The New York Times has a published a story about a battle over housing in Lafayette,California, a suburban community outside of San Francisco, which is described as “a small town next to a big town [which] maintained its status by keeping the big town out.”
The conversations and worries in Lafayette sound similar to many we’ve had in Newton. I recommend reading the whole thing before commenting, but here’s some excerpts that summarize the larger problem:
There is, simply put, a dire shortage of housing in places where people and companies want to live — and reactionary local politics that fight every effort to add more homes.
Nearly all of the biggest challenges in America are, at some level, a housing problem. Rising home costs are a major driver of segregation, inequality, and racial and generational wealth gaps. You can’t talk about education or the shrinking middle class without talking about how much it costs to live near good schools and high-paying jobs. Transportation accounts for about a third of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions, so there’s no serious plan for climate change that doesn’t begin with a conversation about how to alter the urban landscape so that people can live closer to work.
and…
America has a housing crisis. The homeownership rate for young adults is at a multidecade low, and about a quarter of renters send more than half their income to the landlord. Homelessness is resurgent, eviction displaces a million households a year, and about four million people spend at least three hours driving to and from work.
I don’t like dense development (my pet peeve -‘monster houses’) near my home of 30+ years off of Needham Street anymore than anyone else. This was not what I imagined when I made my first mortgage payment. But unfortunately, Newton is now out of step with national housing trends as the NYT article points out. Like suburban Lafayette, CA, our community needs more available market rate and affordable apartment housing badly for people important to our future: new immigrants, service industry employees, first responders, city workers, teachers, home health aides, our kids and retirees. Unfortunately, new construction (even the very best designed) requires compromises, such as accepting traffic congestion and taller buildings as a norm etc.
Greg,
I think its fair to ask you what you would like to see as the following prices in 15 years:
Newton: 2br condo average sale price (1000 sqft)
Brookline: 2 br condo average sale price (1000 sqft)
And how many units you estimate need to be built to get to these prices? Lets assume no recession
Currently, I believe prices in Newton are about 20% cheaper on average than brookline.
Its a fair question to quantify your expectations
… much like greater Boston
In case people don’t read the whole piece, Lafayette City Manager Steve Falk had a total change of heart. Here’s how the story ends:
“People have to realize that homelessness is connected to housing prices. They have to accept it’s hypocritical to say that you don’t like density but are worried about climate change. They have to internalize the lesson that if they want their children to have a stable financial future, they have to make space. They are going to have to change.
“Steve Falk changed. When he first heard about Dennis O’Brien’s project, he thought it was stupid: a case study, in ugly stucco, of runaway development. He believed the Bay Area needed more housing, but he was also a dyed-in-the-wool localist who thought cities should decide where and how it was built. Then that belief started to unravel. Today, after eight years of struggle, his career with the city is over, the Deer Hill Road site is still just a mass of dirt and shrubs, and Mr. Falk has become an outspoken proponent of taking local control away from cities like the one he used to lead. […]
“‘All cities — even small ones — have a responsibility to address the most significant challenges of our time: climate change, income inequality, and housing affordability,’ Mr. Falk had written [upon resigning as city manager]. ‘I believe that adding multifamily housing at the BART station is the best way for Lafayette to do its part, and it has therefore become increasingly difficult for me to support, advocate for, or implement policies that would thwart transit density. My conscience won’t allow it.'”
My post was deleted because I asked a respondent how much do they expect their own house to depreciate by to meet affordable housing goals.
Is it not fair to ask about the potential affects of the policies you propose?
Some people may be able to afford a large deprecation on their homes, while most others cannot
And yet:
A Luxury Apartment Rises in a Poor Neighborhood. What Happens Next?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/upshot/luxury-apartments-poor-neighborhoods.html?referringSource=articleShare
does build, build, build solve the problem? The evidence is mixed at best.
Bugek, show me an example of a large depreciation in the Boston metro market short of a market crash and we can talk specifics.
There are downsides of increased development (in addition to upsides), but depreciation is probably the biggest unfounded fear. At worst, a region stabilizes their housing market and values don’t continue to increase at the same rate. We are far from that fear.
Do you really think property values will go down near Northland, as an unused industrial site gets transformed into anything? Or the Shoe Barn site in West Newton? Or near Riverside?
Mike,
The article is asking for more density to create affordable home for everyone (not just lucky lottery folks for the limited affordable units)
Are you suggesting that with enough density, a young couple could buy a NEW 2br condo for say 400k and yet your own home will still be priced at current levels?
If we talking 2br micro (tokyo sized)apartments then maybe single family homes could avoid substantial drops… especially those in Waban because we know they will never build such units there
Mike,
If you dont wish to provide any kind of pricing expected for condos and single family homes…even though this entire discussion is about “affordability ”
.. then this whole density proposal is just giant hand waving
Bugek, please stop suggesting people are saying things they clearly aren’t, and moving the goal posts besides.
