Here’s a devastating tweet:
For new readers, here's the permits issued per resident for several inner communities. Cambridge, Newton, Brookline and Quincy need to step up pic.twitter.com/IYCaZS9eNB
— Ted (@Ted4P) March 5, 2018
Climate change demands that we build more housing in Newton. Social justice demands that we build more housing in Newton. The market demands that we build more housing in Newton.
And there we are, simply not building our fair share of regional housing.
Neighborhood character, don’t ya know.
Sean, thank you for making the important link between climate change and multi-family housing. The Natural Resources Defense Council supports this notion and provided this guide to help citizens judge whether a housing project supports the creation of walkable cities or not and therefore helps our climate. These projects are good for our city, good for our climate, good for our economy, and most importantly good for people. https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/citizens_guide_LEED-ND.pdf
Do we mean more “government mandated affordable housing” or just more “market based housing” needs to be built?
If its just market based, they will just be bid up to current values. It would just be more rich people housing. Could newton build so much market housing that a brand new 2BR condo will come down to 400k? sure, but at the point the schools and roads would be so over-crowded (with supply).
It will only be affordable if government income restricted units are built.. Lets build them in Waban and chestnut hill 🙂
I am all for multi-family housing and increased density, however, as a family who falls on the lower income side (by Newton standards) I find many things about Newton inhospitable to people with less money. Many residents are left without a place to park a car overnight for several months out of the year, but with our iffy public transit in Newton people still need to rely on automobiles. For parents, there are Tuesday half days and sporadic other half days, making childcare a challenge for working parents. The City policies just aren’t welcoming to people with less money and if we want to have mid-priced condominiums for families, there are things that need to change to make Newton a desirable city for people of various incomes.
Bugek,
The city has proven itself quite willing and able to make sure that a portion of new multi-family housing be other than market-priced. The problem is the reluctance to build any significant multi-family housing. A portion of not much is even less.
That said, from a regional perspective, simply adding housing stock will improve housing availability across the region. Adding more market-rate units in Newton may not lead directly to Newton’s stock of affordable housing, but it will help reduce prices regionally, making more units affordable in neighboring towns that are now just out of reach. It’s not a perfect answer, but it’s a heck of a lot better than how things are now.
Newton is a fully built out city. The most dense housing with the most affordable rents exist in Auburndale, Newtonville and
Nonantum. The most recent dense housing facilities approved by the city council are within this area. The question is where else in Newton can we build? Needham St. will provide more housing
soon. That leaves Center St. and Beacon Sts as possible areas to build. Should we rezone Centre St. between Newton Corner and Newton Centre as an MU4? Perhaps Beacon St. could also be rezoned up to MU4. So much of Newton is historic. Should we simply tear it down for modern multi use housing.
Riverside will ultimately provide more housing. I say leave alone our historic villages. Build on Newton’s outer limits where most multi family, dense housing already exists.
Perhaps Susan Albright might support a 4 story housing unit on the open space park which abutts the War Memorial.
Colleen,
1. Newton is fully built out at a very low density.
2. Not all sites for new housing are historic.
3. Our village centers, those that are next to transit hubs, are exactly where we need to build.
4. Where else? How about zoning all of Newton Centre for 4-5 story buildings with retail at floor level and residential above?
I’m pretty sure that replacing the Walgreen’s building in Newton Centre with a 5-story apartment building (with a new Walgreen’s on the ground floor) would not violate anything historical.
Sean,
Lets put a number of on it. How many units of housing (assume 1 unit is 2BR or 3BR) do you think Newton should build in the next 10 years?
Lets also be very specific with those numbers, how many children should be added to the school system?
I’m not arguing for/against, just wanted to get an idea of the proposed scale..
I think we need some epic-level housing increase. Like double the housing. In case the floods this week didn’t convince you, this climate change thing is happening … and faster than we can keep up with it.
Keeping in mind that, with the doubling goal, I am at the extreme end of things (though, with more and more moving closer), I think an aggressive target of 5000-7500 units in the next ten years makes sense. We currently have about 31K units.
