If you haven’t had a chance, I urge you to watch the Ward 1 Candidate Forum hosted by Uniting Citizens for Housing Affordability in Newton (U-CHAN). The forum was, to use U-CHAN’s words, “primarily focused on affordable housing for the most vulnerable and housing insecure families.” Like the Ward 2 U-CHAN forum, the Ward 1 forum was quite revealing, but along different dimensions. Some takeaways after the embedded video.
Moment of the forum: asked what steps they had taken to advocate for Newest lowest income residents and housing, Maddy Ranalli connected her work combating gun violence to housing.
We understand that cycles of violence and poverty are very intertwined with the housing crisis and providing people the stability and the opportunity of having a place to call their own does a lot for mitigating cycles of violence and poverty that lead people to really to deeply terrible situations.
You are not going to get a more thoughtful answer about the the urgent need to provide housing for the most vulnerable in society. Nor, are you going to get an answer that so cogently connects many of the dimensions of the housing crisis.
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Not surprisingly, the format was nearly identical to the Ward 2 forum. U-CHAN member Emily Cagwin just changed the order of the questions. My admiration for the Ward 2 forum applies to this one.
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Again, Cagwin asked the candidates about a Boston University study that shows public participation in land-use and zoning public hearings skews whiter, older, and wealthier and, therefore, tends to be more anti-development. John Oliver gave an intriguing answer:
I believe that you’re also talking about the NIMBY phenomena, when we talk about people who you know, when you talk about Riverside, we had folks from Lower Falls who are more directly impacted by that development.
It wasn’t at all clear whether he thought Lower Falls having a larger voice in the discussion was a good or a bad thing. Would love for him to expand on this.
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Some Complete Streets discussion snuck into an affordable housing discussion. In his answer to how he would fill the late Jay Ciccone’s seat on the Public Safety & Transportation and Finance committees, Candidate Oliver said that we need to “prepare our roadways for a diversity of uses.” Well said.
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Candidate Ranalli repeatedly demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of affordable-housing issues and how they relate to broader themes. Each answer was a complete essay. Her answer on racial disparity weaved the City’s responsibility for the regional shortage, the need to increase housing stock, zoning, subsidy, the various levels of measuring housing need, with a conclusion in which she calls for housing policy that “allows people to make the choice that’s right for the them with the dignity and agency to do that so that we can attract a more diverse city population.” Her answer about her support for a housing trust fund touched on the need for a trust fund, how it should be funded, what it would be used for, and the additional steps beyond creating a trust fund that would be required to make a housing trust fund effective.
Candidate Ranalli is as impressive a candidate as we’ve seen in Newton.
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The forum, on the other hand, exposed Candidate Oliver’s thin understanding of the issues and inability to articulate a clear point-of-view. On a number of topics, his answers amounted to a bulleted list of the relevant questions, without any indication of how he would answer the questions. With regard to the Housing Trust, for instance, he said we need to have conversation about growth and development, how much, how will we pay for it, where should it go in the city, and how do we get funds into the trust (with a laundry list of options). Okay, but what should our goals be? How would you have us answer the questions? His answer to
It didn’t help that his vague answers were in such contrast to Candidate Ranalli’s deeper understanding of the issues and clearly articulated values. But his answers don’t compare well to the three candidates in the Ward 1 race, either.
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Candidate Oliver either doesn’t really want more affordable housing in Newton or he really doesn’t understand the issue. In his answer to a question about creating a trust fund, he said that zoning won’t have any direct impact on affordable housing. Developers who want to build affordable housing in Newton cite zoning as a barrier. And, it just makes sense that zoning would play a huge role. The biggest housing cost in Newton is the cost of the land. Zoning dictates how the land cost gets distributed across one or more units. The extent to which our zoning will allow greater density will determine how many affordable units will get built and how affordable they will be.
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As for the split between the progressive and conservative visions for housing in Newton that I described in the post on the Ward 2 U-CHAN forum, the difference was not quite as pronounced between Candidates Ranalli and Oliver. Candidate Ranalli, of the five candidates, most clearly and comprehensively articulated the values and the preferred policies of the progressive vision. Candidate Oliver touched on some of the conservative side’s talking points, like million-dollar condos and naturally affordable homes, but he’s not as well-versed and his heart doesn’t seem to be in it.
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Video guide (times are approximate):
Openings — 3:15
Racial Diversity — 5:30
Racial Disparity in Housing Outcomes — 9:00
Housing Choice Act — 12:40
Representation at Public Hearings — 16:25
Personal Steps to Promote Affordable Housing — 20:45
Housing Trust Fund — 24:15
Changes to Zoning — 28:50
Councilor Ciccone Committee Assignments — 32:00
Closings — 37:45
1. Looks like V14 had jumped the shark to become the local, progressive Brietbart.
2. Turning a single family $800k property into (2) $1.5m condos does not create any affordable housing, adds zero economic diversity, and benefits only the Developers.
