Hat tip to BMGs Ryepower for bringing this item to my attention. From today’s Globe:
A house on Foskett Street in Somerville has just become the most expensive single-family home ever purchased in the city, according to property records on the area’s Multiple Listing Service, a real estate information network. The 4-bedroom, 4 and a half-bath house at 32 Foskett St. sold on Friday for $1,725,000, which Curbed reports is several hundred thousand dollars above the asking price of $1.5 million. The home is a Colonial built in 1920 and comes with a two-car garage.
No offense to SomervilleTom or other denizens of that fine city, but there is no freakin way that kind of house should fetch that kind of price. My own old home shouldn’t sell for 990k, but that’s what the flipper we sold to is asking for. Something isn’t right. We need to build more homes and build more densely. We may need to build upward and reconsider zoning laws, but something has to change.
This conversation of two thirty something Somerville residents who moved to Austin was awfully close to one my fiancee and I had when we were in that fine city. Man, this place is as cool as Davis Square and we could actually afford to live here! And it’s 80 all year round with great BBQ to boot. Now, I don’t want to abandon my roots and I want to get elected in Massachusetts, my home, not pretend to be someone else in Texas. But these terrible costs on top of the mess of the MBTA are not helping me make my case to the misses that this is where we belong. Who knows how many young people and natives we keep losing? We already lost one congressional district, can we afford to lose another? Do we want to be the People’s Republic of Zuckerstan? Do we want to outsource the poor to exurbs that can’t help them?
We have to reform our zoning and we can make housing more affordable and build more urbanized and sustainable communities. It’s not hard. We just need to find the will.
drikeo says
Somerville’s an interesting test case. In trying to make itself a more appealing place for working and middle class families (better schools, improved public services, incoming public transit), it’s pricing itself out of the market for working and middle class families.
Absolutely agree that we need to rip apart our zoning codes and build a massive amount of new housing. Won’t be easy. In Brookline, town officials are doing everything in their power to prevent any 40B housing development that dares to rear its head. They’re even getting breathy about one destroying the historical character of a patch of post WWII townhouses, which have no historical character.
stomv says
That’s not true. The Board of Selectmen is opposing some development (Hancock Village in South Brookline, that would increase sprawl and add substantial pressure to the already extremely challenging school enrollment growth) and supporting others (45 Marion St in Coolidge Corner, 60 1-bedroom units, 5 multi-bedroom units, 21 parking spaces).
Brookline housing costs are indeed out of control, and were it up to me, the town would reduce the parking space zoning requirements and zone for taller, mixed use in the dense areas, particularly since there are 100s of businesses in major pedestrian/bike/T accessible areas that are only one story tall. More studio apartments, and more mixed affordable (and Affordable) development would help deflate the bubble a little bit… but Brookline is smaller than Somerville, half the size of Cambridge, and less than 1/10th the size of Boston. Brookline adding 1000 housing units isn’t going to do much to slow the growth of housing costs.
Personally, I’d like to see major housing growth along the Blue Line. It’s got capacity during rush hour, it’s a quick trip into downtown, and could see expansion similar in pace to Kenmore/Fenway near Boylston and really help to slow the price surge.
drikeo says
I’m not saying the project is perfect, but it’s 468 desperately-needed new units in a stagnant market. The opposition gripes it’s “greater than the number of units built in all of Brookline over the past 6 years!” Exactly, you pearl-clutching swine (not you stomv, the Preserve Brookline tools). That Brookline can’t solve the Greater Boston housing shortage by its lonesome is not a reason to prevent new housing in the sleepy part of town. The argument that “those people” (not your words, but I’ve heard them used) will use town services rather than generate taxes disgusts me.
As an aside, studios and 1-bedrooms compound the problem because they take up space that could be used to address the critical shortage of housing into which you can fit a family.
stomv says
What happens now is that because studios and 1BRs are so expensive, the 3/4/5 market rate BR units are rented by a gaggle of 20-somethings [or college kids if sufficiently close to campus], thereby pricing out families from market rate housing. By increasing the stock of studios and 1 BRs, you may find a slight reduction on the price of the larger units, which is a good thing for families.
I’d add that there is plenty need for affordable housing for seniors (married or single), single young people, etc. Arguing that affordable studios and 1-brs compounds the problem is like arguing against feeding homeless individuals because there are homeless families and only a finite amount of food.
jconway says
Partly to save money, also because we have changed are lifestyle and have learned to live small and want to stay that way. It’s ridiculous you can’t find one with a kitchen under 1k a month in Boston or the adjacent communities. We’ve looked.
drikeo says
I was paying $800 a month for a 450 sq ft garden level 1BR in the Fenway, which was just becoming hip. Less than $1k has got to be brutal to find. Just thinking out loud in terms of what might be undiscovered country – maybe Roslindale.
jconway says
I like that the Village is very walkable and it has a commuter station. It is likely where I would’ve ended up had I been hired by the last job I interviewed for in Boston which would’ve required me to reside in the city. A good friend lives near there in a two family he splits with his folks, who got priced out of Cambridge (and his mom is a Biotech VP!).
drikeo says
I suppose that flooding the market with 1BRs and studios would soak up the empty nesters and skim off married/living together twentysomethings. There is a dearth of everything. Yet until there’s enough 3+ BR units that the families vs. college/twentysomethings battle royal is eased, then absurd prices like the place in Somerville will continue.
SomervilleTom says
Somerville is rewriting its zoning laws. The proposed changes are likely to make things worse, not better. I remember thinking the same thing in Brookline.
It’s a tough problem, I don’t know the answer.
drikeo says
I’d figure they’d be scrubbing suburban parking rules, lot sizes, setbacks, allowing for greater density/height, etc.
One thing I’d try to build into zoning regs is that more than 50% of new development should be 3+ bedrooms.
SomervilleTom says
I confess that I’m not familiar with the details, I’m relying on summaries distributed by Denise Provost (who has expressed grave reservations about it).
The short form is that the many separate residential and commercial zoning categories are being replaced with just two, “Commercial” and “Residential” (in essence). The language of the “residential” zones will increase density and makes no provision for greenspace, pedestrian ratios, and so on. The new “commercial” zone will penalize owners of grandfathered residences, so that it will be difficult or impossible to get building permits for renovation or maintenance.
The current commercial zoning language also being changed to decrease the number of small-footprint retail operations like restaurants and bars, and increase the number of large multi-story office buildings. This is not just for Assembly Square (where it might make sense), but also for the areas surrounding the new Green Line stops, for Union Square, and even along commercially-zoned corridors like Highland Avenue.
Somerville already has the highest or nearly highest residential density in the state. Setbacks are already non-existent in many neighborhoods. The new zoning will make it even more dense. The current housing stock is stick-built 2- and 3-family homes, many owner-occupied. The new zoning will encourage teardowns, with the new structures being 4+ units. Streets in Somerville are already narrow — the new zoning will add even more vehicles to them (even with off-street parking).
One particularly poorly-written provision imposes an absolute limit of “no more than four unrelated persons living in one household”, in an apparent attempt to manage Animal-House situations near Tufts. The result will be, apparently, to drastically penalize owners of 4+ bedroom rental properties. On the face of it, the provision as written means that an owner of a 5-BR rental property cannot rent the 5th bedroom.
bluewatch says
Buying your own house in Somerville is now almost as expensive as buying your own congressman.
