Last week I wrote a post comparing Marty Walsh and John Connolly’s policy proposals on education. I concluded that while they share most of the same broad goals, there are a couple of big differences. Walsh aims first for the proven effects of early childhood ed through universal kindergarten, while Connolly leads with a more trendy but less consensus-driven commitment to universally extending the school day. I was pleased to see former city councilor Tom Keane, who often drives me nuts, discuss the importance of that difference in his Globe column today. But more important to me was how Walsh focuses on the immediate steps and alliances necessary to generating change in a complex system, while Connolly announces dramatic goals but leaves the paths to getting to them unspecified. There is a similar contrast in their positions on housing.
Housing is an issue with an even broader reach than education, directly affecting every resident of the city and playing an essential role in economic development, jobs growth, social justice, and quality of life. Accordingly, both Walsh and Connolly place their main focus on what’s known as “workforce housing.” As distinct from the conventional equation of “affordable” with “low-income,” workforce housing recognizes the way the affordability problem reaches right up through the middle class, frustrating people’s efforts to live where the jobs are. It also acknowledges the stake that a city has in being able to house the workers needed to staff its industries and grow its economy.
The most salient difference between the two candidates’ housing policies comes in how each would expand this segment of the market. Walsh focuses on innovative incentive models and cross-sector collaborations; Connolly focuses on the work of existing city agencies. To elaborate:
- Walsh would target transit hubs, retail villages, and underused public lands, providing incentives in taxation, zoning, and financing to spur development. He would “collaborate with employers, developers, workers, and residents to use a neighborhood approach to come up with a workforce housing model that specifically targets hubs of worker concentrations, to provide high quality housing.”
- Connolly, by contrast, says he would “leverage the resources and influence of the Department of Neighborhood Development, the BRA and the Housing Trust to prioritize three-bedroom construction, artists’ lofts, and affordable ‘micro-units’ for our young families, seniors, and young professionals.”
I think the difference here is between smart growth and an attempt to simply goose business as usual. Walsh’s plan foresees that we will have to think more strategically and more collaboratively if we are to foster growth that meets our evolving needs, rather than simply drifting forward on today’s currents. It is hard to see how the existing bureaucratic silos will be adequate to generating and managing the kinds of growth that economists say will be needed to keep pace with demand and thus keep us within shouting distance of affordability in the coming decade. Stifling development is not an option, but simply opening up the floodgates could be disastrous.
A similar contrast runs through the remainders of their plans: Walsh’s is chock full of detail, breaking the housing market down into myriad segments and setting out ambitious ways of expanding and measuring access. Connolly leads with three end-goals: building family-sized units; adding “microlofts” for young singles; and increasing homeownership among city employees. In his break-out sections he adds some concrete strategies for foreclosure intervention and discusses the importance of preserving the existing supply of affordable housing rather than letting it drift back into the open market.
There’s a case to be made, certainly from the point of view of communications strategy, for Connolly’s broad, positive rhetoric against Walsh’s dense policy minutiae. But the difference is not just one of style. Walsh’s breakdown of the housing market is also a recognition of the diversity of housing needs in the city. He spends as much time talking about specific strategies to help the low-income, those in need of support services, and the homeless, as he does the middle-market workforce.
While Connolly mentions some of these issues, his above-the-fold priorities name three constituencies — young families, upwardly mobile singles, and city workers — that are unmistakably voting blocs. In other words, Walsh’s policy vision is more inclusive while Connolly’s is more political.
I think this difference on housing stems from the candidates’ respective public careers. Being an effective state rep from Dorchester has required Walsh to master the widest possible range of housing issues, from the historic preservation of grand old Victorians to the opening of group homes for the addicted and disabled. He’s been at the table for residential developments around T stations, ethnic retail villages, and areas suffering from disinvestment. Connolly, by contrast, has been a city councilor who has worked to build a constituency largely among middle-class families with children, an important but relatively narrow segment when it comes to housing.
I think the city needs Walsh’s broader range of experience and his more ambitious, innovative approach to housing.
I’m going by your description here, but from what I can tell both of the candidates are attacking the wrong problem with different buzzwords.
Getting a little more housing built at the margins is not bad in itself, but it’s more effective at producing photo ops with developers than it is for restoring the city to some measure of affordability.
Making friends with developers is a good way to make sure that your campaigns are always well financed. The career of Tom Menino is a case in point: he went from non entity to Mayor for Life, becoming unbeatable while the city became unaffordable.
Far more critical is fighting displacement, which includes things like taking on institutional expansion, not cooperating with some developers, and confronting financial institutions.
In short, it means picking fights with the kind of people who have the ear of op ed columnists. I don’t see much fight in either of the candidates proposals. It looks to me like they are both angling to continue the Menino administration’s worn out policies and not rock the boat.
No wonder nobody can tell these two guys apart.
I appreciate your clarity on the depth of the displacement problem and what it will take to face it. I just think Walsh’s policy takes on much more of that reality than Connolly’s. He’s at least naming the challenges different people face and proposing aggressive (if not confrontational) ways to meet them.
The area’s institutions — universities and hospitals — are the driving force behind the area’s growing tech and bio-medical industries, the industries that are driving our economy. Granted, institutional growth can be extremely detrimental if it’s not properly planned. But why would we want to stifle the growth of the very things that make Boston (and the surrounding area) so competitive nationally and globally?
The fact is that the world is growing, the nation is growing, the state is growing (though more slowly than it should be) and Boston is growing at a rate not seen in decades. People want to send their children to Boston for the incredible education that our local universities provide. They want to live in Boston for access to the area’s jobs, our world class healthcare and our area’s vibrant culture, which is due in no small part to the influence of the local universities. We can rend our clothes and gnash our teeth over these facts or we can accept them and plan accordingly. Which is to say, we need to reexamine our zoning laws and our permitting processes and make sure that the growth of our population doesn’t outpace the growth of our housing stock, transit network, etc. Will luxury condos be built and developers get rich in the process? Sure. But this isn’t an inherently bad thing when woven into a proper regional growth plan.
While I prefer one candidate to the other, both seem to have the right basic focus when it comes to housing policy.