Moderate democrats, don’t outthink your eyes. The last 3 democratic presidents and nominees are Biden, Clinton and Obama, not Bernie.
Matt,
Why is turning an $800K property into two $1.5 million condos the only option?
What do you think is going to happen to the $800K property if you don’t allow two-family development? It’s going to stay $800K?
The talking point is a little tattered around the edges.
@sean – because a for profit Developer is doing what is in their nature to do…profit. This is where I have a hard time agreeing with the proposed zoning changes.
Upper Falls (at least near our home) is already zoned for multi family. Every modest home had become very expensive condos. Every single one.
I appreciate your passion on the matter…I really do…but prove me otherwise. I’m all ears.
“Moderate democrats, don’t outthink your eyes. The last 3 democratic presidents and nominees are Biden, Clinton and Obama, not Bernie.”
Some of the biggest NIMBYs I know were ardent Bernie supporters, so I don’t think this is that cut and dry. I am a more traditional Democrat, NOT a fan of Bernie, and am a YIMBY.
Here is where local government should step in, and occasionally has. Newton’s leaders should insist that a higher portion of units in large developments be affordable; that zoning allowing two or or more units to replace one should require that developers allot half the units on-site as affordable; that the city pause the teardowns and study ways to prevent Newton’s remaining housing stock from becoming exclusively McMansions for the wealthy and privileged.
The percentage of affordable units at Austin Street increased because city leaders drove a harder bargain. I’d like the trend to continue at all the developments, small and large. Creating more housing will not inevitably lead to greater diversity in the city and should not be sold as such.
@Bob that’s great in theory, but we also need to consider this competitively. Meaning, if a developer can build in a different city and be that much more profitable, why would they want to build in Newton? I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but it’s not as simple as us just raising our numbers as if we’re in a vacuum. We did this years ago with hotels (we put in affordable housing requirements for hotel builders) and entirely missed out on a hotel boom and the tax dollars that comes with that kind of property. Cities and towns around us won out.
We need to pull a number of different levers to find the right mix that gets us where we need to go. Builders focus on luxury properties for the same reason that car companies build large SUVs: they’re profitable. If Massachusetts acted alone to ban them, it wouldn’t change much by way of auto sales and would likely hurt local auto dealers. People would just buy them somewhere else. (If all of New England did it, or a state the size of California did it, we’d see real change there.) But what about other levers, like raising the gas tax, or increasing the excise tax? What would those levers do?
Chuck,
The only tax progressives hate: luxury high density property tax.
If a developer is going to build housing on land which used to house 4(1 family) but now houses 16(4 family) and they are pricing above 1M.
No one is going to cry if there is a 0.25% property tax surcharge to fund extra services needed.
Again.. tax ONLY for luxury properties.
Matt,
You are of course correct that there is no market-based way to create a good for lower than the cost of production. It is true that land is expensive in Newton but Sean would do well to spend 15 minutes on the phone with one of our evil, Newton based developers. They would be happy to educate him on the cost of building materials and the cost and availability of construction labor.
The only way to make the market provide low cost housing is for developers to bundle it with high cost housing. This obviously involves meaningful tradeoffs and does nothing to increase the supply of housing for those at moderate incomes.
Far be from me to question the wisdom of a 20 year old, and “as impressive a candidate as we’ve seen in Newton,” at that. However if her plan to prevent gun violence in Boston is to blow out housing in Newton, when we know that the incremental tax receipts will not cover the costs of educating these additional children, and the schools happen to be full, I’ll pass.
I will wholeheartedly stipulate that there are smart, kind, compassionate people on both sides of this issue. Will Sean?
No one is suggesting asking builders to sell below cost, an absurd idea. But When developers purchase a modest Cape for below a million dollars, demolish it, and replace it with a six-bedroom six-bathroom monstrosity on sale for almost three million dollars, the profit margin is enormous.
I agree that developers seeking high profits don’t willingly agree to build affordable units unless they are a small part of a largely luxurious complex. That kind of project only hastens Newton’s ongoing conversion from a mixed income community to home for society’s elite. That’s not the Newton I have known for most of my life, and I’d rather not grease the skids for it to happen..
A lack of self-awareness lurks in the conversation about affordable housing specific to Newton. About that, I opine here not one wit about what other communities (Boston, Western Suburbs, etc.) should or should not see as their problems, whether they should or should be moved to do anything about their problem statement, whether Newton should or should not help those other governments (not the individuals, but the corporations called “municipalities”) if at its own expense, nor about the merits of self flagellation. Nor whether altruism has or should have a (greater) role in local government, no less regional considerations bent on living down Greater Boston’s tag of provincialism.
