In their most recent report on labor trends the economy, MassInc paints a bleak picture. The 22 page pdf Executive Summary is free.
I think anyone here at BMG with influence in the Patrick administration should get the governor to read this cover-to-cover.
Bottom line: MA is losing (“net migration”) our prime-age workforce to other states at an alarming rate, 2nd worse in the country. This workforce is being replaced mostly by low-wage immigrants.
This trend has been happening since 2002.
What can we do to reverse this?
Please share widely!
In my eyes, people are leaving because of a combination of jobs, housing, services, and quality of life.
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We can either try and put housing into communities where people desire to live, or we can try to make communities with housing (and no opposition to add more) more desirable to those people. Or some combination of the two.
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It’s not just about having jobs — it’s about the salary that, say, an accounting grad needs to earn to make the job worth working. And it’s about the life that such a grad wants to live.
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This will only accelerate, because as people lose their roots to a region — which is what is happening to this country in general — they will just gravitate to wherever offers them the best deal. People are becoming as much free agents as baseball players. It’s to the point where, when someone moves into my neighborhood from another state, I hesitate to cultivate friendships with them because odds are they’ll be moving on in 2-3 years, chasing a job somewhere else in the country.
I want to highlight these statements:
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Today Massachusetts offers a very weak deal to its citizens.
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There are truly only a limited number of neighborhoods in the Boston area that live up to the promise of urban living–walking to bars, restaurants and coffee shops; seeing crowds of people you know on the street every day; being able to take the T or walk to work. If you want to live in one, you pay an exorbitant sum to buy a miniscule old property that needs a huge amount of work and won’t support a family with children.
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Or, if you want more space and better amenities, you live in the boondocks and get in your car every time you run out of milk.
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Both are bad bargains.
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The amenities offered by the urban areas just aren’t worth the price. Take Davis Square for example–a neighborhood marketed by realtors as “hot hot hot” for the past few years. A house just went on the market there for $1.2 million. For that sum, you can access two dollar stores, a McDonalds, the Social Security office, a number of college bars, one good restaurant and a bus to East Somerville.
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And the suburban areas are no great deals, either. If you are going to live in a new development an hour from a major city that you seldom visit, why would you do it here? Identical homes are available at half the price in communities all across the country.
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As you say, we could put more (and better) housing in hot neighborhoods. Or we could allow cheaper areas to develop interesting, attractive “villages” that would make them more desirable.
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Right now, we’re not doing much of either.
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And in turn, I’d like to highlight this one. It’s spot-on, and I came to the same conclusion earlier today.
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Exurbs are the same across the country. We need to offer something different because we are at disadvantages in things like weather, land availability, and energy usage.
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The country is zigging, maybe we need to zag a little bit.
with villages instead of exurbs, town greens instead of parking lots?
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That kind of development is taking root all across the country–except here, where it’s the traditional form of community.
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A limited number? * 600,000 Boston * 100,000 Cambridge * 60,000 Brookline
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That’s three quarters of a million people, and neighborhoods that run the full gamut. Plenty of really safe, plenty of trendy and edgy, plenty with small back lots, and plenty near parks and open spaces.
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They’re expensive because they’re desirable. That’s how this stuff works.
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If you want that “space” of a half-acre lot, surely you’d expect to live in a neighborhood of half-acre lots, no? If so, how the hell would you expect to live close to a convenience store?
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It sounds like you’re seeking a 3 bedroom home on a 1 acre lot slapped in the middle of urban density, with good schools, friendly neighbors, and it to cost under $150,000. Good luck with that.
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There are plenty of $150k homes on 1 acre lots with friendly neighbors. There are plenty of 1 acre homes with good schools. You can even live on a 1 acre lot slapped in the middle of urban density with good schools and friendly neighbors — but you’ll pay more than 10 times that $150,000 pricetag. Start looking in Brookline, or some bits of Cambridge, or as far out as Newton.