Christopher says
…that zoning reform doesn’t have to translate to packing them in further? There’s something to be said for even a little bit of elbow room and even lower income families might appreciate a small yard or not having to hear the neighbors upstairs coming through the ceiling.
stomv says
Lower income families might well appreciate a small yard or not having to hear the neighbors upstairs. To have that, they’ll have to choose either really terrible physical structure, a place with horrible noise, pollution, or other hazards, a criminally dangerous neighborhood, or a place that makes it inconvenient/expensive to commute to a city center.
Behold, housing economics.
Christopher says
That’s a horrible choice and an example where simply letting “economics” figure it out is hardly satisfactory.
stomv says
Should we start building affordable housing (40B or whatever) single family houses with small yards so that folks who can’t win a bidding war get your suburban vision of good living in Cambridge and Somerville, even though that means substantially fewer affordable housing units get built?
Christopher says
You suggested 345 communities could do it, but it should not be the least desirable land.
SomervilleTom says
Somerville is already far too dense for “a little bit of elbow room” or “a small yard” or “not having to hear the neighbors upstairs coming through the ceiling” unless those amenities are already present. The challenge in Somerville (perhaps less so now than a few years ago) was to discourage owner-residents from paving the few remaining “small yards” in front of or behind their wooden two-family in order to park their cars — or rent the parking spaces along with the apartments.
Your vision of a tidy little cottage with a tidy little yard is extraordinarily rare in Somerville. The Zillow estimate (usually low) is $643,480 to purchase, $3,032/month to rent — well out of reach of most working-class families.
In Somerville, zoning reform as currently proposed will mean one of two things for residential areas:
– Tearing down century-old stick-built two-families (one up, one down, porches across the front and back) and replacing them high-density rental boxes with windows and porches, or
– Tearing down the two-families and replacing them with high-density “luxury condos” (have you noticed that condos only come in the “luxury” edition? I guess nobody wants to buy “regular condos”)
In the absence of zoning reform, those same two-families are being gutted, renovated, and resold as luxury condos. What was a pair of 2BR apartments (currently $2,000-2,500/month in my neighborhood) becomes a pair of luxury condos at $600-800K each. Some of those are then rented — at $4,000-5,000/month.
One way to get more units of affordable housing for working class people is, as stomv notes elsewhere here, to build more subway lines with more stops, so that there is more area for “regular” housing.
The proposed zoning “reform” for Somerville does just the opposite — the areas around the new Green Line stops are being rezoned to “Commercial” (if they aren’t already so). That means more profits for developers and more “Innovation District” deserts dominated by huge faceless monoliths and with nobody around after 5:00p and before 8:00a.
We urgently need a sustainable plan for urban development. Your suggestions may work for cities and towns like Tewksbury, Tyngsboro, Dracut, or Georgetown. It doesn’t work for cities like Somerville.
centralmassdad says
My sister is 12 years older than I am, and also came to the Boston area for college. When she was there, in the early 80s, Somerville was not a nice place, and was known among the college students primarily as a place to buy illegal substances. By my time, in the early 90s, Somerville was well on its way to becoming hip, and eventually expensive.
In my view the primary factor that drove this change was the expansion of the Red Line to Alewife.
nopolitician says
This is a point that is very, very important because most people don’t seem to get it.
We have a statewide housing policy that is very often written with the Boston area in mind. The policy then has unintended consequences in the rest of the state. A good example involves the various affordable housing tax credits that are available.
In a specific example in Springfield, a developer used those credits to renovate an apartment building that was run-down and was renting to some very bad people (usually at least 1 murder per year in the complex). When all was said and done, the rents caps that the developer had to abide by were lower than the area market rent; the income caps that the residents had to abide by were higher than the typical tenant in such a building. The tax credits paid off almost all of the renovation cost with almost no cost to the developer.
While that was initially very good for Springfield, because a problem property was turned around with almost no city (or private) monies, the complex is now locked into “affordability” for 25 years, which means that it, and dozens of others, are an anchor around the city’s future growth. There is also an incredible stigma associated with “affordable” housing in this area – because there is so much rental housing that is not designated as “affordable” but truly is affordable, that you can’t even put market-rate units into this complex because no one who is above the income guidelines would even think about renting in a complex with “affordable” (i.e. low-income) housing.
We have to look at housing across the state, not just Somerville and Boston. We need to push for balanced housing, not affordable housing, and if that means subsidizing market-rate housing or even luxury housing, then maybe that is what needs to be done.
The entire housing pattern in this state is screwed up. We should not have census tracts with median household incomes of under $10k – but we do. Maybe people in the eastern part of the state don’t realize it, but we have massive, massive poverty in our Gateway Cities, poverty that should be unthinkable in a state where a working-class city can sell an ordinary 4-bedroom house for $1.7 million.
SomervilleTom says
I’m not sure it’s accurate to characterize the Somerville of today and tomorrow as a “working class city”. There may be affordable neighborhoods today, but even they are very much in transition. In today’s Somerville, my perception is that our lower-priced neighborhoods are viewed as “undervalued” and therefore more visible to developers and investors.
For better or worse, Somerville is booming.
Trickle up says
As a former Ball Sq. Somervidlian – Foskett St. area: This is not a product of zoning, it’s a product of tremendous income inequality playing itself out in the real estate market.
Good planning and zoning is important, but is not going to stem the tide. I don’t know what can, short of massive economic reform. You can’t force people to build affordable housing with zoning.
dreiko above observes that the situation is in many ways a direct result of the kinds of reforms many of us have fought for in our communities: livable streets, sustainable development, decent mass transit, human-scale neighborhoods.
But I think the slogan is not so much “we can’t have nice things” as “no good deed goes unpunished.”
SomervilleTom says
Six 6s for this
nopolitician says
Yes, those are all great things that people obviously want – so let’s get them into other communities, making them more attractive so that the few that have the resources to do it on their own won’t become an overheated real estate market.
Massachusetts has a problem because people want to live in the communities they can’t afford, and they don’t want to live in the communities that they can afford – so they leave the state entirely, moving south or west.
The undesirable communities aren’t being evil. They’re not trying to drive people out. They are, more often than not, the victim of circumstances beyond their control. More often than not, they are constrained in what they can do by budgets that are mostly fueled by property taxes. Even when they know what to do to make themselves more desirable, they simply can’t afford to.
That is a problem that the state should be addressing.
drikeo says
Expanding public transit (e.g. out to Lynn or building public transit in greater Springfield, Worcester, Lowell, New Bedford, etc.) and smart growth initiatives that increase housing density around sustainable commercial centers, would help immensely. It probably is the way out of the weeds.
However, I disagree that undesirable communities can’t get their acts together. Everett didn’t happen by accident and it could start pursuing the things trickle-up listed – “livable streets, sustainable development, decent mass transit, human-scale neighborhoods” – today. Somerville, which has become the poster child for urban renewal, and Quincy, rebuilding its downtown, are leading the charge. What seemed to get both of them headed in the right direction was collective civic will more than money.
SomervilleTom says
I don’t know about elsewhere, but Somerville’s turnaround was very much the direct and intended consequence of the Red Line expansion. We are in the early stages of another round with the Green Line extension. Collective civil will is vital. Investing in public rail transportation is the first step.