Obviously, you can’t just drop those in. You need to beef up transit (including regional rail and a Needham Street extension). We’d have to build schools. We’d have to seriously rezone. We’d probably have to figure out how to get one or two of the golf courses along the Green Line to be developed. But, we could do it if it were part of a state/regional campaign that had coordinated funding and infrastructure development.
To compare, Boston is aiming to add 53K units by 2030 against a current population of about 700K.
As for the mix of units, I’m not technically knowledgeable enough to propose the mix or forecast kids. But, yes, lots and lots and lots of kids.
Funny Coleen. I wonder why you picked that piece of open space? Hmmmm – Oh! I believe it is because it is across the street from where I live. But – no that probably isn’t the reason. You probaly really think we should put housing there.
I’m not in favor of building on our parks and conservation land and no one else is either.
The Governor has proposed the Housing Choice Initiative and a number of other senators and reps including Senator Chandler have a 2nd housing bill S81 . I think some combination of these bills will pass. The Governor has proposed that we need 135,000 units of housing in our Commonwealth. The cities and towns have to figure out where their share of the housing will be.
One thing we can’t afford to do is stick our heads in the sand and pretend there is no problem. Both bills before the legislature talk about the need for multi-family housing. No city or town in the Commonwealth can wash its hands of this problem. We literally rise or fall together. Without more housing, our economy can not prosper.
On January 25th UCHAN (uniting citizens for housing affordability in Newton) had a great overview of the housing need. Here is a link to the NewTV story on the 25th presentation. I’ll try to get the slides posted and let you know where they are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9VnjR2BjQY&feature=youtu.be
This Thursday @ 7pm there will be a 2nd in the forum in the series on financing housing. Location: Eliot Church 474 Centre St.
Learn what it takes to put one of these housing proposals together and what questions you need to ask.
Every housing proposal in Newton has felt like a battleground. But the real battleground is the struggle to get enough housing built before the Massachusetts economy goes south in a hurry.
@Sean what sort of impact do you speculate your plan would have on our low and moderate income residents?
Sean, about that rezoning… For this plan to move forward, areas that are currently zoned multi family for 2-4 units near village centers would be targeted for rezoning for more density. What about similar areas that are zoned single family? Will those also be targeted for zoning changes and more density? Is there any chance that would ever happen?
We “need” more density in Newton due to climate change??? I don’t think so. Our schools are over crowded. Not just the classrooms, but the lunch line at Brown Middle School is so long that kids chose NOT to buy lunch. School buses are overcrowded. Until we build more schools with capacity, we do not need more density.
I agree that our public schools are NOT friendly to families that NEED two incomes. The 12:30 PM early release is difficult and many schools don’t have enough slots for the families that want the care. The Wednesday/Thursday early release day wrecks havoc with working families.
And the green line is more and more unreliable to get to your job in Boston.
Follow this link to view a Quicktime movie of the Jan 25th slides of the First in UChan’s educational series on Housing – “The Housing Overview”, presented by Clark Ziegler from the Mass Housing Partnership.
Use the controls to pause the slides wherever you wish.
https://www.facebook.com/U-Chan-1922163031377319/
Hope to see you on Thursday night at the Eliot Church for the 2nd in the series.
Emily,
Availability of housing for low- and moderate-income households is a function of either supply/demand or regulation.
I’m a big fan of regulatory intervention to create non-market-rate housing for low- and moderate-income households. If we build 5000-7500 units, I would be in favor of whatever we can do to make as many of those units regulated for low- and moderate-income families as possible. It’s a ten-year goal. Between now and 2028, there are all sorts of opportunities to create more regulations or to appropriate money to make it easier for municipalities and developers to create non-market-rate housing.
The other way to create more housing stock for low- and moderate-income households is simply to build more housing stock. Housing prices are stratospheric (actually land prices are stratospheric, which makes housing expensive) because there are many more people who want to live in Greater Boston — and Newton, in particular — than there is housing. If the region, including Newton, adds more housing, prices will come down.
