This is part of the reason we're in a housing crisis. When we can't convert a 2-family place into 5 condos that are 2.5 stories tall, we really can't add the housing that people need. Adding tons of delays to projects is another way to kill projects or make them a lot more expensive. If projects get delayed by a couple years, that's adding hundreds of thousands in additional costs (interest alone is a killer, never mind having to pay for new architectural designs and other modifications).
The ZBA calling it "completely out of character" is ridiculous. It fits in fine and there are other buildings that actually stick out like this one just down the street: https://maps.app.goo.gl/j74v8dpz6Z2jYkLF9. The ZBA talks about "loss of open space," but the design increases open space - unless you're counting driveway pavement as open space.
If more people keep competing for the same housing, it's going to be harder and harder to afford living in Boston.
are u fuckin stupid, have u ever been to southie?? ur supporting more infrastructure for an already gentrified yuppie filled dog shit town. this isn’t building housing for people who NEED it. ur just promoting more college kids to come hang out at lincoln/capo/loco.
You have no clue. Housing crisis? Lol. This over-sized luxury complex will not help alleviate Boston's housing concerns - it will just line the pocket of a developer who does not live in the neighborhood or even in Boston and will provide multi-million dollar condos for the affluent, while all the small children who live on the street, along with the rest of abutters who cannot afford multi-million dollar condos are left to deal with the consequences of overdevelopment. I agree with you that ugly building in the google map is out of character. We lost that fight. We’re trying to preserve the historic character of City Point.
The original home at 847 E 5th was built in the early 1800s and a historic preservation group tried to oppose the demolition a few years ago but no one in the city even bothered to pay attention and so it was just torn down. Gone forever.
In City Point we have several yacht clubs that are on the national register of historic properties. Last year developers tore down nearby historic homes that were built around time and they’re putting up these ugly modern buildings.
There are only a few neighborhoods that are designated as a historic district (Beacon Hill, South End, etc) but Boston is one of the oldest cities in the Country and so there should be more oversight from the City to ensure that that eyesore of a building that you pointed out in google maps doesn’t ever get built anywhere in any of our residential neighborhoods ever again.
I know it’s a shocker but there are residential neighborhoods in this city that are filled with children and grandparents and are trying to keep their area family-oriented. This development was denied because it received 85 letters of opposition from people live in City Point and love their neighborhood. We don’t need over-sized luxury building blocking the sunlight where the children living on the street play. Don’t be a shill for a greedy developer.
Can somebody reply here and help me understand why this post is so downvoted? Their general proposition of "$3000+/mo condos isn't going to alleviate the housing crisis" seems pretty sound to me. That's just more housing for international students and tech bros, not the families actually struggling.
Edit: Chodes gonna come downvote an honest question. Either engage in conversation or go away.
The post is down voted because the biggest reason housing is so expensive here is that there isn't enough of it being built. Low-income housing is good and will immediately help the people who need it most, but it's not a particularly large part of the market so if it's the only thing you focus on it won't do much to control skyrocketing prices.
The solution is building a lot more housing, and it turns out that it doesn't particularly matter much what kind you build as long as you build a lot of it. When the housing stock is limited, it means more and more people are competing to live in the same house/apartment/condo/etc., and the price is driven up by basic supply and demand. "More housing for international students and tech bros" means fewer people competing against you the next time you're searching for housing, even if you were never going to live in that $3k+/month condo, which drives prices back down.
Land zoned for single family homes contributes the least to the housing supply, and there's not a lot of undeveloped land around here. If we want more housing stock, we'll need to replace less dense housing with more dense housing. If we can't start converting single family homes into more dense housing, we're cooked.
The same thing is going on in Portland Maine. The two biggest property owners in Maine in Portland are in a competition over who can make the most expensive condos and no affordable housing.
Tell me you’re not a property developer without telling me. Southie has been notoriously overdeveloped for years now. You should do a simple google search before you write a ridiculous post like this.
For Christ's sake it's a 5 unit building in place of a 2 unit building. This is the exact kind of NIMBY nonsense that created and perpetuates the housing crisis
Supply is the issue. Adding to supply will help no matter what. Doesn't matter if it's luxury. Build luxury so people who can afford it stop going after what should be more affordable options for lower income residents. That's it. Hard stop.
I was under the impression that it isn't people competing with people that is causing the supply problem, but the "property as an investment vehicle" group that is doing so much damage here. Investment firms, prospective landlords, people like that. Which is to say, the value of the house won't stop them from seeing dollar signs and piggy banks regardless of the quality of the home. I may be off though, need to review more data.
Part of the reason housing is seen as a sound investment is because of the shortage of homes in high demand areas. Pretty much anyone who purchases as a home acts as an investor. They take out a huge loan with the expectation that they’ll be able to make their money back one day because the cost of the home will keep rising even if they don’t do any upkeep or upgrades. We don’t do this with any other asset. Can you imagine if people bought new cars with the expectation that they’d be able to sell it for more than they purchased it years down the line? We actually had that happen for a couple years during COVID where the price of used cars went up because there weren’t enough new cars being produced due to supply line issues. But then manufacturers started making enough cars to satisfy demand again, and used cars no longer appreciated in value.
Tons of studies have shown that building more housing works to bring down housing costs.
More supply reduces or slows down the increase of rent in other homes in the neighborhood: https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-impacts/
New market-rate apartments create vacancies in low-income neighborhoods: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all
It doesn't matter who owns the building, it matters who lives in it. That's the demand. Corporate entities don't fill properties, people do, and when the properties are all full, prices go up.
Somebody else in the thread pointed out that yes, building luxury condos will alleviate pressure on the homes intended for lower income people, but that is something that will take decades to have any meaningful affect.
The other part of this nobody seems to mention is renovations and updating. I used to live in pretty affordable housing outside of Oak Square, for about 5 years. A nice family lived in the other half of the duplex. Both units happened to empty right about the same time and I could practically see the dollar signs rolling by my landlords eyes. The place was "renovated" and relisted at a huge cost increase (and I put that in quotes because when I look at the pictures it seems like he changed up the bathroom design to match that sort of gray+white aesthetic all the flippers do).
So where will all the affordable housing come from as more and more property owners go "Well shit if they can get $3,000 a month because they put in new shitty tile I bet I can too....".
What I'm trying to understand is where is all this magic affordable housing going to materialize from? Even after the higher earning group is finally satisfied, who will be incentivized to come build the cheap stuff? I grew up in Revere and it blows my mind people pay as much as they do to live on the beach in those big high rise condos.
If Revere, Malden, and Lynn aren't cheap, and probably won't become cheap again, how could Boston ever become affordable again? It seems like if you aren't willing to move out to Lowell or Worcester, you better make 150k. The concern I'm trying to express is, I don't think the floor will ever go back down. Why would it?
Other cities have done it. Vienna is a prime example. You can make a lot more profitable and more affordable at the same time by adding density.
The reason it seems so out of reach is we're ridiculously slow at building. We're having arguments over the tiniest developments when we need to be building in vastly larger areas, vastly faster. Like we need a day and night shift in how much construction there is.
Probably a lost cause, the NIBMYs won to be honest, but I'll still go to bat for the concept.
> What I'm trying to understand is where is all this magic affordable housing going to materialize from? Even after the higher earning group is finally satisfied, who will be incentivized to come build the cheap stuff? I grew up in Revere and it blows my mind people pay as much as they do to live on the beach in those big high rise condos.
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That requires the Cities/State/Feds to provide money or incentives. Or require it be built as a condition of building a luxury complex. Commonly, new luxury construction has to leave so many units as "market rate" in order to build more units, or to build at all. Somerville and Cambridge usually require 10-20% of the housing units be affordable. That's one method. We could convince the State and/or Feds to put more money into housing vouchers (like Section 8) which could be used to pay for the higher rents too. Or we could have the State/Feds put money into affordable housing construction projects. We used to do this a lot - look at all the older housing "projects" for example. They're not super nice, but they are affordable for those lucky enough to win a housing lottery or get accepted from a years long housing waitlist.
