon millions of people flee to much smaller states, without nearly the amount of resources or breadth of territory we have deal with these problems.
These kids, spread throughout the country, are hardly a blip in the logistical radar. For so many people like you to whine about these logistical issues when there are countries who are completely overwhelmed by refugees coming from war torn areas… and somehow cope… really is a very sad reflection of the state of affairs for our country.
Shameful, really.
joeltpatterson says
http://www.kpho.com/slideshow?widgetid=117700
nopolitician says
The problem I have with many such poverty programs is that the people who advocate for them often are not directly affected by them.
If we are all in this together, then I would say, “yes, let’s help these children out”. But we’re not. We have a very segregated state, and most of the people calling to help these children out are doing so because they know that the children will not wind up in their community.
If the children were “spread through the community”, we would have no problems taking them in. However I can just about guarantee you that towns like Wellesley, Dover, Longmeadow, Weston, etc. will not see these children. They will wind up in cities like Lawrence, Holyoke, Springfield, Chicopee, Brockton. Cities that already cannot provide for their own citizens.
In Springfield, we have seen a couple of thousand of international refugees settled here over the past decade. The groups settling them are usually not residents of Springfield – they usually live in a neighboring suburban town – you know the kind, the ones with the “good schools” who would not like the impact on the test scores of refugees.
The groups make their administrative money by taking federal dollars to resettle immigrants, they provide them with a few weeks of service, and then they cut them loose, never checking on them again. In Springfield, the city code enforcement found refugees living in squalor in an apartment owned by a slumlord. The director of one of the programs did his own inspections of 8 properties, and found two of them to be slum-like conditions. He actually defended that proportion.
So if this state is going to help this problem, then *everyone* should be impacted equally. If a kid winds up in a Springfield classroom, then there should be an equal chance that another winds up in a Longmeadow or Dover classroom. And spare me the story about “Longmeadow and Dover don’t have the programs to handle these children”. That’s discrimination and segregation in fancier terms.
Christopher says
…is that they will be in one or two secure facilities and really won’t be part of the community at all. They will not be going to local public schools, for example, and will otherwise not be the responsibility of the communities. That said, the richer towns are also often liberal so I can certainly see them being willing to take them in if that were the issue.
nopolitician says
I spoke with a number of people out here about this over the weekend, and every single one of them does not believe that the children will be here only temporarily. They think that this is a stepping stone.
I also heard a woman on the radio, NPR, I think, and she said that the children will be “resettled” with relatives or friends. She said that there already “thousands” of undocumented people from Central America living in Springfield and Holyoke, and implied that the children would wind up in their care.
Wealthier towns have a trump card. They don’t have rental housing, and they don’t have “services”. They don’t have public transportation. Any time anyone suggests moving in refugees to those communities, they always wring their hands and say “gee, we’d love to, but we can’t offer the refugees anything they need – they would be much better off in Springfield, Lawrence, Holyoke, Brockton”.
Until everyone in this state steps up equally, poor cities should not bear the brunt of this situation.
SomervilleTom says
I don’t think there are “trump cards” here. I think there is a humanitarian catastrophe happening.
If you want to join us in collecting additional tax revenue from the wealthy who reside in Massachusetts, and want to use that additional tax revenue to benefit ALL of our most desperate children (including these), then I welcome you with open arms.
Turning away these children is NOT the answer.
nopolitician says
Extra taxes don’t cut it, because there is nowhere near parity between wealthy and poor communities. The effects of poverty are already significantly underfunded, so transferring a few more dollars toward this problem will most likely be grossly underestimated.
Again, I think that helping these children is absolutely the right thing to do – however I am pointing out that this kind of thing is typically done in a way that impacts only a small number of (mostly poorer) communities in the state. That has to stop.
If at some point it is decided that these children should attend school here, instead of placing them in school systems in Chicopee, Holyoke, and Springfield, they should also get placed in school systems in Longmeadow, Wilbraham, and South Hadley. No one should be allowed to say “gee, we’d love to take them, but we don’t have the programs to handle such children here in our nice suburbs (plus, we don’t want our test scores to be affected)”.
If there is going to be any resettlement, then let’s open up some rental housing in the wealthier communities so that these children and their families can be resettled there. No one should be able to say “gee, we really support resettling these people because it’s the right thing to do, but we don’t have public transportation in our community, and we don’t have any rental housing, so sorry, you have to put them in Chicopee, Holyoke, and Springfield”.