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Me — I’d like to see more development in Boston proper. The trouble is, the public schools make it hard to attract more people. The ubiquity of 3 and 4 story buildings make it hard to build housing any denser than it already is. The struggling subway system doesn’t help either. If Boston could grow (and grow in attractiveness) I think it could take a lot of pressure off of other communities.
how “this stuff works.”
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Of course “desirable” neighborhoods are more expensive than less desirable ones. The question is, how much more expensive? And how much more desirable?
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Everyone does a cost/benefit analysis in deciding where to live. Massachusetts just isn’t making the cut anymore. City or suburb, properties just don’t offer the amenities required to justify their prices.
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For those who crave the best urban culture, they can head to a place like New York, where they pay high prices, probably have to rent versus buy, and live in a shoe box–but they’re in New York! For those who want a comfortable new home close to the mall, they can head to Phoenix, where cultural pickings are slim, but houses are (comparatively) cheap. If you want a college town, you can have a nice house in Austin for half or less of the price you’d pay in Cambridge.
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A lot of Boomers have it made, since they paid nothing for houses in neighborhoods now considered “hot.” But for younger people now expected to pay four times as much to live in the same neighborhood, the offer just isn’t so compelling.
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The bottom line is, the only people whose opinions matter are the ones leaving the state. And your argument doesn’t seem to have convinced them.
Look, housing is expensive here. Why?
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For new housing, maybe the added labor, material, and regulatory cost add some.
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But, most of it is simply supply and demand. The market here is expensive because there’s high demand to live here and short supply.
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Doesn’t that indicate that the area is attractive? Why do people feel like its imperative to create more housing supply? I’m not against it in general, but I don’t understand this “oh noe!!11! we’re loosing population!” response. In short, who cares if the population in Massachusetts flat lines while other parts of the country grow? Why is that a bad thing? Massachusetts has the third highest population density in the country, behind RI (2) and NJ (1). We’re about 4.5 times more dense than North Carolina, and 15 times more dense than Arizona.
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The question that I think is important is: how can we increase the median income in the state (including all those with $0 income)? Maybe that’s by importing wage earners, maybe its by exporting those who earn less, maybe its by improving education, maybe its by reducing unemployment.
I’ll tell you exactly why it is imperative to create more housing supply (or increase demand in low-demand areas): If we don’t, we increase economic segregation, and the whole system gets out of whack.
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As one community’s real estate prices skyrocket, people either move out of that community or can’t buy into it. That happens along income/wealth lines. That itself becomes a selling point — a feedback loop — where exclusivity breeds even more exclusivity.
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Poor people can’t afford to buy a home in an exclusive community, so they buy where they can afford it. They become concentrated. Their problems overwhelm local service providers. The schools groan under the weight of higher percentages of kids who don’t learn that easily.
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Pretty soon the people in the wealthy communities say “hey, why am I paying so much in taxes but my town isn’t getting anything back”. They revolt and cut off funding to poor communities who can’t pay for the services that they need.
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It’s happening right now in this state, and will only get worse. Look at Springfield. The city has a $475 million budget. A Republican control board has been through it for three budget cycles now, it’s not getting much smaller. The city can only raise $130 million in property taxes. The city is currently unsustainable — yet it once operated entirely on its own revenues (50 years ago). How is that even possible? Because a significant portion of its population is poor, and the city is past the tipping point. The schools are 75% low income, and are also beyond the tipping point.
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If demand was equalized — either through more supply in high demand areas or by making low-demand areas more attractive — these problems aren’t as evident. Sure, some communities will always be more desirable than others, but such differentiation shouldn’t be based on exclusiveness alone — as in “if you live here, you don’t have to live near THOSE people”. And the added bonus is that countless fights of developers trying to jam a lot of houses into exclusive communities won’t happen anymore — those developers are chasing the easy money, trying to put up a house that costs them $100k to build but will sell for $500k.
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We need to grow our population for a couple of reasons. First, the rest of the country is growing. We’re losing our clout. Second, if we can’t grow our population, that makes it a lot harder to grow our economy. That means if you own a convenience store, you have to be satisfied with no increases in profits. That means if you’re a municipal employee you have to be satisfied with no more raises. Life isn’t as much fun when you’re stagnating.