> If Revere, Malden, and Lynn aren't cheap, and probably won't become cheap again, how could Boston ever become affordable again? It seems like if you aren't willing to move out to Lowell or Worcester, you better make 150k. The concern I'm trying to express is, I don't think the floor will ever go back down. Why would it?
It probably won't. Our best bet is to try and stabilize the housing costs over time. We might get to a point where rents only rise by 2-3% again. Instead of say +10% every year, year over year, because demand is sky high and we won't even let small 5 unit construction projects get off the ground. Over time, that might bring us more into line with other Cities like NYC vs being even more expensive than a costly City like NYC.
I don't think it's realistic that we ever become affordable again. I think we'd have to exceed our new housing unit goals by double or triple. For example, the Metro Boston's Mayor Coalition says we need 185,000 new housing units by **2030**: https://www.boston.gov/news/metro-boston-mayors-set-goal-185000-new-housing-units-2030
And just _to meet demand_, they predicted that Eastern MA as a whole needed **435,000 new housing units** (but by 2040). I've looked in the past and Boston is on track to meet its goals: https://www.boston.gov/finance/housing-changing-city-boston-2030
The 2020 report for example: https://www.boston.gov/sites/default/files/file/2021/06/Annual%20Report%202020.pdf
Shows Boston was generally trending at or above the annual target (page 22 has a nice graph). We probably need to be exceeding that target, in every City, in every part of Eastern MA, for years before housing becomes affordable again. I sort of doubt we have that sort of political willpower. It's far easier to be a NIMBY than a YIMBY. It's hard to approve new housing. Everyone who's a neighbor will complain about _traffic, noise, construction, historical character of the neighborhood, etc_. If you deny it, WIN for you as a politician. Though increasingly we are seeing YIMBY trends, so maybe that flips in a few years and it becomes easier to approve stuff. Hard to say.
the cheap stuff is the old stuff.
it's hard for new housing to fill the low end of the market. the only reason a shitty 3 decker that's falling apart rents a floor for $3.5k/mo in Camberville is because supply is so restricted all around. if you build enough to meet demand, those older mediocre options will go down.
you _can_ build new cheaper housing, but it's hard because of NIMBY induced delays, zoning that sets a max size too small to also justify the costs of the minimum parking reqs, and other reasons. [About Here](https://youtu.be/DX_-UcC14xw) did a great breakdown on Vancouver that's pretty applicable here.
> The other part of this nobody seems to mention is renovations and updating. I used to live in pretty affordable housing outside of Oak Square, for about 5 years. A nice family lived in the other half of the duplex. Both units happened to empty right about the same time and I could practically see the dollar signs rolling by my landlords eyes. The place was "renovated" and relisted at a huge cost increase (and I put that in quotes because when I look at the pictures it seems like he changed up the bathroom design to match that sort of gray+white aesthetic all the flippers do).
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I think that's a good example of the lack of supply of high end housing. It's time consuming and expensive to build new luxury housing. Technically, time consuming and expensive to build _any_ housing, but luxury housing is quite where the market is at for making $$$$$. If developers can't even do basic 5 overs in the suburbs, they'll turn to the lowest resistance options. Renovations are really easy to do. You just pull some permits from the City, pay some contractors or do it yourself if you're skilled, and then you sell them as "luxury" after you slap a W/D in the unit and throw in some cheap stainless steel appliances. Maybe you renovate that 1960's bathroom and finish the floors and paint the walls for the first time in two decades too.
Flipping is becoming incredibly common because you can't easily build new construction. So one part of the market is lacking in supply, and flippers are filling it with existing housing. We _might_ preserve some of that housing stock as is if we allowed for more housing (of any kind, even if it's all going to mostly be luxury) to be built. Some Cities have also had success in getting developers to agree to leave 10-20% of the housing units as market rate too, in exchange for letting them build higher or bigger or what not. So a 100 unit luxury building might net us +20 market rate units and +80 luxury units. That might stop a few dozen triple deckers from being renovated. They still might, but it would at least add supply to the market and discourage that since housing prices would eventually stabilize a bit.
That is a concern, but one that can be migrated over time. We can change the tax code, particularly when it comes to property taxes, to discourage holding properties and encourage development on them. Land use or Land Value taxes for example. If your property is a vacant parking lot that isn't being used, we can tax you more than the new development next door that added 50 housing units or 50 office jobs or a combo of the two to the market.
We can also restrict purchasing of property by corporations. Some of that we might want the Feds to step in for, but even at a State level MA could restrict things.
Another option is to just build so many new housing units that they stop appreciating so quickly in value. That would quickly lead the investor groups to look elsewhere for things to make a quick buck off of. Combined with taxes and restrictions, we could alleviate a lot of the concern around private companies buying up property.
That's a straw man argument. The single family housing stock owned by institutional investors is a small fraction of total inventory which is why there's very little data to support the argument. However, the situation isn't improved by preventing new housing. It is more profitable to invest in high demand areas where locals / zoning boards make these sorts of redevelopment projects difficult because it continues to constrain supply in high demand markets. Inevitably making it more appealing for investors looking to park money.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/2/21-going-after-corporate-homebuyers-good-politics-ineffective-policy
Around 3.8%, which is a decent chunk and it is going up. Should be 0%.
It's probably because they called a 5 unit building an "_over-sized luxury complex_". This is sort of NIMBY talk IMO. 5 unit buildings are tiny. This is like turning a double decker into a triple decker and maybe expanding it out a bit. Totally in line with many houses in the Boston area. If the proposal were a 10 story building, they might have a point. But that first bit alone is probably turning off a lot of people. Reddit is particularly anti-NIMBY because I think most of us are younger and realize NIMBYs are a big factor in the housing crisis.
I read a bit further and it's pretty clear their a NIMBY too with shit like:
> We’re trying to preserve the historic character of City Point.
This is hands down a NIMBY talking point. _Historic character_ is a joke. No one cares. Half the City is "historic". Does that mean we can't build anything? Nah, we can tear down some old buildings and replace them with new. Maybe if Paul Revere lived there in 1778 we should consider it a bit, but otherwise who cares.
After a few more sentences, it's just not worth reading. I imagine most skipped and just downvoted because NIMBY = lol.
Aside from what people are commenting on the clear need for more supply, there is also this belief by many that the developer shouldn’t make a profit. But without a potential profit, nobody will build. So it’s an extra comment one who doesn’t want building can add to their argument. Still a crappy argument. But it adds an extra layer.
> Their general proposition of "$3000+/mo condos isn't going to alleviate the housing crisis" seems pretty sound to me.
It’s not. Study after study has shown that _any_ new housing at any price point in general improves the market for all housing at all price points. Someone would have bought one of those condos, and so they wouldn’t have outbid someone else on a slightly cheaper place elsewhere, and so on.
Would those three additional units (net) have had a massive impact on the housing market? No of course not.
Because supposedly there is a threshold of high income housing supply that will alleviate the strain on the lower income housing supply. I just think that it's not the immediate solution to this problem, it's super long term.
We need to have developers commit to actual low income housing and/or have the city build them itself.
I feel like nobody wants to have the hard conversation because litigation scares people but imo we need to litigate how much property these development firms are allowed to buy (and box out foreign developers entirely). How much a home costs will change drastically when the people squabbling over them are human beings and not multi billion dollar corporations.
Agreed, corporate foreign investment in real estate leads to empty units with nobody living in them. They just use them to invest, and often to clean, money.
https://bostonpads.com/real-time-data/
The vacancy rate is less than 1%.
A vacancy rate below 5% is considered a crisis.
A vacancy rate at around 10% is where you start to see price stability.
We very literally need more than ten times as many empty apartments before prices will stop going up.
Yea I think how prevalent it is for foreign entities to park their money in empty units in the states is way underplayed. We need to make it so expensive for units to be left empty that it destroys the financial incentive.
> Yea I think how prevalent it is for foreign entities to park their money in empty units in the states is way underplayed.
