In an otherwise highly laudatory column about Governor Deval Patrick’s economic record in the Globe, Shirley Leung gets this quote from Michael Widmer:
“[Recent governors] all have made efforts trying to remove some regulatory barriers,” Widmer said, but “we remain a very heavily regulated state. Nobody is talking about repealing environment regulations. It’s having it done in a way that is less labyrinthian.”
With regard to housing, there’s an economic problem here, and a gigantic social justice problem: There just isn’t anywhere near enough housing for the middle class in Massachusetts. In a state where the economy is doing quite well in most places, by rights we ought to be able to accommodate a significant influx of people.
But we’re not. We’re losing middle class people whom we ought to keep and squeezing hard the ones who don’t leave. Matt Yglesias says straight-up “Housing affordability is Blue America’s greatest failing”, and the problem is zoning:
This comes about primarily because coastal areas have adopted excessively strict zoning rules. There is not enough semi-dense mid-rise construction in the affluent suburbs of San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, etc. Secondarily, there are too many restrictions on the creation of new, big apartment towers in the very most expensive parts of coastal cities.
Ed Glaeser has been saying this for ages. Paul Krugman, too. There are 351 separate, highly idiosyncratic zoning regulations for housing development in the Commonwealth. And 40B building is not going to make a dent in the housing market in a way that actually affect the middle class; the state simply can’t pull off that kind of scale.
To put Widmer’s and the others’ concerns together: We need clearer and simpler regulations for where you may, and where you may not build. Where you may, build up to the sky. Where there are wetlands or yes, even aesthetic considerations, you may not. Here people, there nature.
There are significant political risks: Homeowners are perfectly happy to have their property values rise. But if they have to find another place within Massachusetts, their gains are simply plowed back into the next house. It makes it more attractive to leave the state for someplace cheaper (and warmer) — pocketing the difference in real estate values.
Access to affordable housing is also part of the solution. We can also increase transit options so that places that do have relatively affordable housing (Brockton, South Coast) have access to jobs in the places that have them. But of course, without an increase in actual supply, this has the tendency to raise housing prices.
This is an opportunity for a wonky, reform-minded, free-market oriented Governor who’s not afraid to take on some knotty problems. If Charlie Baker wants to be that guy, here’s his opportunity.
johntmay says
Charlie Baker can kill two birds with one stone, appease the Tea Party types by following Adam Smith and ease the housing crisis. Raise Wages! Wages come in different forms, one being health care. So Charlie, push for a living wage AKA a wage that will support a worker and their family through thick and thin and allow them to live in the style of the time (see: Linen Shirt by Smith)and push for universal single payer health care. (lower costs and better results). Health Care Reform in Massachusetts is nothing new. Our last Republican governor got it done.
Now if there was only someone running for governor last election who ran on a “living wage” and “universal single payer”……
farnkoff says
Like what, “Keep Dover white?” Either commit to this idea all the way or endorse the status quo. As soon as you allow for “aesthetic” exceptions you are leaving a loophole for geographic segregation and/or snob zoning.
nopolitician says
The problem is not necessarily a “lack of affordable housing”. It is a “lack of affordable housing located in communities in which middle-class people want to live”. What is the primary reason that people want to live in those communities? Because they have a paucity of people who cannot afford housing in those communities.
Our entire state is about escaping poor people. Our schools are set up that way, our housing laws are set up to enforce that, other state laws (such as those designed to use public dollars to create “open space”) support that idea, and our tax system (keep money local!) is crafted around that idea.
Want to talk about affordable housing? There are single-family residences available in Springfield or Holyoke for under $50,000. There is a downtown condo unit selling for $18k in Springfield right now. The median single-family house in Springfield is listed for $129k. And when I look at apartments, I see 3-bedroom apartments in detached dwellings for $900/month, down to efficiencies for $600.
Those sure seem like affordable prices, don’t they? So why isn’t the middle class flocking into them? Why are they trying so desperately to find housing in upscale communities such as Longmeadow (median listed price: $329k), East Longmeadow ($249k), Wilbraham ($269k), Agawam ($239k), or West Springfield ($180k)? Anyone care to offer an explanation for such wildly disparate listing prices? It’s not a jobs issue, which explains the East/West property value difference. What could it be?
Now I do realize that Eastern MA has more of a lack of affordable housing than Western MA, but the legislators need to realize this too, because laws written with a Boston-centric view of the world tend to work differently in Western MA. For example, our state “affordable housing” tax credits are geared toward locking properties up for 20 or more years as “affordable”. That’s great in Boston because it reserves some properties for lower incomes/lower rents when the rest are red-hot, but in Springfield these limited-income developments depress entire neighborhoods, and are very often the highest priced properties around (due to their recent renovations and their appeal to Section 8 based regional rents which are computed higher than city rents)
Why don’t we focus on making our denser communities more attractive to the middle class? That would mean that we don’t need to keep destroying the New England Town ™ charm of our smaller (but desirable) towns. It would focus development on areas that already have the infrastructure to handle it – so we wouldn’t need to keep building more highway spurs (like the extension of Route 57 to the exurb of Southwick) and we could actually have a public transportation system that makes sense (buses tend to not be very efficient when you’re trying to get people from one suburb to another suburb 20 miles away).