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This is a valid concern, and certainly exists in practice. Affordable housing requirements can work to reduce this impact, but since we’re not even at 10% affordable housing, we’re talking about a pretty negligible impact.
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I think you could have left off the last five words and had just as sound a point. It is a concern.
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But, I wonder, how much of the issue is simply differing priorities? I mean, lots of Americans value acre lots and shopping malls. Massachusetts doesn’t have to be all things to all people.
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I think the solution to more affordable housing throughout the state lies in Boston and Worcester. If we could create a low cost mini Acela between the two cities, we might enable lots of good growth in Worcester, particularly in the square mile around the train station. Increasing the number of office buildings helps boost the tax base, and it helps create service jobs in the buildings themselves as well as the surrounding restaurants, etc.
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Of course, that isn’t nearly enough. The real key lies in the public schools. How do you improve the public schools enough to become attractive to families? The issue isn’t a front yard — there are plenty of parks and ballfields. The issue is figuring out how to reverse the “white flight” from the 1970s. If the Boston and Worcester public schools could improve significantly, I think you’d see a reverse exodus back into the cities, and thats where you can build a significant increase in dense housing with the services necessary to maintain that housing.
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Of course, that’s the biggest “if” I can come up with. How to fix the schools? I have tons of ideas based on no experience nor expertise in the area.
I’m not so sure this comment is accurate:
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First of all, where would all of these families with kids live? Much of the housing stock that used to be better suited for families in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville has been carved up into much smaller condo units. $350k doesn’t buy you much in the way of a two bedroom condo with more than 1,000 sq. ft. these days, and most people with one or two kids are going to want more space than that.
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Second, why should density be increased in cities while we let the burbs off the hook? Most suburban towns around here fight any type of affordable housing tooth and nail through zoning restrictions, lawsuits, etc. Somerville is already one of the most densely populated cities in the country. Where exactly would you “build a significant increase in dense housing” in the Boston/Cambridge/Somerville area? And who would choose to live in this dense housing with a family?
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We need to build more housing (not just affordable housing) period. And suburban towns need to be held accountable for their exclusionary zoning policies. It kills me when I read stories in my hometown paper about people fighting any kind of development that has more than one unit on less than 1/2 acre. They’re keeping housing in that town out of the range of most young families, sometimes their own kids. It’s the most selfish attitude I’ve ever seen.
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We should also get the business community involved in this discussion. Business leaders always complain about the sticker shock new hires face when relocating to Boston. I’d hazard a guess that most CEOs and senior executives of companies in Boston and the surrounding area probably don’t live in Dorchester or East Boston. They live in Wellesly, or Weston, or Dover, or other towns that have fought affordable developments. I’d also be willing to bet that the CEOs who live in those communities have never once gone to a zoning hearing, stood up, and supported adding more units to their town.
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Housing affordability is not a problem government can solve alone. Business leaders need to get engaged if they want the workforce of the future to be able to live within 100 miles of their offices.
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Behold the power of the markets. The schools won’t instantly get better, and even if they did it would take years for folks in the suburbs to move in. I understand the desire for space, and I agree that 1000 square feet is tough with anything more than an infant. But, I do think that housing in the 1200-1800 square feet range is easily achievable, and I think it could be done affordably with largish (10-20) story buildings. It’s hard to do it in 4 story buildings because the value of the land becomes too high a percentage of the cost, and because you don’t gain the building efficiencies that larger buildings have in terms of heating, cooling, lighting, etc.
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Urban housing allows for all of those net benefits that living in the city offers — cultural, transportation, etc. The advantage of suburbs is the schools and the half acre lots — and that’s why they’re so expensive. Put good schools in the cities and I think you see a natural reverse-exodus. Besides, why shouldn’t there be good schools in the cities? Just put them in and let the people move where they want, and help the housing market follow along. Furthermore, I’m not talking about affordable housing (sec 8, etc) when I’m talking about density. I’m talking about the entire range of housing quality, from low income apartments to luxury condos. As for where I would build denser housing? Just. About. Everywhere. Anyplace within a half mile of a T stop is a good start (and I’d work on improving & expanding the T, FYI).