Will adding more housing across the region alone make housing in Newton available to low- and moderate-income households? Or, at least as many low- and moderate-income households as we’d like to meet economic and other diversity goals? It’s complicated, but maybe not, if we assume that housing in Newton will always demand a premium. But, adding significant market-rate housing stock in Newton will have a salutary impact across the region, making it more likely for low- and moderate-income households to live closer to the Boston inner core.
@NewtonMom “Our schools are over crowded. Not just the classrooms, but the lunch line at Brown Middle School is so long that kids chose NOT to buy lunch. School buses are overcrowded. Until we build more schools with capacity, we do not need more density.”
I’m confused. I thought I read during the recent elections that the school age population has been going down and that trends is expected to continue. We have built new (not additional) but presumably better planned schools so are the schools really overcrowded? How is that measured?
Tricia, we’ll need a lot of rezoning. More importantly, we’ll need a lot of rethinking.
My daughter goes to school in Cambridge. Her middle school is on the same short street as multi-million dollar homes and a four-story apartment block and is around the corner for lots of multi-family homes. I’d welcome that kind of mix to my neighborhood, a few blocks from Newton Centre.
We also have to make the transit we have more accessible to those with physical disabilities. If I lived in Newtonville, I would not be able to take the commuter rail because I couldn’t get up and down the stairs to the tracks. Same problem for parents with strollers.
Let me summarize
Ice cap is melting, penguins are dying, so we need to turn our beautiful Garden City into another Worcester or Lowell.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
“Liberalism is a mental disorder.” You clearly can’t form a response that’s remotely intelligent so your first instinct is to name call. Lovely.
@Mary Mary I am in agreement. The overnight winter parking ban disproportionately harms those without easy offstreet parking options. And the school schedule, particularly the lack of Full Day Kindergarten, disproportionately harms working families.
If i wanted to live in Boston/Cambridge/Brookline, I would have moved to Boston/Cambridge/Brookline. We can’t even plant trees or fix potholes. Driving north/south at many hours of the day is already a homicide inducing exercise. You guys think you can manage a massive, citywide growth spurt over the greed of the developers to create some kind of high density urban utopia? Color me skeptical Batman….
Sean, you may welcome that kind of density in your neighborhood, but something tells me that the vast majority of people who live in large single-family houses on large lots in single-residence zoned areas of Newton would fight tooth and nail against being rezoned as multi-family. It’s neighborhoods that are already zoned multifamily that are most impacted by the epic level housing increases you envision.
Denis,
The more people you house on our city streets, the less per person it costs to fix potholes and plant trees.
Just sayin’.
Tricia,
Yes, most people in houses zoned single-family would fight tooth and nail to be upzoned. Now, though, it’s not merely a question of neighborhood preference. It’s a moral issue. They are wrong.
November may seen a long time ago, but the city handily defeated the charter proposal. People saw it as a proposal to fuel high density. I sincerely hope our politicians are not as tone deaf as Sean Roche.
@NewtonMom is on the money talking about school crowding. I just heard the South principal said – the entering class is the largest ever. Go figure!
I keep hearing that the Charter vote was a victory for local representation, or it was a victory against density, but I’m still not sure how people get to those sweeping conclusions.
What I saw was a vote in which people were asked to make a decision on a complex issue in which they had little understanding. From a messaging perspective, the Yes side had a higher hill to climb, in that they had to give people several reasons to vote Yes, but the No side only needed to provide a single reason to vote No. that message focused on ward councilors.
Yet, even today when I ask people who their ward councilor is, or if they understand the difference, most simply don’t. I’m not even convinced that some know in which ward they live.
I see the victory as one of a great marketing campaign that convinced voters they were about to lose something, so those voters chose to hold onto it without fully understanding what they gave up in order to do so. And yes, I know there was a vocal group who reached out to their ward councilors, but I’m not sure that represented a majority so much as a very vocal minority.
Sean,
The accessory unit ordinancr that passed last year has effectively doubled the possible number of units in Newton.