While we’re at it, how about looking to shift some commerce to underutilized cities too? Everyone wants to be in Boston, but that strategy is causing all kinds of problems, from skyrocketing housing to incredible demands for transportation. Meanwhile we have empty factory buildings, empty industrial parks, empty housing in Western MA – already built. It seems like maybe the Boston-based state economic development crew might work a little harder and start focusing on the whole state. Boston is easy to sell. Lawrence is not.
jconway says
Inevitably once zoning reform is accomplished, we will see the housing market shift from that very Boston centric system you decry because affordability will be spread out. Part of the reason so much wealth is concentrated in Eastern MA is because the property values are much higher which lead to better schools, better roads, etc. By blowing up the Boston area monopoly on desirability we can not only make those Eastern areas more economically diverse and sustainable-we can also help make Western MA become desirable as well as the regions reach some kind of housing parity.
I definitely agree though that it makes far more sense from an environmental, transit and economic development standpoint to rebuild and rejuvenate our aging and decaying industrial cities into something like what Somerville transformed itself into, or where Salem, New Bedford, Lynn, and Lowell are trying to go. We can do that for the Western part of the state as well. And ensuring that they get better funding because they are poor, rather than worse funding and local aid cuts, is also a high priority. But I don’t view this as a question with an either or answer.
chris-rich says
People want something for nothing. It is an odd childish fantasy that grips us.
I travel extensively around here for fun making web content about the area. I love Lynn as it is and it is affordable but it is full of colored poor people… oh noes!!!
Hell, Walpole is a pretty good deal and a newby blogger bought a house in Roslindale from a shrewd local who moved to Norwood and banked the difference. Migrant yuppies are the new rubes for fleecing by shrewd locals who unload that triple decker dump in Fields Corner for condos and get a spread out in Milford the size of a small duchy.
If there were uniform public school quality it would undermine that status difference for those who need it.
Essentially, the ultra convenient white picket fence suburbs within the 128 doughnut and along 93 north of Boston are really jacked up. The old Irish Riviera along Route 3 south has some price bloat but there are plenty of everyday towns that don’t confer bragging rights that are fine if you like being here.
And the old gateway cities usually mentioned in passing by the effete and clueless with a minor shudder are far less hazardous and far more livable than the uninformed seem to realize.
I delivered phone books to every residence in Lawrence when it was mildly menacing in the 80s and it was fine. I was up there on a photo trip last fall and it was a ball.
The metro area past time of poor people avoidance leads to some pretty comical speculations when echo chamber liberal yuppies wring their hands about their lack of familiarity with people they don’t really make much effort to actually know in a sincere and unaffected way.
Christopher says
When I see bargain-basement prices like the ones you mention I start wondering why the lack of demand. Are the schools not good? Is there a lot of crime in the area? Has the neighborhood not been kept up? You seem to assume that people don’t want to “catch” poverty as if it’s contageous or something, but I suspect there are more legitimate reasons than that for some communities being more desirable than others.
nopolitician says
I have heard that only about 25% of homebuyers are focused on the schools. The schools are not considered good, but that is because of the impoverished population that attends them, not because the teachers are all idiots. Most neighborhoods in Springfield are safe to the average person, though from time to time there is violence between drug dealers. The main reason for the lack of demand is avoidance of poor (and nonwhite) people.
Look at how our state is actually hurting affordability though, with this article: Chicopee to demolish long-vacant military housing, build solar farm for Westover
The state has awarded Chicopee a $1 million grant to demolish former military housing on the edge of Westover Air Reserve Base. Why? Let me quote the article:
So while the news reports stories about how Chicopee is fighting to have homeless people barred from occupying its hotels, it also wants to knock down housing and make the land undevelopable by putting up a solar farm.
The state is helping a city – with the infrastructure already built to handle this housing – demolish 128 houses (probably 250 units) which would have been affordable. In fairness, though I suppose that Chicopee is at its 40B goal of 10.5% affordable.
Christopher says
…that people are deliberately simply trying to avoid living in the same school district as those who are poor and non-white? That does not make any sense.
nopolitician says
I have nothing more than anecdotal evidence, but I do have a lot of it – from people telling me not to buy my house in Springfield specifically because of “all the minorities there” to the constant nattering about how “those people” ruined our cities on every anonymous forum that exists, to the obvious correlation of housing square footage prices with the wealth of a community.
Now add in every public fight over “affordable housing”, and how it will let “those people” into town, and how they will “overrun” our schools, the linkage should be really, really obvious. Everyone wants cheaper housing, but no one wants to live near people who can’t afford expensive housing.
What is your alternate explanation of the flight from cities which are poor and the erection of barriers within other communities against the poor?