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I don’t disagree about the zoning issues. This really falls into “smart growth” and whatnot. The trouble is, its really hard to retro-fit smart growth. But, simply removing exclusionary zoning can just as easily lead to nasty sprawl if not done well. I’m not an urban planner nor architect, so I can’t write very informatively about it, I just know its a real difficult issue.
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Of course not. But, here’s the real issue: dense housing in communities like Wellesly or Weston or Dover or Newton or Brookline result in a higher number of school-aged children per property tax dollar. This is just how it is. Now, if you’re paying high taxes to have good schools, you know damn well that these dense developments will lower the tax-dollars-per-pupil number, which means less school expenditure on your child.
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How do you fix it? The only way I can think of is to not fund education through property tax. Good luck fighting that fight though.
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Cities like Boston and Worcester simply aren’t an attractive living option for many office workers. Why not work to make it more attractive?
…that everyone who lives in the cities wants more density. I, for one, do not want 20 story apartment buildings clustered around every T stop. I expect I’m not alone in that regard, considering the fact that people in the Back Bay are even fighting the new, larger trash cans the city has begun using. Even if you could find the room (without taking existing housing), the neighbors would most certainly object.
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Why should we negatively impact the quality of life of the people who’ve stayed in the city or decided to move into the city while still letting the burbs off the hook? And yes, I think bringing thousands of new people into existing neighborhoods constitutes a serious degradation of the quality of life in the city.
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I moved into the city because of the neighborhoods. I like the scale of the housing here. Frankly, if I wanted to live in a concrete jungle, I’d move to Manhattan. I’m not even a big fan of some of the luxury high-rise development they’re doing around here because it is not well integrated into the neighborhoods. I think for as many people as you might lure in with the promise of better schools, you’d lose people like me who value the neighborhoods and the character of the city.
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You’re also assuming that people want to live in 20 story towers with 1,500 square foot units just because the schools are good. People make housing decisions based on a variety of issues — price, location, space, transportation, schools, etc. School quality is one small piece of a larger picture.
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Finally, if this is a long-term project, then why shouldn’t we take the fight to the burbs. No one (or two or three) communities should be responsible for solving our housing problem. Let’s make sure that the burden of more housing is spread throughout the region.
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I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here. Many parents are more concerned with separating their kids from kids they see as problems then they are with so-called educational quality. That is the basis behind parochial schools, which often have fewer resources, lower curricula, uncompetitive teacher salaries, and even unqualified teachers. Yet people gobble them up, paying for the privilege of being able to keep their kid away from certain segments of the population, because you can be asked to leave a parochial school.
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I think that is the only way to solve the urban education system is via method that allows the middle class to segregate their kids, because that’s what they’re chasing when they leave urban areas. I’m not talking about race, or even economics, I’m talking about grouping children who are raised correctly, whose parents value education to the same degree that you and I do.
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This problem is correlated with poverty, which is why areas with concentrated poverty have so many problems. Odds are that if you don’t value education, if you have no respect for others, you’re going to wind up poor, and you’re going to pass those values to your kids. It is also correlated with race, but in my opinion this is only to the degree that race correlates with poverty.
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One solution would be to give parents in urban districts the ability to separate their kids based on their educational values. I realize that this plan would effectively destroy the remained of schools though, because all the good kids would leave.
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Another approach would be to end economic segregation across this state. Any school in the state could handle a handful of students who don’t care about education. But once you get too many into a school, it becomes both unattractive to the middle class and difficult to manage.
to pay the taxes to fund all the gazebos and other stuff you want. As population declines, the tax burden for the remainder must go up if state services level is to remain constant.
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And I think the point wasn’t that housing supply is short because Massachusetts is so very desireable, it is artificially short because the preposterous scheme of local zoning plus state regulation makes it slow and expensive to develop housing in the Commonwealth. Artificial restriction of supply is great for those who already own, lousy for those who don’t, and ultimately will force the decision of whether to downscale government or raise the heck out of taxes.