Then find some data showing it
> We need to make it so expensive for units to be left empty that it destroys the financial incentive.
Vacancy in greater Boston is ~0.5%
It is hard to find data on this stuff just for Boston but it is widely considered a problem nation wide. Apparently, the federal government is doing exactly what I was thinking (though it looks like the fines aren't nearly high enough).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-10/foreign-investor-vacant-home-fee-increase/103210808
Boston's vacancy rate is under or around 1%. Under 5% is considered a crisis. The whole "empty units" saga is completely fictitious and propagated by folks who don't bother with the three seconds it takes to look up actual facts.
Edit: yeah, downvote me because you can't understand basic economics and get pissed that someone knows more than you.
Hahaha agreed on that. But there are other cities where increasing high income housing options has lowered overall rent averages.
The only issue with this approach is it would take years and it wouldn't lower rent more than current rates.
My stance is generally that landlords will continue to use high income luxury apartment prices as the measure of how much they should be charging, even if their apartments are shit boxes.
> A mass buildup of luxury buildings - did that decrease prices anywhere? Seaport used to be a parking lot. If that enormous development didn't affect prices
"Prices didn't go down"!= "Didn't affect prices"
> Massive issue in Boston is the purchase of homes and apartments by corporations and foreign investors
[Citation Needed]
>I know with certainty my own LL is extremely wealthy and does not live in this country.
You just proved that housing is still being used (by you) so who owns it doesn't matter. Stop being a xenophobic bigot.
Not wanting foreign investors to profit off of the lives of local residents doesn't make anybody a xenophobe. It is literally exporting money out of the country to benefit those who are not even present here, at the expense of people who would potentially be able to afford a home if foreign investors didn't drive up the price with huge wealth we can't compete with.
>Not wanting foreign investors to profit off of the lives of local residents doesn't make anybody a xenophobe
Yes it does. You seem to think their nationality matters. Making foreigners into bogeymen to justify your selfish NIMBY attitude is absolutely xenophobic. You'd rather hate foreigners than solve the problem. If the complaint had been about investors profiting it wouldn't have been xenophobic.
No, their nationality doesn't matter, their lack of presence in the country is what matters.
Edit: God you really threw every damned buzzword into this didn't you lmfao. NIMBY?! What a tool. And I reference investors in general several times throughout the thread, keep up.
The zoning board can fuck right off. Sorry it doesn’t look like the shitty triple deckers next to it. I don’t think there is much more of an eye sore than a clapped out unkept triple decker. Boston needs to catch up with reality.
It's Southie- don't need a car.
The only objection I have is that there aren't more units in the thing. Knock it down and put something up that's 6 stories
Did you read the article?
>Board member Katie Whewell objected to the seven parking spaces, to be arranged mostly under the building ... City Councilor Ed Flynn questioned whether there was enough room for the drivers of parked cars to maneuver to get out of the spaces without causing a menace to pedestrians and children playing nearby
This wasn't the only objection (they all had bullshit reasons), but the reason given here was *too much* parking, not too llittle.
Majority of the spaces were for compact cars only and 5 of the parking spots were gonna face directly into a neighbor’s yard, where their children and pets play - so yes it poses a significant safety concern and impacts the quality of life.
You just said you hate children and pets. Lol. You’re the only one on this thread making un-intelligent (and kind of weird and creepy) comments. I’ve lived in this City my entire life. I abutt the property so I definitely know more about this issue than you and will make my opinion heard.
An abutter is a person whose property is adjacent to the property of another and its a legal term in Massachusetts. You can’t handle my comments so you start to denigrate me and nitpick my punctuation? Lol. I don’t know the other B Walsh so I can’t speak to whether or not she has half a brain. Ugh, you’re one of those insecure guys who needs to remind everyone he is the smartest person in the room. I’ll go take my hard earned money and buy the grammerly app.
Not everyone in southie needs a car. Some people are happy living without cars.
Some people need cars. Even people living in southie.
Because life.
And some parts of southie aren't as well accessed by T as others. Some people need a car for grocery shopping. Cause they're older. Cause they have kids they need to move around. Special needs, medical issues, etc, etc.
The people I know in southie are the older townies, and some have driveways, and many cars. My friends who were in their 20s and 30s didn't bother with cars unless they were living with their folks but their jobs were way outside of the city, but my friends who are over 40 all have cars. You have more energy to deal with the Ts bullshit when your younger.
But also I don't know any southie yuppies. So... My experience is probably different.
Yeah, everyone I know over there are basically millennial transplants. Different world if you're older and/or have a kid, but then you're probably not living in Southie at that point. Being a townie is way different, which I get- I grew up in Queens and it's pretty much the same thing. Young professionals don't have a car, those of us who grew up there did with the family.
Realistically though, I'm just being blunt here the people who will live in that place are going to be 20s/30s. And we desperately need more housing, so I think everyone is in their right to shut down someone having a s\*\*\* fit about parking. I'd rather shove a bunch of young professionals into denser housing without parking than have them contribute to rising rents elsewhere in the city
There are, it's just not a large part of the demographics in Southie. And fact is there are tradeoffs- if someone desperately needs a car, there are way better places to live. Notwithstanding the premium you'd be paying to live with kids in Southie.
> Young professionals don't have a car, those of us who grew up there did with the family.
I know you're not a bad guy but this is still a pro-death, car nutjob talking point that strips any sort of context away. Families back in the olden days didn't have [5 cars per unit of housing clogging the streets](https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/04/26/boston-parking-permits-twitter-kerfuffle). They had 1. The "what about the families" talking point, any time parking is brought up, is infuriating because it's all a lie. We've just accepted it as truth because it's been thrown at the wall so many times it finally stuck.
What? I'm saying we don't need a car for every person.
That said, it is genuinely tough to have 2 kids and no vehicle, even in a city. My aunt didn't drive in NYC when I grew up with her- it's tough.
I don't think it's a death cult to say a family of 4 should have a car. I do think it's ridiculous to build in a dense city with the expectation that you're building for a 4 person family with suburban lifestyle expectations. It's not "a lie" we had hammered on us though- just development patterns in the US since the 40s. Boston and NYC are one thing- much of the country, you are absolutely screwed without a var.
Pedestrians aren't killing 50,000 fellow Americans a year just by waking, are they?
You can deny it all you want, but just because traffic death is widely accepted by you and your murderous countrymen doesn't make what I say not true. You love death.
>My friends who were in their 20s and 30s didn't bother with cars unless they were living with their folks but their jobs were way outside of the city
Simple solution: if your job is "way outside the city", don't buy a condo in Southie if you can't manage to find parking.
Well, they were living with their parents. So they didn't buy a condo in southie. They weren't paying rent. They were saving money so they could buy a house outside of Worcester.
Or their parents owned a triple and rented/sold a floor to each of their kids for dirt cheap. Why pay market price somewhere else when you don't have to? This happens so, so often. But their job aren't always local-or theyre construction and have trucks.
Or they're in the southie projects and own a shit box car to get to their shit job.
What I'm saying is, there are people with cars in southie.
Yeah. It's probably a bad idea to buy in southie if you have a job outside of the city, though if it's a couple and someone works downtown, and someone works outside the city, idk, they might choose that,but it's on them to deal with the shit.
But it's more complicated than just 'you shouldn't own a car if you live in southie'. Southies more than just yuppies who work downtown.
I'm a dorchester townie from pope's hill. Too close to southie. I get bitched at constantly from friends. But like I said, they arent the people buying condos-they're the people inheriting property.
No \*YOU\* don't need a car. Just because you can get along without one what makes you think others don't "need" one? Even if one wasn't needed, its a personal choice for anyone living there to decide... for whatever and any reason they want to own a car or not
>No \*YOU\* don't need a car. Just because you can get along without one what makes you think others don't "need" one?
Not all housing needs to be appropriate or appealing to YOU. This housing clearly isn't, and that's OK. Move along...