Christopher says
Not building housing to outpace school capacity is a no-brainer. It has nothing to do with what kind of people might move in – just numbers. Some people like not living on top of each other, want a yard for their children to play in with their friends, yes even non-white friends. Not everyone talks about “those people” as if they have cooties. There’s also nothing wrong with wanting to live in towns where objective measures such as opportunities offered contribute to schools being better.
stomv says
Why do we want denser suburbs and all the traffic that necessarily comes with it? Why don’t we want denser cities? To be clear, I’m not using the civics definition based on government, but the more general definition based on density, public infrastructure, constrained automobile patterns, and so forth.
We’ve hollowed out our cities due to a combination of white flight, the loss of lower-middle class and middle-class jobs, failing schools, over-hyped public safety challenges, a lack of pedestrian-centric zoning for about 50 years, and an under-funding of urban amenities like parks, shade trees, sidewalks and bus stops.
More than in the past two generations, young people don’t want to live in suburbs. They want to live in the cities. Lets build taller, denser, more diverse cities. We need better transportation infrastructure, better public schools, better parks, better telecom, and a more mixed use of retail, office space, low- mid- and high- income housing, and government space.
Suffolk Downs is 53 acres, right next to a Blue Line stop. It could have a park, a school, a post office, retail including grocery, and 10,000 people living there. Upzoning areas near other Blue Line stops on the “Eastie” side of the Inner Harbor for another 20,000 – 50,000 people. The Blue Line has the capacity.
I’m all for broad mixed-use upzoning, as long as (a) it’s near transit, and (b) we build the additional parks, schools, libraries, and other public amenities so that our public resources aren’t too thin. It seems to me that upzoning the suburbs doesn’t handle (a) very well at all.
Charley on the MTA says
Of course, there’s been a move towards the cites among young people. But not all of them. Suburbs still exist, and there are jobs out there. And Greater Boston, at least, actually has better “suburbs” than most places, in that you can actually live near the center of town and accomplish many errands and functions on foot — a function of their development before the car era.
And as I’ve alluded to, transit to where? 128 has all those jobs that currently people have to drive to. They need to live somewhere, and the supply is constrained. Those folks aren’t going to live at Suffolk Downs.
fenway49 says
Maybe not Suffolk Downs per se, but I know any number of people who live in JP, Brighton, Cambridge, or Somerville and drive out to Woburn or Framingham for work. Reverse commute – far less traffic.
Having built so many suburban office parks, we won’t be able to provide easy mass transit to them but having transit as an option for the huge number of people who could live at a Suffolk Downs and work in downtown Boston will help reduce traffic. Which is not to say we do nothing about developing areas near transit in the suburbs as well.
My personal problem with throwing another “20,000 – 50,000” people in Eastie is that the lines are already long enough at Santarpio’s.
jconway says
Portland Oregon ran into this problem, where they had fast growing exurbs and choose to build more light rail lines to create planned mixed use communities in between. There is reason to think something like that could be attractive to buyer and broadly successful. It’s the reason a lot of the gentrification is spreading to West Medford and Melrose now that Somerville has climbed to Cambridge prices-and it’s mainly since both are old school railroad suburbs on the commuter rail.
Extending an honest to goodness light rail that is modern, as opposed to another green line extension, or even making a BRT lane on the highway would do world of difference. Particularly for folks like my sister in Marlboro and the other communities between Worcester and Boston that are disconnected from either metro area.
Also we don’t just need the free market-government can and should build houses. A far better make work project for the trades than casinos.
jconway says
Streetcar revival
And the Portland example
stomv says
the beauty of mixed use development is that there’ll be enough retail at Suffolk Downs to support the people who live there (and the surrounding neighborhood).
That means not only should lines at Santarpio’s not get longer, but new restaurants will be created that you too might enjoy. That is, your experience in Eastie can grow richer, not poorer, because of a Suffolk Downs environment.
fenway49 says
and replicate Santarpio’s, I’d like to see it. 🙂
stomv says
Homes in this part of the country regularly live to be 100 years old. Office parks, on the other hand, can fade to blight status in 30 years, easy.
128 has all the jobs that people have to drive to, but we need not (a) build up mixed use densely zoned areas around them (awfully tough to happen without massive eminent domaining or really really unhappy neighbors of extremely mixed density residential), or (b) build up substantial commuter rail or other mass transit to serve them.
If instead we focus on our cities (Boston, yes, but also the Gateways) and work on building good office space, good industrial use, good transit, good schools, good public safety, good amenities, and (this is key!) good mixed use mid-density areas to help families transition from 2.5 autos to 1 auto, then we can simply let the 128 buildings wither a bit. Sure, they won’t all disintegrate in 30 years, but if we allow for density where it belongs and ensure the public infrastructure supports it, those office parks in 128 will be less and less desirable, and the motor vehicle traffic in greater Boston — both to and from the exurbs — will decline with the economy and quality of life improving all the while.
nopolitician says
Office parks are part of the problem. They were created to escape higher business taxes and redevelopment costs in urban areas, but their effect on sprawl is crazy.
Instead of people living in a central city and working close to their job, and having many jobs to choose from (in taller office buildings), people now live in one suburb and commute to an office park in another suburb on roads that are not designed for so much traffic. Since these places are not central, you can’t build the infrastructure to support this activity – it’s a matrix model instead of a hub-and-spoke model.