Ted Hess-Mahan posted this article on another thread. “Here is an important PSA for the NIMBY in your life:” Talk to your friends about zoning. I thought it deserved it’s own thread. Basically it says:
the anti-development Baby Boomer [is] thwarting efforts to expand the housing stock and driving up his own home value in the process.
pushing planners to reject high-cost projects (“Gentrification!”) and low-cost projects (“Crime rates!”) and everything in between (“Neighborhood character!”)
Is this happening in Newton? All opinions welcome.
Maybe the millennials in the spare bedrooms are keeping the boomers from selling!
Sallee, maybe you’re right.
Absolutely is happening in Newton, and the Newton Villages Alliance is the most public example of this “resist, obstruct and protest” anti-affordable housing movement.
I’ll go a step further than Ted and attach a label to these “affordable housing deniers”-
everyone needs a tag or label in this day age so they can be properly identified, isolated and ostracized, right? i’ll call them the “i’ve got mines”.
What Ted won’t say but i will is that these “affordable housing deniers” are hard-core solid blue DEMOCRAT Boomers, at least here in Newton. Sad!
To be fair, Paul, many of the most progressive members of the Council are very, very pro-housing and the NVA did endorse Jim Cote (a Republican) in 2015 election. I think the polarization over density here is non-partisan. it’s kind of refreshing.
Are all of the anti-development residents of Newton Baby Boomers? I don’t have the facts but I don’t think so. It struck me as funny that millennials either still living with their parents or living in places paid for by their parents blame their parents for not wanting to build more housing.
I also wonder if the motive here is to drive up property values. Since property values in Newton weren’t affected as much as in other places in the recession and those values continue to climb, I’m not sure that’s what’s behind our anti-development protestors.
The reasons may not be the same as in the article but the results are. We definitely hear as part of the anti-dev argument – gentrification when protesting higher priced developments, higher crime rates when disagreeing with low cost homes, condos and rental units and everything in between.
As a joe-schmo citizen who rarely posts here, my response is: none of the above. I am reflexively against more development because our schools are overcrowded and we can’t seem to fund or build our way out of that. Our roadways are overcrowded — it takes 45 minutes some days to drive my kid from the east side of Newton to the west side for soccer practice (yes, I carpool). That takes it out of you. (And none of that takes into account the daunting/bankrupting $$ that will start to come due in the form of OPEB not too far down the road — and residential building does not provide incremental funding to the city like commercial development does.)
@Andy-
I would need to take a deeper dive into the facts to tease out whether various councilors are very pro-housing or not when it comes to development in their own back yards. Are councilors who live near Austin St supporting that development?
what about the Orr Block development? Any local councilor support there? As far as the NVA goes, Jim Cote was part of a slate of candidates promoted and supported by the all-Democrat NVA leadership. As you probably know, when you head into the polling locations, you are handed a slate card as a useful “guide” on who to vote for. I’m sure the people who supported the NVA and its mission, simply voted for all of their slate candidates. I’ll bet quite a few had no idea they were voting for a Republican. As part of my research i’ll check and see if Cote is pro-housing or not, i suspect that as an NVA supported candidate he is not. Ride over to Winchester St near us, and take a right on Goddard St, look at the first house on your left. You will notice the shell/foundation/skeleton
of a modest development/multifamily that must still be in litigation from a lawsuit brought by an NVA leader and an adjoining neighbor. Thats what not supporting ANY development looks like. The bearded, bespectacled gentleman sitting behind Kathleen K Grieser in the NEWTv broadcast of the Orr Block Development hearing could tell you a bit about whats going on over on Goddard Street if you care to ask him. That complaint was his baby, and he is not the
“adjoining neighbor” from the pair that filed the motion. Progressive councilors have fought tooth and nail for years to decrease the number of affordable units in the 5 million dollar Kessler Woods/CPA funded development, despite using tax payer dollars to purchase a swatch of undevelopable swamp land as a buffer for neighboring “progressive” NIMBYS.
Paul, the 2 ward 2 at-large alders voted for the Austin Street proposal. The nays were Blazar (W6), Ciccone (W1), Cote (W3), Gentile (W4), Harney (W4) and Norton (W2).
At least one ward 2 Councilor supports Washington Place, maybe two.
Emily Norton is opposed to both.
ANP, you nailed it. You should comment more often.
We will never build our way to more affordable housing by adding housing units. Even the city’s Housing Strategy consultant’s report admits that.
I doubt that many of the people who cite “supply and demand” to suggest that we could, would believe that adding a lane to a highway would result in anything but a temporary improvement in the flow of traffic. Neither traffic nor housing is a closed system — both are subject to “induced demand.” Just as drivers will return to a newly-expanded highway, from the alternate routes they’d been using, home buyers and renters will flow back to Newton from alternative cities and towns. We’re not an island in our region, and our region is not an island in the U.S.
How much people are willing to pay to live in Newton is based on factors like our proximity to Boston and transportation, our school system’s reputation (I don’t believe it’s actually that much better than many other systems in the area, if you adjust for parents occupations, income, SAT coaching, etc), the job market, regional attractions like access to ocean beaches, skiing a drive away, colleges, our great pro sports teams, and so forth. Build more housing in Newton or the region, and prices will eventually find the same equilibrium level. Unless you make traffic so bad, and schools so overcrowded, or taxes so high to keep the schools from being overcrowded, that we become a less desirable place to live.
Quite certain that both Albright and Auchincloss in Ward 2 support Washington Place. @Paul Green, I go down Goddard almost every day and am familiar with the large single-family home under construction that was originally supposed to be a 40B multi-unit. I need to check the property you are referring to. Will train my eyes on it in the morning.