Investing in public rail transportation is, in fact, “the way out of the weeds”.
drikeo says
Transit alone doesn’t do it (see the Fairmount Line, or Revere), but transit is the urban footprint. Densely populated areas without it are madness, which probably explains late 20th century Somerville.
nopolitician says
I think that your suggestion suffers from a Boston-centric view of the world. Yes, if you’re near Boston, then expanding public transportation is a sure-fire way to plug yourself into the Boston economy.
The other communities I mentioned are too far from Boston to plug into their economy via public transportation. We need something else. Everett (and Chelsea, and Framingham, and Quincy) are within sight of Boston. The fact that those cities were once in dire shape is more a testament to their prior utter mismanagement than it is proof that any community in the state can duplicate their success. To quote Barry Switzer, “Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.” There is so much industry, so much pent-up demand, so much desire for economic development in the Boston area that it is very hard to screw things up.
Communities like Everett and Quincy can improve via gentrification – professionals escaping high-priced Boston, looking for a community from which they can still commute. Western MA can’t do that. We don’t have a nearby world-class city from which we can siphon wealth relatively unnoticed and with little impact. We don’t have excess tax dollars to spend on “livable streets, sustainable development” – and there is no willpower to even pursue such a goal because initially, this means getting poorer because our choice is very often “cookie cutter chain store or empty store”, and if we ever push a cookie cutter chain store to develop in a sensitive way, they say “sorry, we’re going elsewhere, good luck without us”.
jconway says
I appreciate your perspective greatly, but I wonder what solutions could work for these communities. I am willing to pay for whatever policy that would ol solve these woes.
nopolitician says
There are several things hindering Springfield. The root cause is poverty – I think that a jobs program to hire up to 5,000 unemployed residents at $10-15/hour would go a long way. Even a summer youth job program would help quite a bit. There are too many people who can’t get decent jobs here, and trying to train them for college or even for highly skilled labor is more or less fruitless. We just need to put people to work.
More jobs would reduce the crime in the city, which is another big hindrance. Everyone I speak to says that they just won’t even venture into Springfield because they’re afraid of being killed – even though crime is at historic lows (problem is, sensationalistic journalism is up, making every minor crime a front page story). Putting police on the streets could help too, although I feel that simply arresting more people is counterproductive in the long run because it creates a class of people who are marginalized and unemployable (with a record).
Another issue that people seem to focus on is Springfield’s high tax rate, particularly on businesses. Although the actual revenue raised is low due to low valuations, people fixate on a business tax rate of almost $39/1000, coupled with a residential rate of almost $20/1000. I think that the high rate puts a damper on certain businesses (though not all) if only mentally. Why choose Springfield for your business when you can hop across the border for a $14/1000 tax rate and not have to deal with the city’s negative reputation?
We could use money for redevelopment of physical properties. The city has been focusing on “clearing blight” because that is all it has money for, but that is short-sighted because it results in many empty lots which will never be redeveloped because they are interspersed in the least valuable and least maintained neighborhoods. When a new house costs $150k to build and the best you can hope to sell it for is $125k, we begin down the path to Detroit with streets that become more and more empty. Our local housing economy can’t survive on such low wages for so many people because the cost of rehabilitation and maintenance can’t be borne by people earning $10-12/hour. People simply can’t afford to keep their properties maintained, and that leads to slummy conditions everywhere. A good portion of the housing stock is over 100 years old, and newer building codes, though well intentioned, make this housing more expensive to redevelop. For example, recent changes to lead paint laws are a tremendous burden – if a house is older than 1978 and more than 6 square feet of interior paint is disturbed, this triggers a massive lead precaution process. This discourages people from renovating.
Another good example is the sprinkler laws – if you have an apartment block and spend more than 50% of the assessed value on renovations, you have to install sprinklers in your building (anything above 3-family). I think that the state is considering expanding this to 3-family buildings. The cost to install sprinklers is between $15k and $30k. That may play in Somerville, but when your 3-family is worth $120k, $30k doesn’t make a lot of economic sense, so it makes sense to just neglect the building and not renovate it.
I think that we also need to figure out how to return our real estate market to local owners. Out-of-town amateur landlords are often the bane of neighborhoods. They rent to super-sketchy clientele, and they aren’t around to see what their tenants are doing. The word on the street is that being a landlord absolutely sucks here, that tenants know exactly how to game the system and if you get a bad tenant – which is more the rule rather than the exception – your’re in for huge headaches, for example, maybe 3-6 months of them living for free coupled with a few thousand dollars to evict them. I have heard this from too many different people for it to be just conservative griping. Since 50% of our housing stock is multi-family, this is a very important issue.
Basic city infrastructure improvements would be nice too. The waiting list to get your sidewalk repaired is quite literally decades long – 15 to 20 year waiting list. Streets are a huge mess of potholes.
Ultimately, though, we need more jobs here. I don’t know how to foment that. We have open plots of land, we have storefronts, we have many unemployed people who could work, but we don’t have a very big economic engine. Any jobs that are produced seem to either go to people who don’t live in Springfield, or cause people who get them to move out of Springfield. That’s a big problem because we’re spinning our wheels. I suspect that even the casino, and its 3,000 jobs, will primarily benefit people in surrounding towns because people who have been surrounded by poverty their entire lives simple don’t make good job applicants. I don’t think anyone here knows how to fix the local economy that has been decimated by the elimination of manufacturing jobs over the past 40 years. We can’t just all give each other haircuts.
SomervilleTom says
The lead paint and sprinkler laws exist because they solve very real problems, and not just in Somerville. Exempting properties, especially in poverty-stricken areas with already deteriorating housing stock, only condemns more children to a lifetime of misery from lead poisoning and more poor families to horrific deaths from preventable fires.
These are difficult questions with no easy answers.
nopolitician says
I know that the laws are important, but their impact on everyone should be weighed. I read an article that contrasted MA lead paint laws with Rhode Island, which are more lax, and it showed that RI had a better elimination rate because MA owners simply neglected their properties. I think the difference was that MA has to completely remove lead whereas RI has to encapsulate the lead. We are asking poor people to pay money that they don’t have to solve this problem.
If the people really value this law, one approach might be to create pools of money to allow such work to occur, perhaps tied to the value of the property or something else that directs the money to low-income areas. If done right, a cottage industry could evolve – imagine if the state said “$500 million over the next 5 years to do lead paint abatement, with training and grants to do the work in low-income areas”? That way the law wouldn’t get in the way of buying a house in a lower-priced neighborhood.
Another thing that the state could do is to revamp MCAS. I am old enough to remember the talk when the law was put into effect – it was primarily a “punish the minorities” law. The thought was that in poor non-white school districts, the schools were “passing the lazy kids along” and they would then graduate and not be employed and then commit crimes. MCAS was a “get tough” law similar to the law that eliminated bilingual education or welfare reform.
When I look at Springfield, I am utterly amazed that there are no landscaping companies based in the city, owned by city residents, employing city residents. The landscapers live in the suburbs here, owning $300k+ houses, driving nice trucks, sending their kids to college. Surely there is room for competition from someone who is OK with living in a $125k house and not driving the nicest cars, and who aren’t as desperate to send their kids to college? Yet this doesn’t exist? Why not?