Newton residents who are pro density can go ahead and build an inlaw unit to help the environment, developers who build new houses can build this extra unit.
Residents now have the choice and can act on it.
Double the housing stock in Newton ?
This is unbridled nonsense .
The unintended consequences of this sort of BS are unimaginable.
Get a grip!
One argument I’ve heard for the winter parking ban is that it keeps people from storing cars on the street, keeping down the number of cars in Newton. Another is, it prevents space saver fights…. (Outside of the obvious, keeping the roads clear to plow).
Those are BS arguments. In parts of Newton, people have very long driveways where they can fit numerous cars. The ban disproportionately affects residents with less money – people who live in small lots or multi-family buildings. It’s “keeping down the number of cars in Newton” by making it difficult for people with less money to own a car. If the City gave a damn about having less cars, we’d have better sidewalks, bike lanes, and reliable public transit. It’s essentially a poor tax. I’ve had to move my car when it’s 50 degrees with no snow on the ground or in the forecast just because I can’t afford a home with more land.
Subdividing and rezoning large lots with mega million dollar houses on them as well as building any new higher density housing on Newton’s outskirts are a popular call among some Newtonites. These measures would put the new residents far away from any kind of transit or places to go. They would isolate and require more cars.
Building density in village centers promotes other means of travel without completely excluding the use of cars.
Creating better and more housing opportunities is a complex problem with many and varied stakeholders and requires a convergence of many variables. Lots of valid points are in this thread. Most need to be considered.
The arbitrary parking ban, the schools’ half days, no full day kindergarten, not enough open places in after school programs are disproportionally affecting the lives of Newton’s middle and lower income workers – along with the pricey fees to participate in public school. These concerns are variables that must be addressed.
That’s such a good point about after school programs. Some of the after school programs have a waiting list of over 2 years. Offsite ones like Boys and Girls Club have space in the programs themselves, but their buses fill up.
So, if we develop all this housing like Sean suggests, not only do we need more schools but we also need a substantial increase in after school programs. If they can’t keep up with the demand now, there would be a pretty serious problem down the road.
@mary actually part of that problem is already here AND it’s somewhat solvable. There are transportation programs running in the city, like Sheprd, that are trying to ferry kids to after-school programs.
But our issue there goes beyond desire and into the role that city government plays in our zoning process. I know of a company that tried moving to Newton, one that is for-profit educational retail organization. After searching for a retail location that fit their needs they finally found one; price was not their major issue but it was really about finding the right mix of size, location, and accessibility.
However, when they went to move on it they found that their use didn’t fit the zoning by right, which meant that to move into the area they would need to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees and delay at least 4 to 6 months to move through the special permit process. They felt they had a high likelihood of success, but the time, uncertainty, and expense (on top of the time already invested in finding a space) was just too much. They finally left for another community.
We need to fix our zoning and we need to fix our special permit process. Getting a 2/3 majority in the city council for simple things like a special permit for a retail use is a high bar. The charter offered one possible solution, but the voters rejected it. We still need to solve it.
@Chuck,
Perhaps you could expand on the zoning issue.
What was the proposed use
Where and what the location was zoned for.
The proposed use in this case was for-profit education. Think about a group like Kumon or Mathnasium. Several different companies are emerging that fit this kind of use, which doesn’t fit neatly into traditional categories. It has a lot of pickups and dropoffs so doesn’t have the same parking burden for the floor area, but still requires an active driveway area.
The spot was in an area that already has existing retail (I don’t want to specify) and was zoned MU-1.
What Marti said bears repeating, today and every day and every day after that:
“The arbitrary parking ban, the schools’ half days, no full day kindergarten, not enough open places in after school programs are disproportionally affecting the lives of Newton’s middle and lower income workers – along with the pricey fees to participate in public school. These concerns are variables that must be addressed.”
These are fixable problems that unlike many of our problems, won’t cost a lot of money (or in some cases any money) to solve. I think they’re not getting addressed because the people most harmed by them have the least capacity to be reaching out to their elected officials to demand fixes.