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No.
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The massive runup in Massachusetts housing prices occurred after 2000–a time when we were losing jobs and population and adding new housing. Desirability had nothing to do with it: by objective measures (emigration), we became less desirable, not more.
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Because, except in the third world, population loss is universally recognized by economists as an economy-killer. Local markets shrink, and the local businesses who serve them die off. National businesses lose their talent pool and have to relocate. Construction and shelter industries are decimated. This is a serious problem for Europe and Japan today.
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The damage is worst when the people lost are young professionals and families, as in Massachusetts. The state is investing money to educate children who leave as soon as they are old enough to become productive and contribute back to the economy. We are left with a population that is increasingly poor and increasingly old–a death spiral.
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We can’t change any of this if we won’t face the facts.
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In North Carolina, perhaps, but in Massachusetts? It seems difficult to find anything under $225-250K anywhere in the state, and that includes condos.
I was referring to “in America” not in Massachusetts per se. So yes, in North Carolina, which incidentally, was the state I was thinking of when I wrote that line.
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Sorry for not being clear.
Good public schools.
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This a two pronged attack:
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Good public primary and secondary schools attract middle class. Sure, they result in higher property values — and hence more expensive homes. But, people in their 20s and young 30s with young families want their kids to go to good schools.
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Good public universities are a big help too. The private schools in Massachusetts are second to none, but the fact is that graduates of public colleges are for more likely to stay in that state for employment than the private counterparts. So, improve UMass. Expand the graduate programs to incldue ==gasp!== a public law school in the state. Make UMass more affordable so that it can bring in great students, and figure out how to expand UMass in a way that makes sense.
and Texas for their great public schools?
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Anything that increases property taxes is doomed to fail. Not because property taxes are unusually high here–they aren’t–but because everything else is. I just came home from the grocery store, and, once again, discovered I could’ve eaten out more cheaply. Only last week I took a close look at the cable bill (another price hike) and recoiled in shock. And of course, housing prices are a joke.
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It all adds up, and makes Mass a pretty poor proposition unless you’re very rich or very poor.
well, in terms of Arizona and Florida. I thought only Mexicans were moving to Texas, but otherwise I don’t know.
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The point is: do we want seniors to be moving to Massachusetts? I’m not saying they should be prohibited from entering, but are they going to contribute much to the long term health of the state? Are they going to contribute as much as highly skilled workers?
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Florida has crummy schools, which is attractive to seniors, who keep voting to have crummy schools. Frankly, I don’t want that behavior to show up in Massachusetts.
on national housing news. Phoenix exploded in population over the past few years, as did Las Vegas and many parts of Florida–mostly through an influx of young people, not seniors.
affordable housing, affordable housing, affordable housing
I think affordable housing is a good thing in general, and I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t be working toward affordable housing.
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The thing is, adding more affordable housing will attract all kinds of people (depending on just what affordable means in this context).
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If you’re interested in a particular subset (say college educated 21-35 year olds), maybe it makes more sense to focus on being attractive to that group. Personally, I think that great public schools are particularly attractive (for those youngsters with kids), as is mixed use neighborhoods (for those youngsters without kids). These things aren’t particularly attractive for the folks in the 55+ age group. Even if housing is more expensive than the national average, young college educated people are more likely to afford more expensive housing than those with less valuable skills.
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It just depends on goals. Is the goal to stem population loss? To stem skilled-worker population loss? Something else?
I read the executive summary (the whole report is free to view online, BTW). It said that families with children are leaving this state.
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Given the hostility towards that group in most communities, is it any wonder? Try going to a town meeting and saying “I propose to build 100 homes that we will target towards young families with children” and see what reaction you get.
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Proposition 2 1/2 has turned everyone into a cost accountant, and conventional wisdom says that this demographic group is a money-loser. In the short-term, they may be, but in the long-term, it means the contraction of our state.