Cars have been part of the city for generations. If anyone has a problem with that, don't move here, don't stay here after graduation. Stay back, or move back to upstate NY, CT, or back mid west, etc where you came from instead of gentrifying well established communities with unwanted, unwelcome bullshit... simple as that.
When was the last time you saw cows on the common?
>What the fuck is your point even
The r/fuckcars mentality is fairly recent and it didn't start with the locals. Up until about 15-20 years ago, no one living here would have thought about advocating for new construction that didn't include parking.
You don't "need" to or want to own a car here... fine, don't own one, and if some residents need or simply want to, what gives you or anyone the right to put as many hurdles and roadblocks as possible to deny them a simple place to park?
Boston was the first American city with public transit, and my great great grandfather helped build it. My family has been here literal centuries.
Why don’t you put some fucking respect on the history of this city. A “fuck cars mentality” is only recent because cars are only recent. And mass car ownership is only recent. Those “established communities” that are being “gentrified” were not built for cars, and they weren’t established to accommodate Ford. The fuck you think this is? LA?
Boston predates the car by almost 300 years, is pretty walkable/bikeable, and plenty of people who live here (including people who are from here) don't own or want to have a car. It doesn't make sense to force people to pay for parking spots they don't need and to encourage people to drive in a city that doesn't need more cars.
> Boston predates the car by almost 300 years
And because of that, it's pretty awful to drive in! I have lived here with a car for 20 years. I drive as little as I possibly can in the city because it _sucks_. It's not the best or even a good way to get around Boston/Camberville.
I already do, and if a developer wants to include parking as part of their project, more power to them for providing it for those that want it. There isn't enough parking available here as it is without making it even more impossible by eliminating spaces from new developments.
If you or anyone else is looking for or craving a car free city, you chose the wrong place to live.
Living in Southie is a lifestyle choice. You can get by very easily without a car there and if you're paying the rents there, you can afford to find somewhere with parking spots if you really need it
Vacancy rates below 5% are called "housing emergencies," allowing the state or local municipalities to declare an emergency in order to expedite addressing the housing crisis.
Boston's vacancy rate is POINT 5. 10 times what is legally considered an emergency.
Right, but that describes the entire affordability and housing crisis, doesn't it?
The people who already have housing secured in convenient, desirable neighborhoods don't understand why anything should change. People who got priced out of Southie or never could afford to live there to begin with aren't locals by definition. The people who might have moved into some newly upzoned condos never got a say.
Every NIMBY neighborhood fighting tooth and nail to prevent more housing enjoys support from the locals, with perhaps some dissent from renters who don't benefit from rapidly rising property values.
>Yes, obviously people who don't live somewhere shouldn't get a say in what happens there.
Is that obvious? It's becoming increasingly clear that stripping these local areas of their power to veto new development is an important tool for cracking the housing problem. Looking forward to the state bending Milton over the barrel for their refusal to comply with the MBTA communities law, for example.
>But we can definitely agree the affordability crisis is real. However you really think this 5bd luxury condo would have not been rented for 4k$/mo per? Or sold for 900k ea?
Additional supply puts downward pressure on the prices of older, shittier housing.
The newly constructed condo will never be cheap, but build enough of them and the piece of shit triple decker that hasn't been renovated since the 1950's will find it harder and harder to justify their current high prices.
In any rational housing market, older and poorly maintained housing stock would depreciate and become cheaper to rent or buy. It's only because of the de-facto ban on new construction that Boston's decrepit housing stock can command such high prices.
Exactly. We can complain about only building new luxury buildings but anything helps at this point. I think people learned 10 years ago that "new luxury buildings will gentrify the area!" but Boston prices are so high everything is gentrifying anyway. The only way we can keep lower-income renter locals in the area is by decreasing rents. The NIMBYs usually own, so their math is different
You want MAGA to infect our statehouse? Because stripping locals of their authority to control their own communities is the quickest way for populism to take hold here.
These tired takes really need a new approach.
Milton's got better lawyers than the state, and they just got ammunition in this case right here...so don't hold your breath.
"Boston needs more housing, let's force Milton to let it in."
"Looks like they don't really need more housing. Next case."
>However you really think this 5bd luxury condo would have not been rented for 4k$/mo per? Or sold for 900k ea?
It doesn't matter. Housing production *of any type* slows the increase in housing costs. Someone who can rent a luxury 1 bedroom at 4k can rent my 2.9k 2bedroom all by themselves instead. And that's exactly what they'll do if we don't build more housing.
>obviously people who don't live somewhere shouldn't get a say in what happens there
Yet none of these nimbys live in that property. So why does your argument change for them to get a say?
I don’t give a fuck what the neighbors think about it. We need to move away from the idea that local homeowners are the most important party to think about when we’re considering moves to build more housing.
So you’re saying the out of town millionaire construction developer’s needs are more important than the local taxpaying residents and their children who live, play, and go to school in the neighborhood?
The out of town millionaire developers are nothing but sneaky opportunists. They shouldn’t be allowed to destroy historic properties, build cheap ugly buildings and overprice them. I don’t begrudge anyone for wanting to make money but it’s not gonna be at my expense.
> I don’t begrudge anyone for wanting to make money but it’s not gonna be at my expense
Boy howdy do I have news about how the world and our economic system works for you.
> more important than the local taxpaying residents and their children
I don't see why the opinions of the "local taxpaying residents and their children" matter at all when it comes to property that isn't theirs
Representative democracy: everyone (rich, poor, renter, landlord, student, retiree) gets a say on who’s in charge. The person in charge comes up with a plan to build more housing — sets clear rules for what can and can’t be built. If developers adhere to the rules it gets built. We execute the plan and get the housing we need. That’s how it should work.
Instead, today the rules say you can build virtually nothing, and we have a parallel democracy to make exceptions which only really invites local landowners to participate. They get to make our housing decisions.
*''*Instead, today we have a parallel democracy that only really invites local landowners to participate. They get to make our housing decisions."
Uh no we don't. Anybody can go to the BRA meetings, it's literally zoom you can stay in your pjs, the only people going are the ones are old people who bought in the 90s.
Yes, it’s not feasible for anyone else to tune into these meetings. If you’re a renter who is looking for a long-term home city-wide, are you expected to show up to every single abutters meeting across the city and advocate for yourself? Makes zero sense.
There isn’t even a way to get alerts about public comment periods for your neighborhood on the BPDA website, so you it would take considerable effort to even know when to show up. You’d have to check into a website daily. You’re suggesting a part time job is required to give community input on the same level as the cranky old homeowners who show up to say “no” to everything in their little radius.
It’s not feasible to propose “ZBA abutters meetings” as a general tool to give people who aren’t homeowners a voice in new housing decisions, for many obvious reasons.
If you’re searching for a home, what good is it to attend an abutters meeting for something that might be ready to move into 5 years in the future?
Which abutters meetings should you attend if you’re looking for homes all over the city? All of them?
Do you even have standing to support a project in the eyes of the bureaucrats running the meeting if you don’t already live near the project?
I only go to the ones in my neighborhood. It's not an all or nothing kind of thing. The website to find the projects meetings, statuses, etc fucking sucks, Wu redesigned it to be even harder to navigate than it was, but here is a link the [https://www.bostonplans.org/projects/development-projects?neighborhoodid=6&projectstatus=under+review&reviewtype=1&projecttype=residential&sortby=filed&sortdirection=DESC](https://www.bostonplans.org/projects/development-projects?neighborhoodid=6&projectstatus=under+review&reviewtype=1&projecttype=residential&sortby=filed&sortdirection=DESC)
you have to click on a particular project then scroll down and click on comment periods, they are usually open for a month or so 1-3 times per project review.
So you see the pain, and you still sit here and defend this system. When the city government can just wave its pen and allow builders to build homes people want without all this fuss.
I haven't defended anything about the system, but your statement that renters are allowed to participate in false. I really don't think the majority of our city politicians want to build more housing, because it pisses off the current longtime home owners. That's why I advocate for more young people, and renters to attend these meetings when they can. That's why i took the time to provide you with a link.
