Newton Mayor Setti Warren’s just released housing strategy identifies dozens of possible development sites and recommends numerous policy changes – including a complete restructuring of the special permit process.
The report and other documents are on the city’s website.
Heres’ the story from Jonathan Dame for Wicked Local and this is from Ellen Ishkanian in the Globe.
The TAB has created this map to identify the sites.
Planning to do a deeper dive on this soon.
I hope we can all agree that this is a very positive step forward for the administration. Whether you agree or disagree with the game plan, you now have the full play by play. The Mayor easily could’ve kept going with a piecemeal approach. It takes real courage to lay out a vision like this, I applaud the Mayor for doing so.
What Bryan said. There’s a great deal to digest in this plan and it’s too soon for anyone to have formulated an educated opinion about the report and specific recommendations. But I commend Mayor Warren on spearheading this important initiative and making this a priority.
Addressing Newton’s and our region’s housing shortage is critical to our economic vitality and a moral imperative. Bringing additional foot traffic to our village centers is essential for our merchants and restaurant operators. Providing a diversity of workforce housing options is critical to the employers here and to the businesses we hope to attract.
Folks on all sides of this issue have called for a look at a complete plan. We have it now and I look forward to a robust, civil debate.
@Bryan: The creation of a Housing Production Plan – is basically the same idea and that has been on the docket for years. There just wasn’t interest by the Administration to go that route. However, I am pleased this has finally been released!
Nice job with the map Newton TAB!
Gail, Mr. Dame continues to impress me.
Yes, I have seen this in Toronto since the 1970s. Local town government was abolished. Today they are building 70 story apartment buildings without parking. There is a good public transit system but travel throughout the city is always in gridlock even with 24 lane arteries. Greater Boston is not suitable for rapid population growth. It will never build a high speed transit system and will never have the needed road capacity.
People want to move here. Without adding more housing the rent and home prices will continue to rise (perhaps that is why some don’t want more housing, their property is worth millions now because of demand). The only options to deal with this are build more housing at a rate faster or as fast as demand, this will reduce pressure and reduce the rise in prices. Not build housing or not enough and more and more folks get priced out of Newton, including older residents that cant afford the taxes (because home value continues to go up) but dont want to move someplace else, or simply can’t. Destroy the good schools, destroy the transit, destroy the businesses that are creating this demand, stop repaving streets and replacing street lights, stop mowing. That will reduce demand real quick. Too many residents here say they have their’s and to hell with the rest of you. We know that greenfield development is environmentally unsustainable (in a lot of ways), so infill is the only way to go. We need to allow single story commercial buildings to add 2 or 3 stories on top with minimal regulation, and infact we need to encourage it. Yes big projects will happen and they have issues, and they need to be dealt with, but encouraging incremental changes needs to be front and center. We need to allow accessory dwellings for family members, we need to look at land use in our village centers where additional density makes sense but also look at issues with tear-downs especially if they reduce affordable housing options. We need to look at what the proper mix of new housing will be, the tax benefit and cost to schools (single biggest cost, and with only one kid in a house property taxes don’t come close to covering that cost, which is why we need more residential to encourage more commercial and industrial that will make up the tax difference) I am glad the city is doing this, but the leadership is still not there to make this happen.
Maybe you have to have adult children in their 20’s who’re trying to make their way in a very harsh world in order to understand this issue. All three of my sons are gainfully and professionally employed and have had a terrible time finding housing. If you’re a Millennial, much of your life revolves around finding housing. It’s certainly been the top issue in my household for the last 5 years, and finally everyone is settled in a safe place but it hasn’t been easy by any stretch of the imagination. And they weren’t even looking at communities comparable to Newton. This is a regional, generational problem that’s only going to get worse for young adults (and their families) unless we address it now.
I do commend the Mayor for putting this out there. A lot to discuss. If V14 is looking to play a constructive role, I’d actually suggest multiple threads on different parts.
This stood out as a key point:
“the City will not ‘build its way to affordability.’ The imbalance of demand and supply is so great that the City could not physically accommodate the development needed to affect pricing in a substantial manner. To this point, a combination of preservation and new construction will be necessary to ensure some level of price diversity within Newton.”
This is NOT about making Newton more affordable. That is simply not feasible. Home prices will continue to rise, and Newton will generally be a destination for an increasingly wealthy set. The policy objective of this strategy is to create SOME price diversity through the development of below-market units. We can debate those merits, but the clarity on what this intends to accomplish in that debate is critical.
@Paul Within the context of Newton, I think that’s right. But Newton is a leader on these issues, and I would hope that our strategic planning (and, importantly, our ability to follow through on that planning) will have a significant impact on communities around us. And greater boston in general needs to greatly increase the housing stock to take the pressure off of prices regionally.