If this is truly a humanitarian tragedy, then no one should be trying to figure out why we shouldn’t be able to place refugees in wealthy communities. They should be trying to figure out ways to make it happen.
Mark L. Bail says
I work in one of the suburbs unaffected by refugees because it lacks affordable or even vacant housing. Our ELL population is growing, but very slowly compared to Springfield’s.
When I was in high school in Granby, several families hosted Cambodian refugees. I don’t remember anyone complaining about providing them an education or housing them. Times are different today. People are less generous.
SomervilleTom says
I agree with your follow-up, thank you for clarifying.
My issue was my perhaps incorrect interpretation that you were opposing the Governor’s action (in the short term).
Christopher says
…a lot of people you’ve heard from are drinking the Fox News Kool-Aid, and yes, you do kind of have to put people near where there are services existing especially in an urgent situation like this. You seem to think that problems follow services. I would suggest that services are available where they are most needed, which certainly makes sense from an efficiency standpoint. I wouldn’t mind greater access to transit though.
stomv says
I’m not defending nor attacking Weston, and I have no idea how Weston would respond to immigrant children. But, it’s worth noting that Weston has participated in METCO since 1967. The METCO program provides ~$5k per student per year, so the Weston taxpayers are in fact paying to educate ~167 poor usually black or brown students from Boston, and have for almost 50 years. I didn’t research the other communities you listed.
Mark L. Bail says
also participate in METCO.
jconway says
That we are a commonwealth and a community, and I wholeheartedly endorse both Christopher’s post outlining the clear Christian tradition of compassion the Governor so eloquently defended, as well as EB3’s post here attacking those that would deny a safehaven to the most vulnerable in our society. It speaks to the sad state of the world today, that too many working people blame immigrants, blame blacks, blame gays, blame feminists, as ‘taking away’ some kind of benefit or freedom they are entitled to. They aren’t, they are contributing to the same patchwork of the American fabric as the rest of our ancestors (and unless anyone here is a member of a tribe, we ALL came here from somewhere else). It sickens me that too many friends and relatives, some of whom are on the government doll, are so quick to bemoan a simple act of humanity.
nopolitician says
It’s better than nothing, but METCO is not a free pass. As I showed below, Weston has taken in 8 refugees over the past 12 years. Longmeadow has taken in zero. East Longmeadow has taken in zero. Southwick has taken in 25. The grand total across the state has been 16,562 refugees. Those aren’t numbers to be proud of.
Plus, the METCO numbers are usually fairly small. East Longmeadow takes in 52 METCO kids out a population of 2,699 (1.9%). Southwick/Tolland takes in 20 out of a population of 1,709 (1.2%). Longmeadow takes in 38 METCO kids out of a population of 2,857 (1.3%). Weston actually has a commendable ratio – 181 students in a district of 2,333 (7.8%).
Mark L. Bail says
METCO kids are a benefit to East Longmeadow and its kids. They are a benefit to me. Most METCO kids benefit, not from what some would call a better school system, but from learning to thrive in a predominantly white community. METCO is a state program, however. The reason we don’t have more METCO kids is that the state won’t pay their tuition.
What can you tell us about how communities end up receiving refugees? Is it through churches? The state? When I was in high school, families took in Cambodian kids. I think this was a church-oriented program.
merrimackguy says
but there are many adoptions of refugee children (like from Somali), enough that there is a significant impact on the schools ESL program.
Andover has thousands and thousands of rental units, many of them filled with immigrant and immigrant children.
Andover has Section 8 and town owned units, most of which are filled with people with Hispanic names, clearly not originally from Andover.
I’m only on a rant here because there is so much spouting of so-called facts about wealthy suburban communities here on BMG by people who know absolutely nothing about those towns. People act like this is a wealthy town, and it is when you look at the averages, but it is truly a diverse town both on an ethnic and economic basis.
nopolitician says
Here are some facts about Andover from the 2000 census – I used 2000 because I could only find Andover CDP data for 2010, which is only for the town center (pop. ~ 9000) versus the town (pop ~ 33k)
Foreign-born population: 10.1% (MA is 14.8% in 2010).