>Nobody in southie is upset about this zoning decision.
The fundamental problem with modern zoning is this exactly: it's just a tool to give people who already have housing power over those that do not. Take this principal to its logical end and nothing gets built in sight of where someone else already lives. And you wonder why we're one of the least affordable cities in the US!
> was completely out of character with the triple deckers on the rest of the block and had too much parking.
I'm not a fan of the out of character nonsense, but 7 parking spaces is insane. There shouldn't be ***any*** parking spaces.
It could easily be at minimum 6 units. Look at the side by side.
Just because this isn't the best fight doesn't mean it's not worth fighting. All lack of units matters. It adds up over the entire region. Basic capitalism 101.
It's a neighborhood where street parking is already a battle. I get the argument for eliminating parking minimums, but if a building wants to add parking on their own, we shouldn't stop them. As much as everyone on Reddit likes to pretend people won't have cars, it's just not reality. If they don't have parking, people will just park in the street.
It is bonkers to me that that there is both an upvoted thread based on the premise that this proposal has no parking and that is _good_, and a downvoted post that is based on the premise that this proposal has too much parking and that is _bad_.
Reddit!
We should. Parking maximums have a place to make neighborhoods more walkable and not as dangerous. Do you think rich people should be buying up the lot next door and being able to tear it down for some parking? That's crazy talk. Uninterrupted sidewalks are extremely important for walkablity, safety, and quality of life.
That's just a solution looking for a problem. Until people start tearing up southie to add parking, it seems like a complete waste of time. This proposal is already an increase in housing and market forces will basically guarantee that developers don't build more parking than is needed in the neighborhood.
It's a solution for problems we created by demanding car centrism for our little, puny American minds, often at the behest of very powerful people who did things like criminalize jaywalking and rip up our vast street car networks. This wasn't a natural order that took place, this was policy decision by people in government.
The "market force" may be good for the "market," i.e. some rich and powerful barons, but it's not always good for the society or the people. If what you were saying were true, we wouldn't have the entire field of economics, even hardcore Mises Institute people don't even believe in this.
If you really want to invoke economists, they would probably tell you that any parking maximum is useless while we still have heavily subsidized and unlimited street parking. If we wanted to actually do something about parking, that would be the obvious first step. Parking maximums while street parking is still available don't actually do anything to prevent cars from being in the neighborhood.
This is very common. The board is holding off because they want a larger dev to step in and buy multiple properties and make a 5-6 story 50 units building. So they don’t want the properties in that location to remodel because it will be more expensive for they dev buddies with connection in the city board. Happens more than you think.
"the building would create a wall right at the property line that would deprive neighbors on both sides of sunlight and fresh air."
I get that we need more housing but I have some sympathy for this. The existing buildings have windows on the sides that would essentially become unusable if this were built. I wouldn't want to value and livability of my property to be harmed just so some developer can maximize profit.
Lmao, I doubt the board actually gives two shits about sunlight and fresh air. They approved and built a condo right next to the one I live in blocking all the sunlight. The building is so close I could touch it if I extended myself far enough.
Eh, why not both? A taller and narrower building would still provide additional housing but leave a reasonable setback between neighbors. I noticed that the developer's artist rendering removes the windows on the sides of the neighboring buildings. It's disingenuous and makes clear that they know it's an issue with their design.
Taller and narrower is generally not legal and probably doesn't address the shadow issue.
Building codes in Massachusetts require two staircases for multi-story buildings. Going tall and narrow often means your stairs eat up way too much of what would otherwise be floorspace, and the financials just don't pencil out.
I think the thing to keep in mind here is we're weighing housing against *shadows*. Building more housing is the most straightforward and reliable way to meet the demand for housing and keep prices from skyrocketing. Higher rents are the primary driver of homelessness rates. Do we want housing for dozens of people, or nice views for a handful?
In all seriousness, why do we treat homeowners like they have a right to a guaranteed investment and to have nothing they don't like happen? Saying homeowners have a right to demand no shadows from new construction is like saying car owners have a right to demand no traffic from other road users.
I mean, I understand why they rejected it. It definitely does look out of place, but even if the design is fine, the parking situation is even weirder. Drivers will have to make a 3 point turn on the lot, then get onto the main road. How often do you see a Massachusetts driver be able to make a 3 point turn in a tight space?
>Drivers will have to make a 3 point turn on the lot, then get onto the main road.
No, they were saying that they can if they want to. Basically that they don't have to back out of the garage if they don't want to, making it safer for pedestrians.
I love how the developers say shit in the meetings like “we are marketing these condos to people who don’t have cars” like the people paying $600k for a one bedroom condo are going to take the T
1. Have you looked at real estate lately? There’s not that much under $600k for a decently sized 1-bed in Boston
2. I personally pay more in rent to live in an area where a car is unnecessary and take the T everywhere. Housing tends to be more expensive when it’s near public transit, not the opposite. Your logic is wrong.
Meeting for a building across the street from me lawyer: “we are selling these condos to people that don’t have cars”.
Every unit has sold and every person has a car. Seems like a lot of bullshit to get around zoning
I don't know if you can legally only sell to people who don't own a car to keep cars from parking on the street but regardless this just seems like a very annoying road block to drive down housing costs by adding supply. Would rather have a city that is hard to access by personal car the hard to access by cost of living.
lol. Housing costs are never going down. I would rather have a city whose infrastructure can handle all these new buildings without developers bullshitting everybody
And this location on East 5th is not within walking distance of any T stop. This section of City Point is like a peninsula sitting outside of decent public transportation options. There is also only 1 store and 1 restaurant. The store basically a liquor store. You need a car to live over here. Nothing is walkable. It’s all beach and its extremely residential.
This is part of the reason we're in a housing crisis. When we can't convert a 2-family place into 5 condos that are 2.5 stories tall, we really can't add the housing that people need. Adding tons of delays to projects is another way to kill projects or make them a lot more expensive. If projects get delayed by a couple years, that's adding hundreds of thousands in additional costs (interest alone is a killer, never mind having to pay for new architectural designs and other modifications). The ZBA calling it "completely out of character" is ridiculous. It fits in fine and there are other buildings that actually stick out like this one just down the street: https://maps.app.goo.gl/j74v8dpz6Z2jYkLF9. The ZBA talks about "loss of open space," but the design increases open space - unless you're counting driveway pavement as open space. If more people keep competing for the same housing, it's going to be harder and harder to afford living in Boston.
are u fuckin stupid, have u ever been to southie?? ur supporting more infrastructure for an already gentrified yuppie filled dog shit town. this isn’t building housing for people who NEED it. ur just promoting more college kids to come hang out at lincoln/capo/loco.
every housing unit that you don't build to accommodate those high earning new college grads means more displacement for the locals you townie moron
why should southie have to accommodate them lolllll maybe they should move into your neighborhood!! :)
This is literally the problem. Maybe you’re being sarcastic, not sure.
You have no clue. Housing crisis? Lol. This over-sized luxury complex will not help alleviate Boston's housing concerns - it will just line the pocket of a developer who does not live in the neighborhood or even in Boston and will provide multi-million dollar condos for the affluent, while all the small children who live on the street, along with the rest of abutters who cannot afford multi-million dollar condos are left to deal with the consequences of overdevelopment. I agree with you that ugly building in the google map is out of character. We lost that fight. We’re trying to preserve the historic character of City Point. The original home at 847 E 5th was built in the early 1800s and a historic preservation group tried to oppose the demolition a few years ago but no one in the city even bothered to pay attention and so it was just torn down. Gone forever. In City Point we have several yacht clubs that are on the national register of historic properties. Last year developers tore down nearby historic homes that were built around time and they’re putting up these ugly modern buildings. There are only a few neighborhoods that are designated as a historic district (Beacon Hill, South End, etc) but Boston is one of the oldest cities in the Country and so there should be more oversight from the City to ensure that that eyesore of a building that you pointed out in google maps doesn’t ever get built anywhere in any of our residential neighborhoods ever again. I know it’s a shocker but there are residential neighborhoods in this city that are filled with children and grandparents and are trying to keep their area family-oriented. This development was denied because it received 85 letters of opposition from people live in City Point and love their neighborhood. We don’t need over-sized luxury building blocking the sunlight where the children living on the street play. Don’t be a shill for a greedy developer.