What Marti said:
“The arbitrary parking ban, the schools’ half days, no full day kindergarten, not enough open places in after school programs are disproportionally affecting the lives of Newton’s middle and lower income workers – along with the pricey fees to participate in public school. These concerns are variables that must be addressed.”
These are solvable issues at little or no cost. But the residents who would most benefit are those who have less capacity to be reaching out to their local elected officials. Which is all the more reason we should act on them.
Marti has it exactly right: “The arbitrary parking ban, the schools’ half days, no full day kindergarten, not enough open places in after school programs are disproportionally affecting the lives of Newton’s middle and lower income workers – along with the pricey fees to participate in public school. These concerns are variables that must be addressed.”
These are solvable issues, at little or no cost. But those who would benefit the most are those with the least capacity to be able to take time out of their lives to learn how to advocate to their local elected officials. Which is all the more reason we should act on them.
@Emily Norton – I heard you the first time 😉
@Chuck – Sheprd is having issues with accommodating passengers during peak hours, but hopefully that will change if they can keep up with the demand.
@Emily – Well said!
So many topics here, but I’m probably not going to convince any of the sky’s-the-limit density advocates that more units are not going to bring market prices down as long as Newton is 12 miles from Boston with a reputation for good schools. So let me comment on the under-discussed economics of the winter parking ban.
You might think that lifting the parking ban would be good for lower income people who can’t afford to buy or rent a home with ‘enough’ off-street parking. But remove the winter parking ban in favor of a ‘snow emergency only’ policy, and those houses and apartments suddenly become a lot more desirable to more households which will drive up the market-clearing prices and rents. (Anyone remember what the price of a non-included, separately priced parking spot at Austin Street or Court Street is going to be?)
And those houses and apartments would be attractive to people who own more cars, and the current occupants would be able to own more cars per family, so we would end up with more cars on the street, and when people own cars, they tend to use them.
I’ve been meaning to ask this question — what year did the winter parking ban begin? Because anyone who bought their house since then, or inherited and didn’t sell it to buy one with more parking, knew what they were getting, and benefited from a lower price. The people who had a real loss were the ones who owned houses with no parking back when the ban was first instituted, and I’d give those people (not the property) a winter parking ban waiver for the rest of their lives as a way to compensate.
If they’re able to waive the parking ban for some people, that would prove that the ban is unnecessary. They either need the roads free of cars overnight or they don’t.
I can hardly believe what Julia posted. Now she says we’re supposed to keep an arbitrary and hardship producing law because somewhere in an imagined future, the property will become more valuable if we lift it. Fear brings out the doom and gloom in otherwise thoughtful people. I don’t fear the unknown as she does. If for some reason these properties gain value I’ll be happy for the owners. Does she only want other communities to gain in value?
I’m also surprised because one of Julia’s missions has been advocating for what she sees as saving these very homes and advocating for keeping these neighborhoods as they are. There is no reason to assume that addressing these residents’ unfair treatment will lead to anything but a less divided Newton.
Exactly how does Julia know why residents who move from these homes with inadequate off street parking sold their homes. Once again she is speculating. We can’t return to the past, nor do I want to. Nostalgia and living in the past can be crippling to future needs. Adapting to change, which will happen on its on, is how we survive.
We need to lift the arbitrary parking ban to relive pressure on these families now and in the future, along with correcting the other hardships I mentioned. If we don’t treat these residents well now, why would any others like them want to live in Newton.
Newton’s demographics will change – do we want it to go the way of gated communities or do we want to keep the diverse income mix Newton has now? The character of Newton is its people with diverse economics. Lose the lower ends and that character goes out the window.
Julia’s argument on why lifting the winter parking ban will raise housing costs and bring more cars into Newton seems well thought out and reasoned to me.
Emily Norton’s suggestion of a local shuttle, I think, would be more helpful to keep Newton diverse.