Black/African: 0.7% (MA is 6.6%)
White: 91.6% (MA is 76.1%)
Asian: 5.7% (MA is 5.3%)
Hispanic/Latino: 1.8% (MA is 9.6%)
Median Household Income: $75,671 (MA is $66,658)
Persons below poverty line: 3.9% (MA is 11.0%)
Home ownership rate: 78.6% (MA is 63.2%)
Andover has a 40B score of 9.3% affordable units. According to the Andover Housing Authority website, they maintain 56 “family” units and 218 senior/disabled units. So they’re getting to their percentage mostly via senior housing (4 to 1 ratio).
If you think that Andover is having problems due to poverty and immigration, I think you should spend more time in Lawrence, Holyoke, and Springfield.
Christopher says
If anything it sounds like he was saying Andover has made a contribution and has figured out how to manage it.
nopolitician says
I’m pointing out that Andover may think that it is doing its part, but when they have taken in just 1 refugee over the past 14 years, when they have just 21.4% rental housing despite being a city with a population of 33,000, when they have various demographic populations that are below the state average in every category, when they have not met the 10% 40B goal, and of the affordable housing authority units they have, 80% of them are restricted to seniors, not families, then they aren’t doing nearly as much as they think they are.
merrimackguy says
and I could argue your census numbers with real facts not statistics.
Your mind is made up though, so no point.
PS Andover borders Lawrence. It’s 100 yards from my house. I am there every single day.
Christopher says
…or even proportional. So Andover is senior-heavy; maybe others have other types of housing. FWIW Andover is a town, not a city, one of the largest to be governed by open town meeting. I still don’t know what you mean by taking in a refugee as if it’s up to the town and I find it hard to believe that a single refugee with no family is just out there by himself.
nopolitician says
Defending a 40-B strategy that focuses on senior housing by implying that it is an equivalent contribution to providing family housing is a little like defending a wealthy town by saying that “their contribution to the state is to provide housing for the wealthiest” – as if that is equivalent to providing housing for the poorest. Anyone and everyone knows that senior housing is a 40-B loophole, an out for wealthier communities to keep poor kids out of their schools.
Again, I posted here because there was a big circle-jerk going on concerning how *of course* we should take in refugees – but the people proclaiming that are not nearly equally impacted by this – they don’t have nearly as much skin in the game as the people living in the urban communities where these people will inevitably wind up.
nopolitician says
Here are some hard numbers as to the extent that some communities have stepped up for refugees in this state. These are the total number of refugees settled in the following communities from 2002 until 2014. As you can see, some communities have stepped up quite a bit, while others have just not.
Somerville (population: 77,000) , for example, has accepted just 37 refugees in the past 12 years. West Springfield (population: 28,000) has accepted 2,742. Cambridge has accepted just 110. Amherst has accepted just 6. (even Weston accepted more, with 8).
Western Massachusetts took about 34% of the refugees despite having only about 12% of the population of the state.
Would someone like to explain away such disparities? Would someone like to justify why refugees are not being equally distributed across our state? Does anyone here live in a community which has done virtually nothing for refugees over the past 12 years but who strongly supports more? Can you explain why you’re comfortable asking others to step up to the plate while personally avoiding the impact?