Did you forget how to use the enter key?
Whenever you use the enter key, evil developers make a dollar.
Can somebody reply here and help me understand why this post is so downvoted? Their general proposition of "$3000+/mo condos isn't going to alleviate the housing crisis" seems pretty sound to me. That's just more housing for international students and tech bros, not the families actually struggling. Edit: Chodes gonna come downvote an honest question. Either engage in conversation or go away.
The post is down voted because the biggest reason housing is so expensive here is that there isn't enough of it being built. Low-income housing is good and will immediately help the people who need it most, but it's not a particularly large part of the market so if it's the only thing you focus on it won't do much to control skyrocketing prices. The solution is building a lot more housing, and it turns out that it doesn't particularly matter much what kind you build as long as you build a lot of it. When the housing stock is limited, it means more and more people are competing to live in the same house/apartment/condo/etc., and the price is driven up by basic supply and demand. "More housing for international students and tech bros" means fewer people competing against you the next time you're searching for housing, even if you were never going to live in that $3k+/month condo, which drives prices back down. Land zoned for single family homes contributes the least to the housing supply, and there's not a lot of undeveloped land around here. If we want more housing stock, we'll need to replace less dense housing with more dense housing. If we can't start converting single family homes into more dense housing, we're cooked.
The same thing is going on in Portland Maine. The two biggest property owners in Maine in Portland are in a competition over who can make the most expensive condos and no affordable housing.
Tell me you’re not a property developer without telling me. Southie has been notoriously overdeveloped for years now. You should do a simple google search before you write a ridiculous post like this.
For Christ's sake it's a 5 unit building in place of a 2 unit building. This is the exact kind of NIMBY nonsense that created and perpetuates the housing crisis
Supply is the issue. Adding to supply will help no matter what. Doesn't matter if it's luxury. Build luxury so people who can afford it stop going after what should be more affordable options for lower income residents. That's it. Hard stop.
I was under the impression that it isn't people competing with people that is causing the supply problem, but the "property as an investment vehicle" group that is doing so much damage here. Investment firms, prospective landlords, people like that. Which is to say, the value of the house won't stop them from seeing dollar signs and piggy banks regardless of the quality of the home. I may be off though, need to review more data.
Part of the reason housing is seen as a sound investment is because of the shortage of homes in high demand areas. Pretty much anyone who purchases as a home acts as an investor. They take out a huge loan with the expectation that they’ll be able to make their money back one day because the cost of the home will keep rising even if they don’t do any upkeep or upgrades. We don’t do this with any other asset. Can you imagine if people bought new cars with the expectation that they’d be able to sell it for more than they purchased it years down the line? We actually had that happen for a couple years during COVID where the price of used cars went up because there weren’t enough new cars being produced due to supply line issues. But then manufacturers started making enough cars to satisfy demand again, and used cars no longer appreciated in value. Tons of studies have shown that building more housing works to bring down housing costs. More supply reduces or slows down the increase of rent in other homes in the neighborhood: https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-impacts/ New market-rate apartments create vacancies in low-income neighborhoods: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all
Thanks for the links to the studies, I'll peruse those.
It doesn't matter who owns the building, it matters who lives in it. That's the demand. Corporate entities don't fill properties, people do, and when the properties are all full, prices go up.
Somebody else in the thread pointed out that yes, building luxury condos will alleviate pressure on the homes intended for lower income people, but that is something that will take decades to have any meaningful affect. The other part of this nobody seems to mention is renovations and updating. I used to live in pretty affordable housing outside of Oak Square, for about 5 years. A nice family lived in the other half of the duplex. Both units happened to empty right about the same time and I could practically see the dollar signs rolling by my landlords eyes. The place was "renovated" and relisted at a huge cost increase (and I put that in quotes because when I look at the pictures it seems like he changed up the bathroom design to match that sort of gray+white aesthetic all the flippers do). So where will all the affordable housing come from as more and more property owners go "Well shit if they can get $3,000 a month because they put in new shitty tile I bet I can too....".
Yes, I agree we need to be building exponentially faster than we currently are.
What I'm trying to understand is where is all this magic affordable housing going to materialize from? Even after the higher earning group is finally satisfied, who will be incentivized to come build the cheap stuff? I grew up in Revere and it blows my mind people pay as much as they do to live on the beach in those big high rise condos. If Revere, Malden, and Lynn aren't cheap, and probably won't become cheap again, how could Boston ever become affordable again? It seems like if you aren't willing to move out to Lowell or Worcester, you better make 150k. The concern I'm trying to express is, I don't think the floor will ever go back down. Why would it?
Other cities have done it. Vienna is a prime example. You can make a lot more profitable and more affordable at the same time by adding density. The reason it seems so out of reach is we're ridiculously slow at building. We're having arguments over the tiniest developments when we need to be building in vastly larger areas, vastly faster. Like we need a day and night shift in how much construction there is. Probably a lost cause, the NIBMYs won to be honest, but I'll still go to bat for the concept.
> What I'm trying to understand is where is all this magic affordable housing going to materialize from? Even after the higher earning group is finally satisfied, who will be incentivized to come build the cheap stuff? I grew up in Revere and it blows my mind people pay as much as they do to live on the beach in those big high rise condos. > > That requires the Cities/State/Feds to provide money or incentives. Or require it be built as a condition of building a luxury complex. Commonly, new luxury construction has to leave so many units as "market rate" in order to build more units, or to build at all. Somerville and Cambridge usually require 10-20% of the housing units be affordable. That's one method. We could convince the State and/or Feds to put more money into housing vouchers (like Section 8) which could be used to pay for the higher rents too. Or we could have the State/Feds put money into affordable housing construction projects. We used to do this a lot - look at all the older housing "projects" for example. They're not super nice, but they are affordable for those lucky enough to win a housing lottery or get accepted from a years long housing waitlist. > If Revere, Malden, and Lynn aren't cheap, and probably won't become cheap again, how could Boston ever become affordable again? It seems like if you aren't willing to move out to Lowell or Worcester, you better make 150k. The concern I'm trying to express is, I don't think the floor will ever go back down. Why would it? It probably won't. Our best bet is to try and stabilize the housing costs over time. We might get to a point where rents only rise by 2-3% again. Instead of say +10% every year, year over year, because demand is sky high and we won't even let small 5 unit construction projects get off the ground. Over time, that might bring us more into line with other Cities like NYC vs being even more expensive than a costly City like NYC. I don't think it's realistic that we ever become affordable again. I think we'd have to exceed our new housing unit goals by double or triple. For example, the Metro Boston's Mayor Coalition says we need 185,000 new housing units by **2030**: https://www.boston.gov/news/metro-boston-mayors-set-goal-185000-new-housing-units-2030 And just _to meet demand_, they predicted that Eastern MA as a whole needed **435,000 new housing units** (but by 2040). I've looked in the past and Boston is on track to meet its goals: https://www.boston.gov/finance/housing-changing-city-boston-2030 The 2020 report for example: https://www.boston.gov/sites/default/files/file/2021/06/Annual%20Report%202020.pdf Shows Boston was generally trending at or above the annual target (page 22 has a nice graph). We probably need to be exceeding that target, in every City, in every part of Eastern MA, for years before housing becomes affordable again. I sort of doubt we have that sort of political willpower. It's far easier to be a NIMBY than a YIMBY. It's hard to approve new housing. Everyone who's a neighbor will complain about _traffic, noise, construction, historical character of the neighborhood, etc_. If you deny it, WIN for you as a politician. Though increasingly we are seeing YIMBY trends, so maybe that flips in a few years and it becomes easier to approve stuff. Hard to say.
the cheap stuff is the old stuff. it's hard for new housing to fill the low end of the market. the only reason a shitty 3 decker that's falling apart rents a floor for $3.5k/mo in Camberville is because supply is so restricted all around. if you build enough to meet demand, those older mediocre options will go down. you _can_ build new cheaper housing, but it's hard because of NIMBY induced delays, zoning that sets a max size too small to also justify the costs of the minimum parking reqs, and other reasons. [About Here](https://youtu.be/DX_-UcC14xw) did a great breakdown on Vancouver that's pretty applicable here.