Maybe because we lack the flexibility to teach simple trade skills to kids without jamming college-track courses on them? What is wrong with teaching a kid basic business skills (like how to do taxes, banking, simple accounting), plus a singular useful trade, even if it is at the expense of college preparation. Yes, there are benefits to having a well-rounded education, but if that education becomes a barrier to life, are we really doing the right thing?
Privatization has closed a lot of doors to Springfield residents too. Back when the state Control Board took over the city, they fired all the city employees who mowed the lawns and did other grounds-keeping work, and replaced them with privately-owned companies based outside the city. City residents lost their jobs and were replaced by suburban workers.
SomervilleTom says
Last year, we did a lead abatement on my downstairs rental unit, with guidance from our real estate attorney. As is apparently also the case in RI, we only needed to encapsulate the lead paint.
One concern worth mentioning is that unscrupulous property owners can have unlicensed and unregulated contractors do the work before an inspection, potentially without the needed safeguards handling the resulting lead dust, chips, and so on, and then request an inspection after the work is already done. Lead, like asbestos, is truly hazardous and properly managing it during renovation is expensive.
I like your idea of a “lead abatement pool”, and I agree with the other points you raise.
SomervilleTom says
One very real issue with our current commuter rail approach is that there is, as as I know, little or no commuter rail service radially from Springfield, Worcester, or other cities west of Boston.
Perhaps such expansions (using DMU technology, for example) will help.
nopolitician says
There is commuter rail to Worcester, and that was beneficial to the city when it was implemented, but Worcester is out the outer boundary of what makes sense for commuter rail. The trip takes 83 minutes, and people will only tolerate that daily under certain economic conditions.
Commuter rail from Springfield to Boston is not feasible for people to be able to commute for a daily job. Better rail service between Springfield and Boston might open some economic doors – but the current trip takes 2.5 hours whereas a car trip takes 90 minutes. If you could get the speed closer to 90 minutes that would improve things as well as alleviate traffic on the Pike. The problem is that the rail line is not a straight shot, it is very curvy and hilly.
SomervilleTom says
I was contemplating a Springfield commuter rail hub, with radial service to the surrounding communities.
The rail link between Springfield and Boston is provided by Amtrak (the once-daily Lakeshore Limited), rather than commuter rail. It is not a viable commuting option. The 2013 plan proposed by Governor Patrick included funding for a Springfield-Boston commuter rail link (emphais original):
I’m not sure whether this was approved, however.
nopolitician says
Commuter rail radiating out of Springfield really doesn’t make any sense. Springfield is not Boston at all. Boston is a commuter rail destination because of all the jobs, restaurants, culture, sports, entertainment there. Commuter rail is useful because its housing stock is more expensive than surrounding communities, so people live in cheaper locations and commute to Boston.
Springfield is nearly the perfect opposite of that situation. Springfield has less jobs than surrounding areas – the jobs have been slowly moved to the suburbs over the course of decades. Housing in Springfield is often half the price of surrounding communities or even less. Even if commuter rail was built to the few employment destinations in the city – Mass Mutual, Baystate Medical, etc. – that would actually be bad for Springfield because it would allow people to more easily “escape” the city.
That is exactly what happened when the highways were built, people moved out of the city but kept their city-based jobs. But eventually the companies moved where the workers were now living because the businesses were bearing more and more of the property taxes. Now everything in this region centers around suburban office or industrial parks, far, far away from the city and its [mostly poor] residents (and the higher costs they cause).
It’s funny, whenever I get into a debate over how there are no jobs for people to work, someone always brings up a company called C&S Grocers, which is a grocery distribution company. Presumably it is hard unskilled work where you can make $12/hour. Problem is, the distribution center is in Westfield, in an industrial park, which is about an hour bus ride from Springfield, and you have to walk the last mile to the building yourself. In other words, the jobs have been spread out so that they are not accessible to anyone without a car. Oh, and to apply for such a job you need to own steel-toe boots which are going to run you $150, so there’s that barrier too.
Improving the rail line between Springfield and Boston will not cure Springfield’s ills. It will help a bit, probably making it more convenient for Springfield-based companies to tap into work in Boston (think: a software development firm that can take the train to Boston a few times a month to meet with clients). It will also alleviate congestion on the highways. It isn’t going to reinvent the city’s economy though because Springfield won’t be a source of labor for Boston.
SomervilleTom says
I’m not sure I accept your premise.
I hear you about the current sad state of Springfield. It seems to me that it is reasonable to ask whether providing public transportation is a cause of or a response to economic prosperity.
According to its own website, Springfield, like many cities east of the Mississippi, became a major metropolis because it became a major railroad center in the 19th century:
Perhaps a convenient, safe, and affordable Springfield-centric commuter rail system would itself create new employment destinations near stations and stops. Perhaps companies would locate in Springfield because housing, office, and even industrial space is affordable.
Perhaps investment in commuter rail is a leading, rather than lagging, indicator of urban prosperity.
kirth says
Why is the assumption that commuters would be taking trains exclusively into Springfield? It’s at least as likely that Springfield residents would be taking trains to jobs in Boston or points in between. See Lowell.
Dispersal of workplaces is not unique to the Springfield area. When I lived in Central MA, I regularly carpooled with co-workers to jobs several towns away. It would be great if public transit was more comprehensive. When it isn’t, people try to adjust. A commuter rail line would help with that.
On a more minor point, steel-toed boots can be had for much less than the $150 quoted price. Walmart has name-brand steel-toe boots for 1/3 of that, and less-familiar brands for 1/5 of it.
nopolitician says
Commuter rail is beneficial because it alleviates congestion. It moves people into a desirable place without them needing a car.
Springfield is not Boston. Its downtown area is a little under 1 mile in radius. About 90% of the residents down there are low-income living in housing that is now income-restricted because the only way it could be redeveloped was to accept low-income tax credits from the state. Although there are still a number of office jobs downtown, the number has shrunk over the years and there is plenty of open office space and a lot of empty storefronts.
Why would commuter rail make a difference there? If you built a rail line to a prosperous condo complex outside the city, why would anyone take it downtown? If you’re going to open a restaurant, you’d do it right next to the condo complex so that the people could visit on their way home from their suburban office park.
The rail system you would build would be unused.
Yes, Springfield did well in the past due to its advantageous location; it was a hub for the region, the center of commerce. However the highways built in and around it made it easy to flee, and regional cities are no longer either necessary or even practical due to advances in transportation – we no longer have regional banks, regional bakeries, regional manufacturing – it is all global now, and it is far more advantageous to manufacture Craftsman wrenches in China than it is to make them in Springfield (where they once were made).
kirth says
I don’t understand why you think the only value of commuter rail would be to bring workers into Springfield. Trains run both ways.
Almost everything you say about Springfield is — or was — true of Lowell, but Lowell has commuter rail, and that’s probably a big reason it’s a more successful place. It allows Lowell residents to work in Boston without the crazy-making car commute, and allows people in Boston to attend events in Lowell without a car.
nopolitician says
Lowell has commuter rail TO BOSTON. It takes about 50 minutes. The train from Springfield to Boston takes 2.5 hours. That is a huge difference.
Somervilletom was suggesting a train system that uses Springfield as a hub. That makes no sense, and I hate to say it because I respect Tom, but it highlights how little he knows about the western part of this state.