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I think that another of our competitive advantages is that we aren’t Sprawlsville, USA. We have quaint, rural communities with distinct character. I’m OK with keeping them that way, but if we want to grow our economy and population, people will need to go elsewhere.
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If we allow urban centers to decay to the point where no one wants to live in them, we have effectively cut off young people from housing. We can’t exist as a state of McMansions. We need a “minor league”, and that means apartments, rental housing and smaller starter homes. Those things exist, but because services are tied to property taxes, the service levels in communities that offer them are sub-par. People are choosing to move out-of-state rather than to settle for sub-par services — including things like crime and quality of life.
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Taxes in those communities are high on the middle class because the lower class lives in very cheap housing. Many people in Springfield pay taxes similar to wealthier suburban communities, and at some point they say “why am I paying $4-5k in taxes here when I can move elsewhere and pay the same”? They pay $4-5k because entire other neighborhoods pay $1.5-2k in taxes.
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It’s all related.
And as someone who believes that the number one reason (possibly by far) for this negative net migration of prime-age workforce is housing costs, it is telling that people who are in prime family-starting age are leaving states like RI, MA, and CT and going to places (among other, also cheaper southern places) like VT, NH, and ME.
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Housing costs not only affect the decisionmaking of new employees who would like to start families in non-rental situations, but it comes full circle and businesses realize that if they move to NH, VT, or NC where housing is cheap, their employees will happily follow.
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Encouraging (or forcing) communities to allow more housing development, including single-family homes, is critical. There are a million different ways to do this, but the current situation of 351 different housing/zoning strategies is very problematic, to say the least.
The state should take a more active role to coordinate economic development between municipalities and some of our world-class growth engines like the investment companies, universities, and business associations. I am not talking about a multi-million investment fund to compete with private capital. That strikes me as a mis-allocation of resources and likely not to produce great results (although probably lots of cheap loans for friends of the well-connected). I am talking about beefing up the economic development coordinators at the state level to help get business parks approved, red tape cut, and advantageous administrative procedures adopted. In Singapore, the government will offer turn-key factory space, built by private developers, tax holidays for five years for new companies, renewable for another five years on application, help finding capital, and finding workers. Businesses can get up and running fast. We should have the similar programs, so that companies invest in Massachusetts rather than someplace else. Maximal return (which can be measured in jobs created and capital invested) for a relatively small investment at the top end.
then let me make 3 suggestion that would have an noticeable reduction on housing costs and stimulate production:
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(1) Remove from 40B the 20% profit limitation on projects smaller than 8 (or 12) dwellings. You’ll see an explosion of very creative, right-sized infill projects which today, because of the profit limitation, are rarely feasible.
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(2) Exempt residential projects in Boston and other municipalities from union labor. Union labor increases the total hard cost of major construction by 50% to 100%. It’s more than labor rates. It’s work rules. It’s attitude. I’m not knocking some of the fine union sub-contractors I deal with (they’re real pros, and they “build great”) but the majority of union labor is less efficient, less responsive and always much, much slower (“don’t kill the job.”) Union labor increases total project costs on large scale urban residential projects by 30% to 35% … you get a $500,000 condo instead of a $385,000 one.
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(3) Get rid of or radically reform MGL Chpts. 7 and 149 to allow private development of schools, sewer systems and public roads. Without a doubt, MA has the WORST public works legislation in the country. This makes school construction 2x as expensive as in NH or CT and 3x as expensive than NC or FL. That’s the reason so many towns reject child-friendly residential development … they’re scared stiff they’ll have to build a middle-school addition at hugely inflated premiums. These laws are KILLING public infrastructre projects.
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Let’s make it easy. Pick 2 of the 3.
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We can’t even reform our 2nd worst in the nation auto insurance laws, so I’m skeptical any of the above suggestions have a chance.
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That’s my 2 cents.
I’m not sure which MGL chapter sewer lines fall under but it’s the biggest bunch of red tape junk I’ve ever heard of.