Andy, you are training your eyes on the odd side of Goddard closer to Christina, where the monster house is almost finished. Look at the even side of Goddard, closer to Rachel Road. That is where there is a gaping hole with some concrete poured. It’s an eyesore, and has been there for a few years now.
@J0-Louise-
That is exactly the location i am talking about. The NVA can tell you what their issue is with
that development. The same pair that is responsible for that hole in the ground WERE supporters of Avalon Bay on Needham St, so i’m at a loss here.
@Marti
Thank you for that info. Politics does sometimes make strange bedfellows, so i’m not surprised that Republican Cote and the All-Democrat NVA leadership are united against Austin St. Any port in a storm right?
We all know the political climate has changed since the last presidential election. There is an
aggressive movement – our attorney general is big on it- towards forcing people to speak out on their positions whether they want to or not. In other words, if you choose to hold your powder, or, your opinion, your silence is seen as complicity, i.e. if you don’t speak out in favor for affordable housing, you are against it, etc.. The gloves seem to be off in the new political world,
and local politics are one and the same with national politics, so i say during the next election cycle in Newton we start flushing out, or forcing any candidates for local office to state their positions on the record and take a very deep dive into what they say they support and what they have supported. Would have a lovely cleansing effect. Why bother with the niceties when there don’t appear to be any left?
It really irks me when people blame the residents for supply and demand.
Having worked in real estate renting and selling I’ve had many experiences whereby a very modest 3 br apartment that a boomer couple raised three kids in is “too small” for a gen x, y or millennial couple to rent–with one or NO children! People want MORE than ever and yet they want AFFORDABLE and those two wants are very much opposed and that has nothing to do with the current residences.
When households moved from single-earner, single-car (as my grandparents were through to the early 70’s – all the kids walked, and grandmama went to the market in the village center every day by bike to get “supper”) to two-income, two-car traffic doubled.
As a certified millennial (born in 1981, I can’t quite claim gen X) until last summer we had 5 people, of three generations, in our 3-bed 1-bath cape. (Now we’re at your typical parents & kids situation) … so I’ve had a boomer in our not-so-spare bedroom. It was a long 6 years.
If Boston builds enough housing (and by housing I mean giant-ass soulless towers ala Osaka, Japan: enough is the quantity needed to lower rent to what they pay in Osaka – $700/mo for a tiny, dingy and/or 15 min+ from transit, 1 bed apt or $1,000/mo for something small, new & convenient) I’d expect a shift from the exurbs where people priced out of the city move back. In this case there would be less pass-through traffic, and bucolic Newton might be worth the price premium (which would be something like 4x to maintain current property values) or prices here might fall as overall supply in the area is eased.
In a counter example, if the supply is not met, then prices continue to rise. My friends who wish to buy will continue to do what they’ve been doing – pooling resources (marriage is popular, but I’ve also seen a few LLC’s for platonic ventures) and doubling, tripling, and quadrupling up as the move further out of the city to even find a place.
And in the last case, massive amount of supply are added outside of 128, and Newton is choked out by the pass-through traffic. The pike fills, rt 9 & 30 are jammed with people trying to cut-through, and life generally sucks.
…it would be awesome if Boston threw zoning to the wind and allowed housing to be built until the price of a new unit was lowered to the cost to build + smallest-acceptable-profit.
It’s amazing. I read people talking nostalgically about walking to the corner store and living without a car, then I hear complaints about driving across town. I hear protests on projects that increase density and then complaints that housing costs are too high.
No, we can’t just build our way out of this problem. We can’t simply stick taller resident-only towers on small plots of land and expect this to work. But if we build smarter, if we look at our city as the ecosystem it is (and the larger economic ecosystem in which it resides) rather than as a patchwork of individual needs and wants, then we can start solving some problems.
Yes, we need more housing. That’s a constant. We need more that is affordable and we need more varied stock for an aging population. Look at any amount of research you want, but that’s a constant.
Yes our current road system doesn’t allow you to easily traverse the city north/south. Our arteries tend to run east/west. We need transit alternatives and I know that the city is working on this.
But if we build smarter housing and focus on transit hubs, we can eliminate some of those trips. If we increase density in certain areas then the businesses that rely on foot traffic will come. If we have affordable places to live the workers can afford to live and work here. It won’t happen overnight (and we have other issues to deal with too), but it can be a smart evolution toward a much better city.
Protesting every mixed use housing development isn’t going to get us there. It will only stand in the way.
I moved to Newton some 30 years ago because it was a really nice place to live and had excellent schools. I paid a lot more for my house than I would have paid for a similar house in, say, Arlington. I made the right choice, as it has been good for me and my family living here. Like a lot of people, I like Newton the way it is (that is not to say that there is no room for improvement, but as a basic matter, I like it here). I plan to live here for a long time. I’m generally not in favor of proposals that I think will change the character of the town, and particularly my part of it. That is because, not to repeat myself too many times, I like it the way it is. Does that make me a bad person?
Oh Wise One, change is a constant in life – things change no matter how much you want them to stay the same. Newton is continually changing so I would rather try to guide that change than just let it evolve on its own.
If you build them, they will come. Enjoy the many dynamic, vibrant changes that are afoot here in Newton. There should be no carve outs, or set asides with respect to preserving one’s village character, at the expense of any another.
Newton is a CITY with over 90,000 residents. Wayland, Weston, Needham, and Wellesley are all smaller towns with fewer residents and less pressure for large scale development, so it is likely some affected residents many need to readdress their housing needs. Those towns may be great places to start looking.