Trickle up says
or even Hartford would not be out of the question.
I actually get (and agree with) your point, mostly. But I also suspect better transit (not necessarily limited to rail) can be a part of the solution.
Christopher says
What is that a reference to?
jconway says
N/T
SomervilleTom says
@Nopolitician: I understand how far the trip is from Springfield to Boston. I agree that few commuters will attempt it. It is different from Lowell in that regard.
I fear the discussion about Lowell misses some important aspects of its short-lived rebirth in the 1980s (during the Tsongas years). People did NOT gravitate to Lowell because of commuter rail access to Boston. I worked in Lowell for several years, commuting INTO Lowell (from Billerica), in order to work in a startup in the Wannalancitt Mills complex. We went INTO Lowell restaurants for dinner because they were better than their suburban counterparts. People bought condos in the renovated Market Mills complex because they were spacious, lovely, and in the heart of an increasingly popular downtown.
The government played a major role in that, led by Paul Tsongas. I am under the impression that Lowell was the first urban National Historical Park. Even though the Tsongas years were, sadly, too short, they were a period of enormous improvement and growth for Lowell.
All that is just as possible in Springfield today as it was in Lowell in the 1980s.
I have a different take on the role that highways will play in the future, and a different take on what commuter rail is for. You wrote “Commuter rail is beneficial because it alleviates congestion. It moves people into a desirable place without them needing a car. ”
The rest of that comment assumes that downtown Springfield will forever be “not desirable”. That’s what I’m challenging. I’m suggesting that some places become desirable in part because they have rail access. That’s also the connection I attempted to draw to Springfield’s history. The impact of highways, while devastating, is also likely to be short-lived. People are already starting to figure out that dependence on the automobile is becoming more and more expensive.
NYC became a booming metropolis because of rail and subway access that allowed workers to get onto an island from surrounding areas (skyscrapers are only viable because elevators let them get to higher floors).
Why would new condo complexes and restaurants near them be built in outskirts if the downtown already has convenient, affordable, and reliable rail transportation?
While I’m not saying that Springfield will become NYC, I am challenging your assumption that Springfield downtown will forever be depressing and bleak. I’m suggesting that government can send a HUGE message about the future of Springfield by investing in a modern regional rail transportation system centered on Springfield.
I’m suggesting that it is possible to start with a vision of what Springfield might be, then take intentional and concrete (literally!) steps to make that vision reality. A central part of that process, in my view, must be convenient, affordable, and reliable regional public rail transportation, intentionally designed to make the Springfield downtown a desirable destination.
drikeo says
Someone’s going to build a high-speed rail line across MA. Boston-Worcester in 30 mins? Boston-Springfield in 60? We have the technology. In the meantime, why has no one built a rail line linking Springfield’s downtown business district to Bradley Airport, and then out to Hartford in the other direction?
My in-laws live in South Hadley. I’m familiar with that area of the state. There’s assets out there, but everything’s disjointed. Like a lot of places, they made it real easy to build out on the state highway and real hard to build in and around downtown business districts. There just isn’t a regional big picture.
nopolitician says
Yes, Tom, I agree 100% – Springfield could be transformed like Lowell. Lowell was able to do this because they had a very powerful state representative and he was able to secure money during an era where the federal government was receptive to such projects.
It is a different climate now, with different players. Our state representative, although a former mayor of Springfield, is not as powerful, and has a larger congressional district because of the state’s lagging population growth. That’s not an excuse; just a point that the situations are not the same.
With a lack of federal appetite to revitalize cities, we need to look to the state. I had been hopeful that under Deval Patrick – who grew up in a poor urban area – would understand the need to help cities, and although he certainly did more than our string of Republican governors, particular with his categorization of them as “Gateway Cities”, not much actually happened, and I think that the city’s general government State Aid was reduced more under Patrick than it ever was. To push that point a bit, here are some actual general government aid numbers:
2000: $28.7m
2001: $31.6m
2002: $34.1m
2003: $34.1m
2004: $29.0m
2005: $29.0m
2006: $34.9m
2007: $44.3m
2008: $45.2m
2009: $45.2m
2010: $33.3m
2011: $32.0m
2012: $29.7m
2013: $32.0m
2014: $32.8m
2015: $33.7m
Yes, Chapter 70 school aid increased so this isn’t the total picture, but that is restricted money and doesn’t help a city rebuild itself. Those aid numbers are appalling – we are getting just a little more than we were getting in 2000 – 15 years ago.
Those numbers don’t reflect the other budgetary aid money that has been reduced – for example, “additional assistance” was reduced from $2.3m to zero (I believe it was added to the general government category in 2010. A category called “racial equity” was also zeroed out.
Keep in mind that during this era, Springfield also:
1) Was slammed by the foreclosure crisis, with a ridiculous number of properties sitting blighted, vacant, empty.
2) Was hit by a tornado in 2011, which removed millions from the tax base. There are still streets with piles of rubble on them where houses once stood because the owners were either not insured, or saw this as an opportunity to take their insurance check and walk away.
3) Hit the Proposition 2.5 levy ceiling, which resulted in the tax levy being either constrained or reduced. Here are some numbers on that:
2003: $115.8m
2004: $125.6m
2005: $131.0m
2006: $138.5m
2007: $145.5m
2008: $153.5m
2009: $163.0m
2010: $170.8m
2011: $171.2m
2012: $169.4m
2013: $167.4m
2014: $173.0m
2015: $176.1m
Notice how the levy went down for two straight years, coinciding with a reduction in state aid? How many other cities or towns have had their levy + aid decrease? I’m betting zero.
Also, during this era, Springfield’s median household income stagnated, so even if it had room to raise taxes on itself via an override under the levy ceiling, there was no actual ability to do this. The MHI went from $30,417 in 2000 to $31,356 in 2010. As a comparison, Cambridge went from $47,979 to $76,264 in that same timeframe and even Revere went from $37,067 to $49,118. Take an extra moment to comprehend that, and if you’re bored, run the numbers on household income versus tax bill to see how Springfield can actually have low tax receipts but also be overtaxed in relation to its citizens’ income.
But beyond that, take an even harder look at the structural numbers for Springfield. The city’s Foundation Budget – the minimum amount that the state thinks we need to spend on our schools, is required to spend $338m on the schools. Keep in mind that our tax levy is $176m and think about that for a minute. Yes, Chapter 70 takes care of the difference, but from a structural perspective Springfield is insolvent without state aid. Also realize that even as Springfield’s general government state aid dropped and its tax levy decreased, the foundation budget mandated that we increase the local contribution to the schools (money that comes from either the tax levy or the general government state aid).
On a final note, at the federal level, CDBG block grant funding has been shrinking for a long time. This is money that could go to help redevelop Springfield but there is no federal appetite for this money since it is seen by conservatives as wasteful spending on “them”.
So given all that, although it may be possible for Springfield to get better, it is actually not possible for it to do this without external help from either the state or federal governments. Yet the state simply tsk-tsks us at our bad schools and continues to ignore us out here.
SomervilleTom says
@nopolitician: I passionately agree with you about the devastating consequences of our horrific tax policy. Springfield is exhibit A in the case that Massachusetts desperately needs to increase taxes on our wealthiest residents (I strongly suspect that Lawrence, Lowell, Worcester, New Bedford, Fall River, and even Gloucester have similar stories).