Worcester 3408
West Springfield 2742
Boston 2612
Springfield 1876
Lowell 1230
South Boston 621
Westfield 550
Lynn 531
Dorchester 293
Chelsea 218
Jamaica Plain 206
Greenfield 194
Malden 173
Cambridge 110
Chicopee 109
Quincy 109
Roxbury 107
Woburn 98
Framingham 76
Feeding Hills 63
Brighton 61
Medford 54
Agawam 53
Turners Falls 48
Revere 46
Watertown 43
Newton 41
Somerville 37
Charlestown 36
Wellesley 35
Hyde Park 32
Brockton 30
West Roxbury 30
Allston 29
Leominster 27
Natick 27
Southwick 25
Fitchburg 23
Stoughton 22
Brookline 22
Roslindale 21
Canton 21
Peabody 18
Salem 17
Mattapan 17
Waltham 17
Lawrence 16
Swampscott 16
Sharon 14
Acton 14
Needham 13
Newton Center 12
Franklin 12
East Boston 12
Randolph 11
Danvers 11
Melrose 11
Chestnut Hill 11
Lexington 10
Arlington 10
Attleboro 9
Belmont 9
Weston 8
Marblehead 8
Saugus 7
Ludlow 7
West Springfiled 7
Milton 7
Winchester 7
Lynnfield 7
West 6
Holyoke 6
Dedham 6
North Attleboro 6
Ashland 6
Bedford 6
Amherst 6
Concord 6
North Grafton 5
Auburndale 5
Everett 4
Falmouth 4
Chester 4
Williamstown 4
North Reading 4
Northborough 3
Webster 3
Clinton 3
Millis 3
Spencer 3
Taunton 3
Shrewsbury 3
Newtonville 3
Haverhill 3
Dartmouth 3
Westwood 2
Wayland 2
Beverly 2
Rockland 2
Burlington 2
Fall River 2
Buzzards Bay 2
Holliston 2
Winthrop 2
Devens 2
Russell 2
Granville 2
Weymouth 1
North Billerica 1
Hopedale 1
Indian Orchard 1
Raynham 1
Wakefield 1
Williamsburg 1
Dorchester Center 1
Blackstone 1
Dracut 1
North Andover 1
Northampton 1
Reading 1
Methuen 1
Whitman 1
Chicago 1
Nashua 1
Marlborough 1
Hudson 1
Braintree 1
Andover 1
Pittsfield 1
Auburn 1
Christopher says
I assume the state looks everywhere to discover where there is space available. I’m also not sure there needs to be an acceptance. Non-refugees move from community to community all the time. When I moved from Dracut to Lowell I did not have to ask Lowell’s permission to move in. I did because that’s where I happened to find a place. I wish you would stop assuming such horrible motives to these discrepancies.
nopolitician says
There are a few reasons that these numbers are the way they are:
1) Our state is heavily economically segregated, primarily by zoning. Many communities do not allow multi-family housing to be built in them. A refugee isn’t going to buy a house in Dover, so Dover doesn’t have to worry about refugees because none will be settled there.
2) The program is deliberately set up to concentrate the refugees in certain communities. They look at things like “support services”. This means that even if a community like Ludlow has a fair amount of multi-family housing, they don’t settle refugees there because there aren’t enough “services” in Ludlow. The reason there aren’t services offered in Ludlow is that there aren’t a ton of poor people in Ludlow that require services.
3) The settlement is done at the discretion of the agencies getting the funding. I’m not sure there is any public oversight of this program – definitely no local oversight. I don’t know their criteria, but they have said that they try and “keep communities together”. But there is no transparency since this is being done by private organizations.
If you look at the detailed numbers, you’d see that are patterns to the settlements. Some communities get only eastern-European refugees from countries with high literacy rates. I took the top 8 countries from Westfield, West Springfield, and Springfield (I used 8 because Westfield only had refugees from 8) and did a weighted average of the literacy rates of their home countries. I got this:
Westfield: 99%.
West Springfield: 73%
Springfield: 67%
There is definitely a bias going on, one which is resulting in disparities in the settlements.
The net effect of all this is that we are settling refugees in poorer communities, those with many other problems. Other communities get nothing. It is pretty grinding when the people who are championing these programs are completely insulated from them, who won’t step and help themselves – but are happy to offer *my* community to take this kind of impact.
SomervilleTom says
New England has a long tradition of this economic segregation, and it is a powerful motivator against regional government.
As long ago as the 1980s, I was struck by the difference between the way Billerica and Concord reacted to developers who sought to exploit the affordable housing laws. Billerica did lip service to the complaints and issues, while making sure that the developers got exactly what they wanted (it was very profitable for the developer). Large tracts of open space and vulnerable watershed were turned into dense housing developments (with the requisite number of units temporarily designated as “affordable housing”) overnight — to the great personal (and in too many cases financial) benefit of the “powers that be” in Billerica at the time.
Concord made sure that the same developers got ZERO traction in town, and ultimately relegated a few units to the “undesirable” sections of Concord near Hanscom (if I remember correctly).
This did NOT mean that Billerica was “kind”, “compassionate”, or “Christian”. It meant, instead, that both towns understood and accepted the culture here, and the more-powerful and more-affluent residents of each town had long since found ways to profit from reality as it stood.