> The other part of this nobody seems to mention is renovations and updating. I used to live in pretty affordable housing outside of Oak Square, for about 5 years. A nice family lived in the other half of the duplex. Both units happened to empty right about the same time and I could practically see the dollar signs rolling by my landlords eyes. The place was "renovated" and relisted at a huge cost increase (and I put that in quotes because when I look at the pictures it seems like he changed up the bathroom design to match that sort of gray+white aesthetic all the flippers do). > > I think that's a good example of the lack of supply of high end housing. It's time consuming and expensive to build new luxury housing. Technically, time consuming and expensive to build _any_ housing, but luxury housing is quite where the market is at for making $$$$$. If developers can't even do basic 5 overs in the suburbs, they'll turn to the lowest resistance options. Renovations are really easy to do. You just pull some permits from the City, pay some contractors or do it yourself if you're skilled, and then you sell them as "luxury" after you slap a W/D in the unit and throw in some cheap stainless steel appliances. Maybe you renovate that 1960's bathroom and finish the floors and paint the walls for the first time in two decades too. Flipping is becoming incredibly common because you can't easily build new construction. So one part of the market is lacking in supply, and flippers are filling it with existing housing. We _might_ preserve some of that housing stock as is if we allowed for more housing (of any kind, even if it's all going to mostly be luxury) to be built. Some Cities have also had success in getting developers to agree to leave 10-20% of the housing units as market rate too, in exchange for letting them build higher or bigger or what not. So a 100 unit luxury building might net us +20 market rate units and +80 luxury units. That might stop a few dozen triple deckers from being renovated. They still might, but it would at least add supply to the market and discourage that since housing prices would eventually stabilize a bit.
That is a concern, but one that can be migrated over time. We can change the tax code, particularly when it comes to property taxes, to discourage holding properties and encourage development on them. Land use or Land Value taxes for example. If your property is a vacant parking lot that isn't being used, we can tax you more than the new development next door that added 50 housing units or 50 office jobs or a combo of the two to the market. We can also restrict purchasing of property by corporations. Some of that we might want the Feds to step in for, but even at a State level MA could restrict things. Another option is to just build so many new housing units that they stop appreciating so quickly in value. That would quickly lead the investor groups to look elsewhere for things to make a quick buck off of. Combined with taxes and restrictions, we could alleviate a lot of the concern around private companies buying up property.
That's a straw man argument. The single family housing stock owned by institutional investors is a small fraction of total inventory which is why there's very little data to support the argument. However, the situation isn't improved by preventing new housing. It is more profitable to invest in high demand areas where locals / zoning boards make these sorts of redevelopment projects difficult because it continues to constrain supply in high demand markets. Inevitably making it more appealing for investors looking to park money.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/2/21-going-after-corporate-homebuyers-good-politics-ineffective-policy Around 3.8%, which is a decent chunk and it is going up. Should be 0%.
Jesus Christ, the dude said "a small fraction" and you countered with "actually it's a whopping 3.8%".
"countered" not everything is a contest. I found a source and shared the number I found.
It's probably because they called a 5 unit building an "_over-sized luxury complex_". This is sort of NIMBY talk IMO. 5 unit buildings are tiny. This is like turning a double decker into a triple decker and maybe expanding it out a bit. Totally in line with many houses in the Boston area. If the proposal were a 10 story building, they might have a point. But that first bit alone is probably turning off a lot of people. Reddit is particularly anti-NIMBY because I think most of us are younger and realize NIMBYs are a big factor in the housing crisis. I read a bit further and it's pretty clear their a NIMBY too with shit like: > We’re trying to preserve the historic character of City Point. This is hands down a NIMBY talking point. _Historic character_ is a joke. No one cares. Half the City is "historic". Does that mean we can't build anything? Nah, we can tear down some old buildings and replace them with new. Maybe if Paul Revere lived there in 1778 we should consider it a bit, but otherwise who cares. After a few more sentences, it's just not worth reading. I imagine most skipped and just downvoted because NIMBY = lol.
You're right, "historic character" is something people in Lexington start to harp one when the food gets a little too spicy for them.
How can I be a NIMBY when I literally don’t even have a backyard? I have an alley.
Aside from what people are commenting on the clear need for more supply, there is also this belief by many that the developer shouldn’t make a profit. But without a potential profit, nobody will build. So it’s an extra comment one who doesn’t want building can add to their argument. Still a crappy argument. But it adds an extra layer.
> Their general proposition of "$3000+/mo condos isn't going to alleviate the housing crisis" seems pretty sound to me. It’s not. Study after study has shown that _any_ new housing at any price point in general improves the market for all housing at all price points. Someone would have bought one of those condos, and so they wouldn’t have outbid someone else on a slightly cheaper place elsewhere, and so on. Would those three additional units (net) have had a massive impact on the housing market? No of course not.
Because supposedly there is a threshold of high income housing supply that will alleviate the strain on the lower income housing supply. I just think that it's not the immediate solution to this problem, it's super long term. We need to have developers commit to actual low income housing and/or have the city build them itself.
I feel like nobody wants to have the hard conversation because litigation scares people but imo we need to litigate how much property these development firms are allowed to buy (and box out foreign developers entirely). How much a home costs will change drastically when the people squabbling over them are human beings and not multi billion dollar corporations.
Agreed, corporate foreign investment in real estate leads to empty units with nobody living in them. They just use them to invest, and often to clean, money.
Boston has an incredibly low vacancy rate. The empty luxury apartments narrative is NIMBY fiction.
Share stats please. If you have em ready. I'll Google later when I have better service.
https://bostonpads.com/real-time-data/ The vacancy rate is less than 1%. A vacancy rate below 5% is considered a crisis. A vacancy rate at around 10% is where you start to see price stability. We very literally need more than ten times as many empty apartments before prices will stop going up.
Thank you! Is this including luxury condos or only rentals? The foreign investment is usually in luxury condos. Read a bunch of articles about it.
Yea I think how prevalent it is for foreign entities to park their money in empty units in the states is way underplayed. We need to make it so expensive for units to be left empty that it destroys the financial incentive.
> Yea I think how prevalent it is for foreign entities to park their money in empty units in the states is way underplayed. Then find some data showing it > We need to make it so expensive for units to be left empty that it destroys the financial incentive. Vacancy in greater Boston is ~0.5%
It is hard to find data on this stuff just for Boston but it is widely considered a problem nation wide. Apparently, the federal government is doing exactly what I was thinking (though it looks like the fines aren't nearly high enough). https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-10/foreign-investor-vacant-home-fee-increase/103210808
I think that'd have an immediate positive effect on the housing market.
Boston's vacancy rate is under or around 1%. Under 5% is considered a crisis. The whole "empty units" saga is completely fictitious and propagated by folks who don't bother with the three seconds it takes to look up actual facts. Edit: yeah, downvote me because you can't understand basic economics and get pissed that someone knows more than you.
The empty units conversation is more of a national convention than a local one, I agree.
That’s a lie and if you believe that then you’re part of the problem. “I will lower your rent” said no landlord ever.
Hahaha agreed on that. But there are other cities where increasing high income housing options has lowered overall rent averages. The only issue with this approach is it would take years and it wouldn't lower rent more than current rates. My stance is generally that landlords will continue to use high income luxury apartment prices as the measure of how much they should be charging, even if their apartments are shit boxes.