In particular, I absolutely agree that it is NOT possible for Springfield to improve without external help from both the state and federal governments. I hope my agreement about that has been apparent throughout our dialog, but it’s good to explicitly state anyway. To argue against that proposition is to blame Springfield itself for these issues, and that is an old and stale canard of the right wing.
The Lowell “miracle” (it was called that while it was happening) occurred because state and local governments invested in Lowell. The same must happen in Springfield and throughout Massachusetts. That investment is impossible without new taxes, and those new taxes should fall on the wealthy and the very wealthy.
When we make those investments (and I remain foolishly optimistic that sooner or later we’ll do the right thing), I think it’s crucial that they be used to realize a sustainable and forward looking vision for the future, rather than perpetuate or react to the problems of the past.
We must look forward beyond our bow to our landmark, rather than staring backward at our wake.
Christopher says
In your second paragraph above you refer to your state representative as having a larger congressional district, so are you referring to your state representative or your congressman?
nopolitician says
Meant to say US representative.
SomervilleTom says
Paul Tsongas was not a powerful congressman when he began advocating for the “Lowell Miracle”. He was a social liberal and fiscal conservative who was the first Democrat elected from his district in the twentieth century — according to Wikipedia:
His advocacy of the Lowell Heritage State Park followed by the Lowell National Historic Park significantly enhanced his power and standing among both his constituents and his peers. It is a tragedy that illness cut short the promising political career of this Massachusetts native son.
Again, I offer this in the spirit of encouragement rather than criticism. Springfield, and struggling cities like it, desperately needs the vision, optimism, and sheer exuberance that Paul Tsongas brought to Lowell.
I think the joy and positive karma of such an approach is as effective as the specifics of the proposals — build on the positive aspects and common ground of the past in order to realize a shared vision of a prosperous and sustainable future.
drikeo says
is that it would suck a lot less if it weren’t run by short-sighted weasels.
As for western MA, you can’t plant trees? You can’t build some micro parks or community gardens? You can’t zone to build more housing around crucial business districts? Paint a few bike lanes? Direct a little more money toward street sweeping? Sorry, sympathetic as I am to the argument that western MA faces stiffer challenges, cities there could enter the 21st century.
You can’t eat the elephant all at once, but you could take a few bites.
nopolitician says
The city plants trees, but the budget to plant trees is almost zero. It relies on grants and donations to do what it does. There is a maintenance cost associated with planing trees which you may not realize – you need to water the trees frequently for the first year they are planted or they die. That is the kind of spending that gets crowded out when one of the local colleges has their buildings get hit by stray gunfire a few times in the course of a week and the newspapers run headlines telling everyone to stay out of the city.
Springfield does not suffer from zoning issues. It suffers from a lack of demand for housing. When you can buy a house near a “crucial business district” for $75k, it should be obvious that more housing is not an issue.
When both state aid and tax levy goes down, the answer is “no, you can’t direct a little more money to street sweeping” because the DPW budget has to go down, not up.
The city painted a bike lanes a couple of years ago with the aid of a grant from a nonprofit agency, but again, with a declining budget, spending on “improvements” is generally not possible.
merrimackguy says
FYI this was pretty close to one of Baker’s stump lines in 2010. Of course no one really cared so it wasn’t a part of the 2014 messaging.
It’s an important issue though. After “where are people supposed to work,” comes “where are people supposed to live?”
Travel to other states, especially NC and GA and you’ll find people making close to MA wages and paying much much less for housing. It’s not like living in AL or MS- quality of life is high and work opportunities plentiful.
Housing here is completely off the hook, and with significant variances in schools it’s not like you can choose (if you have children) to live in some of the more reasonably priced small cities.
As to solutions higher, denser zoning is one answer. A second might be a review of wetland regulations, which put huge portions of the state off limits. Not saying taking a buzz saw to it, but I bet there is build-able land available without damage to the environment that is currently off limits.
jconway says
I think 2010 Baker was arguing that the climate was unfriendly to business and tax rates were too high for cost of living. Which to keep it brief, I’ll just invite him or those believing that lie to live in Chicago for a year and get back to me. It would also seem he and his predecessor bare a direct responsibility via the dismantling of rent control.
I agree with you about NC, friends who have lived there are unlikely to move away or eager to move back, and the Tech Triangle and smaller college towns are quite New England-esque with some of their cultural offerings and even their fall foliage. Job climate is a bit more limited for either of my intended fields (policy or teaching), but would be ideal for the lady (medical). GA is a bit too far south for my tastes, I would have to talk to another mixed race couple who made the leap first and see how they fared.
Part of it is recognizing which up and coming communities have the quality of life that you want at a more affordable price. A very close friend who grew up down the street from me just bought a house in Salem, as have a few other Cantabs I know, and I think the walkable downtown, proximity to transit, cultural amenities, and growing diversity are attractive but I will have to jump on it fast since Somerville had the same vibe just a decade ago.
The ‘bad schools’ rep I always take with a grain of salt and they don’t really scare me off since CRLS had a ‘bad’ reputation all the years I went there and now is considered one of the best in the state, despite having the same teachers and leadership it had when I went there. She’s attended some of the ‘worst public schools’ in the nation and made out ok.
paulsimmons says
The only places left were Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge.
In 1994, there was a Statewide referendum, Question 9, which abolished rent control in those municipalities, despite local support. Interestingly, the three adversely affected cities opposed the referendum, which passed with 51% of the vote.
jconway says
But you are correct it should’ve been a local vote. My sister got evicted not two months after that and had to live with us for a few months with my nephew in toe. I was only 8, but I blamed my parents for voting the wrong way on RC since it seemed like one event directly caused the other. Looking back, I don’t think my mind is changed on the causation. I will concede that RC has a lot of issues and should’ve been reformed, but abolishing it entirely dramatically changed the landscape overnight leading us to this very point.
SomervilleTom says
Rent control was abolished in large part because it became obvious that its primary effect was arson.
In an appreciating market with property taxes and expenses increasing, when property owners cannot raise their rents they will replace the building. Since most rent control ordinances, not to mention zoning laws, made that difficult or impossible to accomplish, the result was a “hot rehab”.
I lived in Boston in a 9th floor apartment with a panoramic view of the Charles river, Cambridge and Boston (Babcock Street, adjacent to BU West Campus) during the rent control years. Our neighborhoods were rundown, and major fires were a frequent (as in weekly) occurrence — I watched them from my balcony (when I wasn’t watching the trains in the then-active railroad yard immediately beneath me).
The fires stopped when rent control was abolished.
centralmassdad says
less housing.
If rents can’t cover expenses, there isn’t much incentive to build new housing. So you have an artificial shortage, created by rent control.
The problem is that rent control was replaced by more rigorous zoning, which also creates an artificial shortage, while simultaneously allowing the price of existing housing to rise to meet all of that demand.
The two interact.
bob-gardner says
All the rent control ordinances exempted new construction. Developers were always free to charge whatever rent they wanted on new construction. So if there were an artificial shortage developers were free to cash in on that shortage. A good incentive to build more, not less.
You have it exactly backwards.
SomervilleTom says
The landlords I knew said that evicting tenants was expensive and took forever. In place like Boston and Cambridge, permits for teardowns were hard to get. The “hot rehab” solved both problems for far less money.