Christopher says
I have a couple of possible ideas, but they raise problems of their own. Statewide property tax? That’s NH’s solution, but I hope that doesn’t keep communities from going above and beyond if they choose to and have the resources. Standardized zoning across the Commonwealth? The ship has pretty much sailed regarding where the land is. Plus for a sustainable economy you need urban, rural, and everything in between. I do not think it is necessary for every community to have the same proportion of zoning requirements and I’d much rather focus on reducing or eliminating poverty than redistributing it.
stomv says
We’ve created a sledgehammer in 40B. It is anything but subtle, but it does apply to all communities* as an equal percentage of the community’s population.
Keep in mind that affordable housing need not be an apartment tower, nor acres of 3 story brick 1950s era housing. It could be individual apartments on the second story of what would otherwise be 1 story commercial buildings. It could be one unit of a three decker. It could be one of the two pairings of an attached side-by-side two family. It could even be a modest single family home.
* OK, not Boston, and maybe not Cambridge (or is that just 40A?). But they’ve got a far higher percentage of affordable housing than (nearly?) every other Massachusetts community.
SomervilleTom says
I’m under the impression that the current language of 40B imposes a 30 year restriction on the rent or price limits. After thirty years, the properties revert to full market value. So one additional option is to make the restrictions permanent.
In my view, the larger difficulty with the current 40B is the widely varying ability of towns to manage it. As I observed above, affluent towns are more able to “manage” 40B housing to literally create ghettos, while other towns use it as lever to obtain power and money windfalls for both developers and local officials.
If I remember correctly, one little-mentioned aspect of 40B is that it trumps local zoning ordinances (this may have been adjusted in the 2008 rewrite). At least for a time, this made it all the more difficult to manage sustainable development in less affluent towns.
nopolitician says
From what I can see, there has been too much focus on “affordable”. This is not precisely the thing that needs to exist in the state. We need to focus on multi-family rental units.
Condominiums should not be counted as affordable, even if some units are sold below the market value. Condos do not satisfy the state’s full needs. It is abominable that over-55 housing can count as affordable and that a community can satisfy its 40B requirements primarily with that method.
I know people don’t want this in their community, but we need to have rental housing for people who are poor. These are people who will not be able to buy a condo – ever. These are people who will move around a lot. These are people who are going to be immigrants. We need housing that can be used for the resettling of refugees in each community.
That is what ending the segregation looks like – not just cherry-picking the population who need affordable housing (i.e. seniors, young teachers). 40B is set up to allow this kind of cherry-picking. In some ways it has harmed the poor areas because it has concentrated the groups that no one wants even further.
This is what being liberal is all about – not just tsk-tsking communities far away from you for expressing concern with refugees being placed within their borders, but from the safety of your community where you know such refugees will never wind up.
stomv says
A few items to push back…
1. How many rental units? 40B is 10% — what fraction should be rental housing (multi-family or single family is irrelevant to this question methinks)?
2. Given that multi-family housing is cheaper per unit to construct, we’d expect affordable rental housing to be multi-family, even in communities with relatively little multi-family housing. But we also know that “packing” all of our affordable housing units into one building or one city block is also troublesome. We’d like the affordable housing to be integrated within the community. So — what percent of the multi-family building should be affordable? 20%? 50%? 100%?
If, for example, you said that 25% of the affordable housing should be rental units for families, and you said that no more than 20% of a building’s units should be affordable (so it’s not a “project”), then you’ve got (10% * 25%) / (20%) == 12.5%. That means that to satisfy these numbers, every community would need to have a minimum 12.5% of it’s housing stock to be multi-family. How realistic is that in the exurbs and rural areas of Massachusetts? I don’t have any idea, I’m just trying to imagine this approach on the very communities that you argue aren’t going to pull their weight (leafy suburbs, downzoned communities, etc.)
nopolitician says
I’m suggesting in general that maybe we should start thinking in terms of rental units rather than in terms of “affordable” units. I think that communities have already gamed the hell out of “affordable”. I don’t have all the details, this is something that just kind-of dawned on me.
I’ll throw a random number out – I think maybe 20% on the low end for rental units, and 40% is the point where a community probably should not build any more. I put that upper bound because I think that the state could offer incentives via state aid to reward communities that are supplying rental housing, but the incentives should stop at such a ceiling.
Sure, 20% sounds high, but it only sounds high because people have a natural aversion to rental units. The fact that people think that rental housing isn’t needed in exurbs and rural areas shows just how skewed our thinking has become. Why can’t a two-family house be constructed in a rural area? Why can’t an existing farmhouse be converted into a two-family? It gives people more options. Face it, someone working as the school janitor in a rural town isn’t going to buy a house in that town despite it being “affordable”. Owning a house is too risky for his job, it ties him down too much.