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One developer in Tyngsboro was extending sewer for a 40b project and he had to get into a knock-down dragout fight with the DEP because in order to get his permitting, they wanted him to clean up the water supply in Lowell. That’s right, he had to fight to be able to build a clean sewer line without being forced to clean up the water in another municipality that he’d never even built in. For every gallon of wastewater his project was creating, they wanted him to clean up 3 gallons in Lowell!
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We just had a 10 million dollar office park deal fall through because we couldn’t get sewer to the site. The site is within about a mile of an existing line that has plenty of spare capacity, but under MGL we have to reserve capacity in that line for complete build-out on every lot it abutts. Lots of these lots aren’t even developed. So we have a sewer line at about 20% capacity and we’re not allowed to extend it to high-value projects because theoretically everybody who’s never tied in in the last 10 years might try to tie in tomorrow, after building out their properties to the maximum demand allowed by law overnight.
There are lots more single people than there used to be, and many more divorced families that used to live in one house but now take up two. And there are lots more women working in high paying jobs who either live in their own house or pool their income with a spouse (usually also in an equally high paying job) to out-bid single earner families for housing. Remember, house prices are set by the buyer, not by the seller. If a house sells for 1.2 million, that’s because some family felt they could afford that much. So, between being out-bid by dual income families and having more houses taken up by single and divorced women, lots of young people are moving to where there aren’t so many working women, like North Carolina, for instance.
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It’s not that simple. I doubt that such a family was just itching to drop $1.2m on a house. If they could have received the same house with the same services for $50k, they would have jumped on it.
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The problem is, their $1.5m gets them something that $50k can’t buy them — the ability to exclude people who can only afford a $50k house from their lives.
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And why is it a problem to live near someone making only enough to live in a $50k house? Because local governments can’t deal with the increased services that a poorer population consumes. If you can’t have a government that can respond when your neighbor hasn’t mowed his lawn in weeks, the solution is to move somewhere where people have enough time, money, and self-respect so that their lawn gets mowed, and with just enough government to handle the stragglers.
The point is that the seller doesn’t strong arm anyone into spending 1.2 million. They list the house at what they hope to get, but it is the buyer that sets the price by agreeing to pay it. Sometimes buyers even offer more than it is listed for, I hear. Point is, it’s not like no one can afford a house these days – it’s that only some people can, and it is increasingly two income families that are able to easily outbid single earner families, and they are the ones driving up the cost of housing. Two income families cause the gap between rich and poor to double, because now rich families are twice as rich as poor families. ($70,000 * 2 = 140,000, $30,000 * 2 = 60,000, so what used to be a $40,000 gap is now a $80,000 gap, and compared to low income single earner families, it’s now a $110,000 gap, up from 40!)
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And my other point is that divorce and remaining single put a big strain on the housing market.
Why aren’t they driving up the cost of housing in other parts of the country? Houses in the South & West don’t come anywhere near Boston area prices.
Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate of any state in the union
From that same site, we are near the bottom in percent of households that are married couples.
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But I can see that North Carolina is #30, so it can’t just be just a result of households splitting up. Maybe there was more of a radical change up here in the last 20 years than in other states, affecting housing markets more.
Yes — Proposition 2.5!
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After it was enacted, communities started to assign cost figures to potential residents, and then started to reject types of residents that it didn’t deem made the cut.
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Why? Because prior to Proposition 2.5 communities were not constrained by a hard revenue cap. A town could raise taxes — within reason, of course, since drastic increases resulted in a competitive disadvantage for their town — when they needed to.
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After the they were hampered significantly. So even if new housing isn’t a drain on a budget (it can’t be, since every community already has plenty of existing housing), conventional wisdom said that it was, so communities started inventing ways to block it.
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I’d love to see data on when large-lot zoning was put into effect in various communities. Or when environmental laws started to be enforced. Or when a host of other methods to block development started creeping up.
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I can’t find any data about property values per town prior to 1980, but I’d be curious to see if communities were more equal back then. I suspect they were. I suspect that, as Americans for Tax Reform (Grover Nordquist’s organization) says, residents have “sorted” themselves based on what services they can afford.