I guess we have different recollections of the era.
thebaker says
And you are exactly right about evicting tenants. My fatehr used to tell me how it took X number of dollars and 3-6 months to evict a family when you add up lost rent, attorney costs and multiple hearings etc.
He used to tell me all the time how it was just easy to drop a match and let the insurance cover the damages.
thebaker says
If the editors add an “Edit” button to this blog, I can pretty much guarantee a tray of inside out brownies for each. THIS IS NOT A BRIBE! I am merely “lobbying” the editors for an Edit button, that is all. : )
bob-gardner says
I was active in landlord-tenant issues in the ’80’s and I thought I had heard every cockamamie argument against rent control. But I never heard anyone say that they could figure out the primary effect of rent control by staring out of their 9th floor balcony.
Where did you get that insight, Tom? From the three-eyed raven?
FYI, the primary effect of rent control was that a lot of people could afford their rent. The primary cause of its repeal was that these people were thrown out of their homes.
If you have the slightest evidence of a correlation between rent control and arson, Tom, let’s see it.
SomervilleTom says
A burning three-decker raises an obvious black column of smoke visible for miles. No three-eyed raven was needed.
Here are some sources:
Economics in One Lesson, The Lesson Applied: What Rent Control Does (emphasis mine):
A history lesson on rent regulation in the 1970s, quoting from “The Cost of Good Intentions”, by Charles Morris (emphasis mine):
Hot rental market sparks suspicions of landlord arson in San Francisco (emphasis mine):
The correlation between rent control and arson is reasonably well-documented, the Google search that produced the above answered about 31,500 results. Perhaps your advocacy impeded your ability to hear at least some of those “cockamamie” arguments — they’ve been made for as long as rent control has existed.
bob-gardner says
Most three deckers were exempt from rent control in Boston because they were owner occupied. But you, O magical Tom, with your special powers are able to tell just by looking out of your ninth floor balcony, which burning three deckers are owner occupied and why they are on fire.
With impressive skills like that, how come your citations suck? Economics in One Lesson was written by a right wing crank. His views on rent control are all of a piece with his views on the minimum wage, on unions, and on stimulus spending. Us mortals who live on earth would be embarrassed to cite that book on a progressive blog, but I guess you’re not an ordinary mortal.
Your second citation is to a passage that states that the arson in the South Bronx likely happened “irrespective of rent control.” The third citation mentions rent control as only one of a number of tenant protections. And contrary to what is stated in the article, arson for profit is not easy to pull off. The arsonist not only needs the insurance company to pay the claim, but to continue to insure the landlord’s other buildings, and not to raise rates to the point where the profit disappears. The landlord also needs a bank willing to sink money into a possible crime scene.
It’s not impossible to make money burning buildings, but it takes a lot of collusion among a lot of white collar criminals, thugs, and government officials. The Symphony Road arsonist ring is a case in point.
The myth that arson is somehow caused by rent control because the poor beleaguered landlord can make easy money by dropping a match is just talk.
SomervilleTom says
I thought perhaps we could have a civil exchange. I guess not.
Perhaps the “myth” is “just talk”, but it’s talk that you apparently never heard during your claimed history with “landlord-tenant issues in the ’80′s”. You asked for the “slightest evidence of a correlation between rent control and arson”, and I offered it.
I’ll tell you what’s “cockamamie” — attempting to discuss anything with you.
bob-gardner says
when you make a sweeping, unsupported claims about rent control in Boston and arson and then come up with nothing better to support those claims than the three examples you give.
It’s a cockamamie way to discuss something with me. As a matter of fact it’s a cockamamie way to discuss anything, with anybody.
merrimackguy says
You could make this point all day here on BMG
merrimackguy says
As I saw Baker speak about 20 times in 2010 and I bet you saw him zero, I think I am better equipped to know what he meant. He specifically said that he wanted MA to be a state where his children could live and work after college, and that everyone’s children could choose that path, and not be forced to leave the state in search of a place they could afford to live.
Cambridge R&L has always been a far cry from Lawrence, Brockton and many suburban HS. You can use all the salt you want (any stats, by the by?- it’s not in the Boston Mag Top 50 2014). Also note that (as I have friends with kids in urban schools) it’s a much different equation if you’re a top student (who can do well in a bad school) or in the middle or bottom (who are most impacted by school quality).
jconway says
Further on Baker’s own words:
Heavy on tax cuts for business and lowering cost of living, nowhere does he mention making housing more affordable. He definitely did in this campaign, though again, it was a goal light on specifics.
I actually favor a more libertarian and market oriented approach to zoning, if anything, it is a patchwork of NIMBY based zoning regulations that are holding us back from building the 19,000 units we have to have to bring the cost of living down. Instead of attacking one another over what and when Charlie Baker said something, let’s agree that housing is unaffordable and try and find solutions to the problem.
jconway says
Link
merrimackguy says
over my eyewitness account of something completely different.
Surprising coming from Mr Personal and/or Family Anecdote. I will put you in the “can’t admit you’re wrong” camp.
Of course he talked about the high cost of doing business.
But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the wage vs housing cost ratio.
jconway says
I can’t find the articles about Rindge losing accreditation or hernia thing middle class families but it did in the 200s, maybe Joel Patterson (he was Mr. Patterson then) can answer that better. I think we are going around in specifics, I remember a lot about taxes and next to nothing about housing in that campaign. I remember and actually praised Baker on BMG this cycle for talking about it this campaign, something his inept opponent failed to do.
Anecdotes help make the data personal, but I think we agree on both. Housing is way too expensive in the area, so how do we solve it? I’ll admit I was incorrect about Baker 2010 if it gets us back to addressing that question and I’ll even apologize for holding my recollections against yours. What was Bakers solution in 2010 or 2014 for that matter? I compel felt agree with his rhetoric about a state our children can’t afford to stay in our return to, it’s been my life these past five years.
merrimackguy says
If you were looking for a Baker plan, it would be “improve the business climate and then we’ll have better jobs and then people will make more money and be able to afford the expensive housing”
As he’s he’s only been in office 3+ months we’ll have to see how it actually goes.
I don’t think that will address the the housing issue, actually. There’s a good chance we are helpless against the onslaught of foreign money looking for a safe place to park it. It’s happening all over the US including Boston.
drikeo says
Also, a top-down business climate doesn’t necessarily create loads of good-paying jobs. It increases corporate profits. We’ve already got low unemployment and higher than average wages.
Frankly, unless someone builds tens of thousands of new units of housing, supply and demand in MA is going to keep housing expensive. The claim that an improved business climate will make a major difference is an empty right wing bromide. I say that as someone who is pro healthy business climate, but it’s not a wonder elixir.
jconway says
Sorry
SomervilleTom says
I join Mr. Baker, you, and others in wanting “MA to be a state where [our] children [can] live and work after college, and that everyone’s children [can] choose that path, and not be forced to leave the state in search of a place they [can] afford to live.” In fact, I daresay it would be hard to find very many people who disagree with that sentiment.
I don’t see any connection (except in party dogma) between that vision and allegations of a climate that is “unfriendly to business” and tax rates that are “too high for cost of living”.
The collapse of our transportation system this winter was devastating for businesses in Boston. That collapse was caused by decades of too little spending and too little investment in public transportation infrastructure. It was NOT caused by taxes that are “too high”.