Marti, we are proposing building more dense housing in our village centers, and we’re saying those housing developments should provide LESS offstreet parking to reduce car ownership/use. If we simultaneously make onstreet overnight parking legal, then what good is limiting the parking in these new developments? Residents will just park on the street. A 2-bedroom with parking for one vehicle only (and no onstreet overnight parking) will reflect that limitation in the rent. That same apartment, with one offstreet space but the ability to park additional cars on the street, will be more desirable and command a higher rent.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t do something about the winter parking ban. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t develop more dense housing with limited parking in village centers. But we have to do all of this carefully and thoughtfully because the law of unintended consequences is a b*tch. The idea that this stuff is as simple as “build more!” and “eliminate the ban!” and “we’ll figure it all out later” is a recipe for disaster.
Everyone arguing to eliminate the winter parking ban should take a look out the window
I don’t think there’s anyone that opposes a parking ban when there’s actually snow.
Julia and Tricia make excellent points. Without any limitation on overnight parking, limits on parking in new apartment buildings wouldn’t matter (assuming we were to implement them) because new residents could just park on the streets all year, except during snow emergencies. That’s why so many cities have residents only parking and/or time limits for on street parking. We have to think through any changes carefully.
My apologies for the repeat posts yesterday by the way – they weren’t showing after I posted them, actually not till today, due to some technical difficulties on the part of V14. Thank you to the blog administrators for fixing them! (Though my posts were so well thought out frankly who can read them enough?)
I’ve been wondering if Newton would implement resident parking permits in denser neighborhoods at some point. I feel like some of the village squares have been getting more active over the years, particularly West Newton Square.
We do have resident permit parking in my dense but small neighborhood (Charlesbank Rd/Nonnatum Pl area), and it works quite well in my view, with the egregious exception of the nonsensical winter parking ban.
@MMQC – The challenge is where would all these cars go when there’s a legitimate need for a parking ban? The municipal lots go off limits under the current snow emergency rules, so the city could change that to allow for parking but we don’t have high capacity parking garages like Boston. I’m not sure the current snow emergency restrictions would work without the winter parking ban, we’d probably have to shift more towards a system like Boston’s where they only ban parking on main roads and arteries during an emergency.
People seem to think the roads will be suddenly choked with cars if the winter ban is lifted. No. The cars that do need the parking and already park there during the non-winter months would be there (except during snow emergencies,, where I might add they all seem to find temporary arrangements when needed, at least in my neighborhood.
Allowing parking where it is needed or logical makes sense- enforcement during true emergencies would and should be the only thing for the city to worry about for such parking.
Don’t worry, I’m not coming to park on your lawn.
As it stands, I assume different people will make different arrangements during a snow emergency. I have an arrangement that’s not super convenient, but in an average winter we don’t have all that many snow emergencies, so it’s not a big deal.
As far as Sean’s plan to substantially increase housing and how that might influence the amount of cars in Newton, I have two thoughts: 1) I don’t think his idea is realistically going to happen anytime soon and if it did it would probably be little by little so that the increase in cars wouldn’t be that noticeable and 2) We need better public transit that hits all corners of Newton, consistent sidewalks that are wide and smooth and shoveled when there’s snow, and accommodations for bicyclists. Then, maybe people could easily go car-free in Newton.
I agree that the better the transit plan around development where it belongs (dense village centers), the better the overall effect, and the less need for extra cars. Make it easier for people to use alternatives and they will. That sounds pat, but it’s no more pat (I think less so) than assuming opening housing stock will jam the streets with parked cars 24/7.
Yes, we deal with people parking on the street overnight for half the year and the world hasn’t ended! There are a lot of asinine arguments and “concerns” in favor of the parking ban that I’ve seen on this blog. One was from a wealthy resident in Waban who probably has never set foot in a denser neighborhood like Nonantum and he wanted ALL car off-street ALL the time because Newton is too beautiful to have parked cars on the street. Another was that the ban makes it easier for bicyclists – who is biking between 2 and 6 AM? And now Julia’s concern that it will drive up housing prices. Anything beyond the concern of snow removal just seems like nonsense to me.