I think realistically, in Newton, we can hope for some level of housing price stabilization and the return to people being able to do sane things like get inspections on properties they are interested in buying. We can get some of that by providing enough units to meet pent-up demand and take the pressure off some of the existing housing stock. In addition, we should be looking at whatever possibility exists for non-profit housing construction. These are modest efforts to take for a city that has done little to provide additional housing for decades.
Your “new 2BR market-rate condo for $400K in Newton” strawman? Fantasy. Ain’t going to happen unless subsidized or built by non-profit. Nowhere in Boston metro. (Realtors feel free to chime in.)
However, It would be great to see them as affordable units at that rate in Newton, by whatever means. But to your question, in places like JP they exist right next to gut renovations and new units at current market rates. When we left the less-gentrified part of JP five years ago, a new construction three-decker condo was just built on our street, at $1M a unit, overlooking a JPNDC 100% affordable elderly housing complex on the Southwest Corridor park.
Any attempt to raise the spector of “what if my property value plummets with all these high quality low cost homes getting built all around me” is completely unsupported by any examples anywhere in the local market. Please cite one such example, if you could, to help further this conversation.
Mike,
It appears your definition of affordable units applies to those “lucky enough” to win some kind of limited lottery. Thats fine
For example, if we build 3000 units then 600 would be for the lucky few. The other 2400 units will be high priced luxury units
Only a lucky few benefit while the new residents pay more to subsidize the affordable units and the rest of us get to live with any “potential” negative consequences..
So in summary, you want to build thousands of units just so that 20% of them are affordable to those who win some kind of lottery
Bugek, your summary in no way accurately characterizes what I wrote or what I believe.
This medium, limited as it is, can help bring common understanding, but only if we all try in good faith to work towards it as writers and as readers.
Thomas Freidman wrote: “Unfortunately, new construction (even the very best designed) requires compromises, such as accepting traffic congestion and taller buildings as a norm”.
When density is planned and designed well it will be the only way we can actually reduce traffic congestion by giving people real options to driving and help reduce car trips. It will also improve our health by designing safer and more walkable & bikable neighborhoods and streets.
We have traffic congestion because we have designed for it for the last 80 years. Our zoning designed for it by putting people in one place and jobs in another place. Our environment is paying a very high price for this with the absurdity and inefficiency of moving 1 person around in a 6000 pound vehicle with a 3% efficent gasoline engine and with the terrible environmental costs of paving over green spaces to build roads, never mind the social costs of buldozing our neighborhoods as we prostrate ourselves to the sacrosanct automobile.
So yes, “nearly all of the biggest challenges in America are, at some level, a housing problem”. I would say a warming planet is the biggest challange we face and creating new, highly energy efficent, passive house design & multifamily housing that includes robust TDM plans is the most critical component to having any hope of mitigating the worst impacts of climate change and building a better and more fair society at the same time.
@Councillor Leary: Thanks for bringing this thread back on topic.
@Mike: Nice try, but Bugek is pretty devoted to taking threads off topic and mischaracterizing positions.
@Bugek: The issue here is our massive housing supply shortage and the systemic societal problems that accompany it. We can’t possibly build enough housing any time soon to negatively impact current housing values in the ways you’re suggesting. But if we did that would be a great thing because, well, read the article and Councilor Leary’s comment.
Councilor Leary is spot on!
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/11/capitalism-affordable-housing-rent-commodities-profit?fbclid=IwAR1r8lOyp4owli2R5wnXkiIkqHoDVmOUHv6BB_IFtotaNthokgmdk4XjuhY
And then there is this take on what is the biggest challenge for affordable housing possibilities.
@Alison Leary”Our zoning designed for it by putting people in one place and jobs in another place.”
Well this is true to an extent. Especially when places to work had toxic fumes and such e.g. people didn’t want to live next to a factory.
But your vision is far from reality.
The majority of people change jobs often these days. The idea that they’re going to have a “Babar like” fantasy where the everything is conveniently located to everything else is not going to happen.
Over 30 + years as a software engineer (and I would be the “model”, potential work-at-home kind of job, but that doesn’t happen either) I have worked in
Charlestown
Boston
Marlborough
Newton
Southboro
Burlington
Lynnfield
I now have a small office in Newton but I commute to the 495 area 4 days a week to various clients. I’m flying to Akron this week (more carbon than driving) for a meeting with another client at the end of this week.
Once a family buys a house or a condo, has kids, and puts down roots in the school system, when the job changes they’re going to have to commute. Until you have real point to point public transportation, or everyone working at home, people are going to need to drive something.
Or maybe robots doing everything and all of us having a guaranteed income.
Just by way of context, Lafayette has a population density of approximately 1,745 people per square mile. That is somewhere between Newburyport (approximately 1,600) and Holyoke (approximately 1,895).
Newton? approximately 4,885 people per square mile.
What should Newton learn from Lafayette that closer peers cannot teach?
But, if you know the mayor of Holyoke, you might give him/her a call and tell them they should be more like East Bay Californians …
Just wondering what Greg is going to post about after March 3rd?
@Matt: The housing crisis will still be a crisis on March 4. Same for the climate crisis.