Thanks to decades of budget-cutting and demagoguery from shysters of BOTH parties, Massachusetts now ranks squarely in the middle of the 50 states on pretty much every measure of tax burden. It doesn’t seem to have helped our “business climate”, since the same people are still making the same complaints.
Perhaps if a significantly larger share of the wealth that is currently sitting in offshore bank accounts of our wealthiest 1% was instead in the wallets of our children, they might be more able to live here. Perhaps if our children did not have to take crushing debt burdens to attend college, they might be more able to live here.
It seems to me that the standard-form proposals always offered by the Massachusetts (and national) GOP in response to EVERY issue — “improve the business climate” and “cut taxes” — have in fact very much worsened the barriers to realizing the vision that we all claim to share.
We need to put more money into the pockets and wallets of our young people. I suggest that the first place to seek that money is where it currently resides — the assets of our wealthiest 1%.
merrimackguy says
imply that Baker had this issue on the radar. I was only making a these random points:
1. jconway echoed a a Baker point.
2. When Baker made the point no one noticed or cared.
For all I know he’s given up. Affordable housing is not a popular issue for the suburban voters.
Home owners want home appreciation.
People who like where they live don’t want change (Andover is loaded with “Block This” or “Stop That” signs.
More people with kids, especially in less expensive housing, means more school spending and higher taxes.
I’m not even sure urban types want more construction and more people moving in.
drikeo says
One of the reasons why Kim Driscoll was high on gubernatorial wish list.
jconway says
But that is part of the problem when you have an white native middle class aging out of the schools, a young professionals class not requiring schools yet, and a sudden influx of immigrants from a variety of cultural and socio economic backgrounds overwhelming the public schools that aren’t used to it. I trust the new Superintendent, a Latina and Salem resident with experience managing schools in the Boston system will help turn it around.
fenway49 says
Has lost its frickin mind. I know no shortage of people who said “it’s cheaper, warmer, and practically a blue state now.” Currently horrified by the state government and wishing they could get the hell out.
SomervilleTom says
Thankfully I never had to actually live there. I worked for IBM for a time, and therefore spent more days than I wanted to at Research Triangle Park (in the 1990s). I heard the same things then that I hear now, and if anything the NC culture has gotten worse since then.
I felt then as I do now that I prefer to live in a region that celebrates New England patriots who prevailed in the American Revolution rather than one that celebrates Confederate sympathizers who failed in their attempt to destroy the nation.
The cultural values that drove that distinction in the 19th century were very evident more than a hundred years later in the 1990s. From all external information, they appear to be even stronger today.
Indeed, North Carolina has lost its frickin mind — if it ever had one to lose.
jconway says
So I get where you two are coming from. Hell, I want to make it perfectly clear Massachusetts is my first choice, always will be, since it will always be home. Why do you think I spend so much time stalking these boards? 😉
I am just saying, housing affordability is a huge issue for me, and I have no idea how to solve it on a broad enough scale.
scott12mass says
Come out to Charlton. You may have to give up mass transit but check the listings. Great place for kids and schools are as good as concerned parents want them to be. 3 bedroom (only one bath though) with a nice yard and beach access < $200,000. Very safe town.
If we get the government to create little ghettos in Wellesley by forcing "affordable housing" development areas it only enables the growing income divide. Let the marketplace decide and when these high price suburbs begin to find the "little people" who make cities work don't want to commute and pick-up the trash, work the sewers or man the 7-11 the price of housing will come down. Or they will have to pay people more.
If the govt subsidizes housing it's providing a place for the serfs who serve the landed gentry.
gmoke says
This is not just a local problem. For years, I’ve been watching the news about the internationalization of real estate with the “best” neighborhoods in London being bought up as second, third, or fifth homes by plutocrats and kleptocrats who stay in them for maybe a month a year, killing those neighborhoods and the businesses that used to serve them. Then I started reading about Chinese plutocrats and kleptocrats buying up properties in Newton and Wellesley and, finally, about the Chinese billionaire who is quietly buying up Harvard Square.
The pressure on real estate prices is not all local. It is also international now with too many people with too much money looking to buy up anything valuable and real estate is one example.
Yes to local zoning and new affordable housing but don’t forget that there are outside pressures which are part of the new reality we are trying to change.
And, by the way, rent control in Cambridge was calculated with a decent profit margin for the landlords included.
SomervilleTom says
It doesn’t sound like you checked with very many Cambridge property owners about the reality of that “decent profit margin”. Like it or not, investment property is now and was then bought and sold on the basis of its profitability and margins. Very few investors are interested in fixed profitability — like it or not, for better or worse, investors (and landlords are investors) want properties that have no restrictions on gross profit margins.
I agree with you about the pressure of international investors. One dynamic that is often overlooked is the depressing effect of student loan burdens on long-term housing market statistics. Young people who carry those crushing debts don’t form new households — they live with parents or find other alternatives. The slowdown in households means, a few years later, a slowdown in first-time home purchases.
The result is that the market shifts towards older buyers with deeper pockets. In terms of market share, “Starter” homes are replaced by “luxury residences”.
The result is increasing upward pressure on rents, and that in turn spurs international buyers to jump into affluent neighborhoods to buy up residential properties. Increasing rents, combined with student debt burdens, further erode the ability of young people to EVER own a home.
Rent control is not an effective answer. Instead, we need to make it possible for young people to get a college degree without today’s enormous debt burden, and we need to put more money in their pockets and wallets when they graduate.
nopolitician says
I really hate to break up the party, but how about sharing some of the wealth with the rest of the state?
Yes, Boston is an amazing success story. People really, really, really want to live there – so much that they are willing to pay $1.7m for a house in Somerville. But Boston is atypical, and is partly so wildly so successful because of the state itself.
See, the state capital is in Boston, and the amount of money that goes into that engine is tremendous. It amplifies the effects of the world class city that is Boston. It drives up the prices of real estate to unsustainable levels, and generally mucks up the entire economy of the state.
Why not share the wealth a bit? How about, at the very least, moving some of that state spending into the rest of the state? How about trying some state policies that try and spread the wealth around a bit – using some of the tax revenue generated in Boston to improve conditions in Lawrence, Springfield, New Bedford, Lowell, Fall River, North Adams, Holyoke – cities that have plenty of unused capacity and cheap, cheap, cheap real estate?
You can buy a move-in-condition single family home in Springfield in a good neighborhood for $120k. You can buy a fixer-upper in a more marginal neighborhood for $30k.
Real estate price differential is a massive symptom that people should stop ignoring. It is obviously fueled by a problem that “the market” can not cure. This is a problem that the state should address.
thebaker says
We have always had that problem, it often gets overlooked, myself included. Good point.
Peter Porcupine says
…so I looked up my daughter’s house on a real estate web site.
It was on Elm Street near Porter Square and was a sort of turn-of-the-century vertical duplex with 4 oarking spaces and a handkerchief front lawn. The top two floors were one unit and she owned the first and a finished basement with bathroom and kitchen with seperate access so it could be rented as a stand alone unit although she used it as a single unit.
It last sold for $650,000 a few years ago as did the top unit. It would appear that even in 2012 it fit that $1.5 million description.
Her husband let it go after she died, but I bet he would regret that now.