I think that such a requirement could be partially accomplished by zoning. This would allow for gradual change – over time, people might convert their single-family house into a multi-family house. Basing it all on “current use” would get tricky.
To circle back to why this topic is relevant in this thread, if we’re going to have a statewide policy to accept a certain number of refugees, then it only makes sense that these refugees have the potential to impact anyone and everyone in this state. It does not make sense for people who will not be impacted to try and shame those who will be impacted but resist.
stomv says
20% is too high in some communities, and 40% may be too low in others. In Boston, for example, 35% of homes are rentals, and given the skyrocketing price of rent in Boston, it clearly isn’t enough. I agree that some rental housing is good — it lubricates the housing market. Not everybody wants to buy right now, and not everybody could buy right now.
I’m pretty sure you can’t regulate own vs. rent using zoning. Zoning controls building massing and use, but so far as I know MA zoning doesn’t allow a building to be “zoned” rental or owner-occupied. Maybe you could zone some parcels in ways that would be more attractive as rental, but that would be tough to pull off.
You can use property tax assessments to give owner-occupiers a lower tax bill, providing financial incentive if the number of rental units is “too high.”. I don’t know if one could do the reverse (give rental unit owners a lower tax bill), but I do know it would be tough to get the votes to do so at a local level.
And finally, the mere existence of rental housing does nothing for the working poor if the units have 1 bedroom or if they are expensive.
nopolitician says
Why do you think that 20% is high in some communities? Which communities do you have in mind? Dover? I’m sure that if Dover had 20%, it would be filled very quickly. What are you using to measure “too much”? Whether it is rented?
While you can’t necessarily regulate rental vs. owned via zoning, if the requirement is implemented via zoning I think it would work best. Picture changing the zoning of a main street in a suburban town to Residence-B (2-family). What would happen? Well, eventually someone would convert their single-family house into a multi-family house. Then a few years later maybe someone else would. Change would be gradual, but it would occur. If there was an open lot, maybe someone would choose to build a multi-family structure rather than a single-family structure. This would open opportunities for younger families as well, either by renting or by owning the multi-family house and renting out the other unit.
The existence of multifamily housing may not immediately do anything for the working poor, but I think that it will be a relief valve for property values in many communities. There is a very high premium placed on communities or neighborhoods that limit multifamily housing, because multifamily housing means “not the kind of people I want to live near” to many. That isn’t something the state should be encouraging.
nopolitician says
I see what you’re saying about rental vs. owned. I agree with what you said – you could zone something Residence B and someone could build a duplex condo on the property. In that sense, zoning is more about density than rental vs. owned. I still think it would help to get more Residence B into many of these communities though.
sue-kennedy says
As developers moved towards building more up-scale housing, both middle income and lower income families faced housing shortages. There are programs for low-income housing, but 40B affordable housing is intended to increase the housing supply for middle-income firefighters, teachers etc., who have also been dealing with shortages in supply.
There is a good argument to increase housing for both middle and low income households. Sacrificing one for the other would negatively impact everyone.
Mark L. Bail says
how to fix things. I also don’t think the disparities in refugee acceptance are the intention of individual municipalities, though policy may lead to the segregation.
My town, for example, has a shortage of rentals, mostly because of our rural history. The major reason is we don’t have water and sewer. The state finally came through with an affordable housing project we sought 25 years ago. The NIMBY irony it is filled with people from town.
SomervilleTom says
I enthusiastically embrace what I think is your basic premise — that money talks, and money prefers that “undesirables” like these land somewhere else (except when they can be safely controlled by reliable gatekeepers).
At the same time, I think it takes far more analysis to connect this data to what’s really happening. We don’t know what it takes to qualify as “refugee” in this data. We don’t know what “accepts” means. We don’t know what impact local rents and property values have. We don’t know the impact of local vacancy rates.
What we do know is that Massachusetts is among the wealthiest societies in human history. America is, today, among the wealthiest nations in the history of the world, and Massachusetts is near the top of America’s states.
Those of us who embrace traditional Christian values (even if some, like me, reject the theology sometimes used to defend them) should be appalled at this contrast between our immense wealth and our awful treatment of the poor, suffering, diseased, weak, and powerless among us.