Economically speaking, Sean, et. al. seem to be, at best, unwitting perpetrators in The Big Steal (some call it “The Great Grift“), where the mysterious Collector is clearly someone other than those economically disadvantaged households for which they claim to act as patron saints.
In the case of Newton housing, the steal is the furthering of a historic transfer of wealth from younger generations’ prospects into the cash equivalents so desperately gamed for by the older generations. The mechanism is advocating for public policies intent on pushing the land under residences to, what developers call, its “highest and best use”.
Realizing a conversion from a lower to a higher use increases the price developers will pay the prior land owner, by a “price premium”.
Harvesting the American ideal achieved by resident-owners of residential real estate so to hand it over for rental from corporate owners is the most likely equilibrium scenario resulting from Sean’s efforts to groom audiences here. That the result will preclude at least some more from younger generations from being able to, in Newton, enjoy a fruit from their labor ought to tingle as if one were a witness to younger abuse.
Maddie might be Sean’s favorite poster child, but a conversation with a mirror and a dose of self-awareness might have her preferring to play for another team.
Preservation of earned wealth is not prima facia evidence of racial hostility. Values that include respectful weighing on a way of life that includes a degree of financial stability achieved here and aspired to by others (perhaps including some of those whom advocates purport to help) are not, on the face of it, unwokedness run amok.
Voting against advocated for positions — e.g., that have not, among other things, been evaluated as to cost, burden shifting, enrichment of certain parties, on-the-ground disruptions to logistical realities — might be more about being less farfetched than about being Conservative or (Heavens!) Republican.
That unexercised rezoning initiatives get advanced, without having been rigorously analyzed and evaluated for their implications over time, similarly supports the opening sentence, above.
It’s often said by Sean and others that the path to affordability is to increase supply. How about this…we rein in demand?
As a City, we suppress private developers’ profit motive, but the one control we do have is zoning and taxation. We can determine the limits of what a builder can build. Or impose a luxury tax as Bugek suggested. Now all of a sudden, McMansion developers are less attracted to Newton.
Without deep pocketed developers competing for each bid, affordability reaches more attainable levels.
Matt:
I’ve got no objection to a luxury tax myself, but you might want to reexamine your assumptions a bit. Demand is much more elastic that you think, and Newton is a draw at many price points. Also, there are issues under the state tax code with localities imposing such taxes.
NoNo: One of the hardest things about many of the proposals to keep homes “naturally affordable” is that those proposals can impact the values for current owners, many of whom are counting on their home to be their vehicle for retirement. It is easy to say we should put restrictions to lower the value of homes in Newton, harder when the city council or the mayor has to meet the voters on that issue. Older folks with home values vote…
@figgy – it was a bit hard for me to lob that point (suppress demand) as I am will be entering the “cash out for retirement” demographic much sooner than I am prepared to admit. Herein lies another prime point of hypocrisy of this long standing debate….
In many ways, Developers and near-future retirees share the same profit motive….which is like oil and water in relations to housing affordability. So to say making housing affordable will help the elderly is a bit of a farce.
Yet many supporters of YIMBY and the proposed zoning changes insists we need the density required to create more affordable housing. How can that be? Is it perhaps because, by keeping density limited to Village centers, it screws those of us who already live in denser areas of Newton, while YIMBYs who live outside of Village centers, will continue to live in single family neighborhoods in large lots and homes, retaining their premium value?
Where’s the equality in that? Sounds more like a page out of the conservative playbook than progressive.
I’m not saying making housing affordable will help the elderly. I’m saying that many of the homeowners in Newton are elderly, there will be a lot of housing turnover in the next 10 years, and those folks have gotten used to the idea of the massive windfall many of them are getting (and have come to rely on it in many cases, either through reverse mortgages or cash our refinance).
I actually don’t think we get more affordable in Newton through zoning code changes in either direction. I do think it makes a difference across the wider Commonwealth, and it is partially up to regional initiatives to succeed if we want real change. Not an easy thing to do, but we are seeing progress I think with this recent bill eliminating some of the more restrictive zoning rules. But I do think the 40Bs get us a fair amount of new affordable units, as do the larger negotiated projects with locked in workforce housing with restrictions tied to the land (a la Austin Street). Those units can make a real difference for a lot of families, and that’s something too.
As for the hypocrisy of some folks, yep, that’s a thing for sure. Doesn’t mean I still don’t believe in denser village centers with vibrant commercial cores, built along transportation nodes. And I live in Newtonville. Lots of 3 families one street over from me, and I’d be fine if more condos ended up on my street (it is coming when some of the older homes get redone I think)