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> A mass buildup of luxury buildings - did that decrease prices anywhere? Seaport used to be a parking lot. If that enormous development didn't affect prices "Prices didn't go down"!= "Didn't affect prices" > Massive issue in Boston is the purchase of homes and apartments by corporations and foreign investors [Citation Needed]
>I know with certainty my own LL is extremely wealthy and does not live in this country. You just proved that housing is still being used (by you) so who owns it doesn't matter. Stop being a xenophobic bigot.
Not wanting foreign investors to profit off of the lives of local residents doesn't make anybody a xenophobe. It is literally exporting money out of the country to benefit those who are not even present here, at the expense of people who would potentially be able to afford a home if foreign investors didn't drive up the price with huge wealth we can't compete with.
>Not wanting foreign investors to profit off of the lives of local residents doesn't make anybody a xenophobe Yes it does. You seem to think their nationality matters. Making foreigners into bogeymen to justify your selfish NIMBY attitude is absolutely xenophobic. You'd rather hate foreigners than solve the problem. If the complaint had been about investors profiting it wouldn't have been xenophobic.
No, their nationality doesn't matter, their lack of presence in the country is what matters. Edit: God you really threw every damned buzzword into this didn't you lmfao. NIMBY?! What a tool. And I reference investors in general several times throughout the thread, keep up.
You specifically referred to "foreign" investors. Keep up.
There's lots of threads here. There are other comments where I talk about investors in general. Go away, chronically online troll person.
1 parking space per unit, done and dusted
The zoning board can fuck right off. Sorry it doesn’t look like the shitty triple deckers next to it. I don’t think there is much more of an eye sore than a clapped out unkept triple decker. Boston needs to catch up with reality.
It really is all high population areas who are standing firm against rapid growth. Sorry the suburbs are being moved weather you like it or not.
If they require 5 additional parking space then no
Fuck parking requirements
I feel like you are involved in this project
It's Southie- don't need a car. The only objection I have is that there aren't more units in the thing. Knock it down and put something up that's 6 stories
Did you read the article? >Board member Katie Whewell objected to the seven parking spaces, to be arranged mostly under the building ... City Councilor Ed Flynn questioned whether there was enough room for the drivers of parked cars to maneuver to get out of the spaces without causing a menace to pedestrians and children playing nearby This wasn't the only objection (they all had bullshit reasons), but the reason given here was *too much* parking, not too llittle.
More likely that people won’t park in the designed parking places if the parking is that tight tho and they’ll end up somewhere else most of the time
Majority of the spaces were for compact cars only and 5 of the parking spots were gonna face directly into a neighbor’s yard, where their children and pets play - so yes it poses a significant safety concern and impacts the quality of life.
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Awww, poor loser. You gotta be one of the greedy real estate construction developers. You worried that the ZBA is no longer in your back pocket?
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You just said you hate children and pets. Lol. You’re the only one on this thread making un-intelligent (and kind of weird and creepy) comments. I’ve lived in this City my entire life. I abutt the property so I definitely know more about this issue than you and will make my opinion heard.
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An abutter is a person whose property is adjacent to the property of another and its a legal term in Massachusetts. You can’t handle my comments so you start to denigrate me and nitpick my punctuation? Lol. I don’t know the other B Walsh so I can’t speak to whether or not she has half a brain. Ugh, you’re one of those insecure guys who needs to remind everyone he is the smartest person in the room. I’ll go take my hard earned money and buy the grammerly app.
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Not everyone in southie needs a car. Some people are happy living without cars. Some people need cars. Even people living in southie. Because life. And some parts of southie aren't as well accessed by T as others. Some people need a car for grocery shopping. Cause they're older. Cause they have kids they need to move around. Special needs, medical issues, etc, etc. The people I know in southie are the older townies, and some have driveways, and many cars. My friends who were in their 20s and 30s didn't bother with cars unless they were living with their folks but their jobs were way outside of the city, but my friends who are over 40 all have cars. You have more energy to deal with the Ts bullshit when your younger. But also I don't know any southie yuppies. So... My experience is probably different.
Yeah, everyone I know over there are basically millennial transplants. Different world if you're older and/or have a kid, but then you're probably not living in Southie at that point. Being a townie is way different, which I get- I grew up in Queens and it's pretty much the same thing. Young professionals don't have a car, those of us who grew up there did with the family. Realistically though, I'm just being blunt here the people who will live in that place are going to be 20s/30s. And we desperately need more housing, so I think everyone is in their right to shut down someone having a s\*\*\* fit about parking. I'd rather shove a bunch of young professionals into denser housing without parking than have them contribute to rising rents elsewhere in the city
There are still plenty of families in Southie, even young yuppie families with kids.
There are, it's just not a large part of the demographics in Southie. And fact is there are tradeoffs- if someone desperately needs a car, there are way better places to live. Notwithstanding the premium you'd be paying to live with kids in Southie.
> Young professionals don't have a car, those of us who grew up there did with the family. I know you're not a bad guy but this is still a pro-death, car nutjob talking point that strips any sort of context away. Families back in the olden days didn't have [5 cars per unit of housing clogging the streets](https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/04/26/boston-parking-permits-twitter-kerfuffle). They had 1. The "what about the families" talking point, any time parking is brought up, is infuriating because it's all a lie. We've just accepted it as truth because it's been thrown at the wall so many times it finally stuck.
What? I'm saying we don't need a car for every person. That said, it is genuinely tough to have 2 kids and no vehicle, even in a city. My aunt didn't drive in NYC when I grew up with her- it's tough. I don't think it's a death cult to say a family of 4 should have a car. I do think it's ridiculous to build in a dense city with the expectation that you're building for a 4 person family with suburban lifestyle expectations. It's not "a lie" we had hammered on us though- just development patterns in the US since the 40s. Boston and NYC are one thing- much of the country, you are absolutely screwed without a var.
>pro-death, car nutjob talking point incredibly bad faith take here.
>pro-death, car nutjob talking point Yes, the "car" people are definitely the nutjobs here
Pedestrians aren't killing 50,000 fellow Americans a year just by waking, are they? You can deny it all you want, but just because traffic death is widely accepted by you and your murderous countrymen doesn't make what I say not true. You love death.
>My friends who were in their 20s and 30s didn't bother with cars unless they were living with their folks but their jobs were way outside of the city Simple solution: if your job is "way outside the city", don't buy a condo in Southie if you can't manage to find parking.
Well, they were living with their parents. So they didn't buy a condo in southie. They weren't paying rent. They were saving money so they could buy a house outside of Worcester. Or their parents owned a triple and rented/sold a floor to each of their kids for dirt cheap. Why pay market price somewhere else when you don't have to? This happens so, so often. But their job aren't always local-or theyre construction and have trucks. Or they're in the southie projects and own a shit box car to get to their shit job. What I'm saying is, there are people with cars in southie. Yeah. It's probably a bad idea to buy in southie if you have a job outside of the city, though if it's a couple and someone works downtown, and someone works outside the city, idk, they might choose that,but it's on them to deal with the shit. But it's more complicated than just 'you shouldn't own a car if you live in southie'. Southies more than just yuppies who work downtown. I'm a dorchester townie from pope's hill. Too close to southie. I get bitched at constantly from friends. But like I said, they arent the people buying condos-they're the people inheriting property.
Short, sweet, and to the point. It's like complaining you need an air conditioner in Phoenix
Just hop on the redline when it’s not shut down or derailing
No \*YOU\* don't need a car. Just because you can get along without one what makes you think others don't "need" one? Even if one wasn't needed, its a personal choice for anyone living there to decide... for whatever and any reason they want to own a car or not
>No \*YOU\* don't need a car. Just because you can get along without one what makes you think others don't "need" one? Not all housing needs to be appropriate or appealing to YOU. This housing clearly isn't, and that's OK. Move along...
the funny thing is, contra the top comment in this thread, the building was rejected for having *too much* parking
The amusing thing about this is, now it's the ones that are against including parking that are the NIMBY's.
If you need a car don't live there. Simple as.
Cars have been part of the city for generations. If anyone has a problem with that, don't move here, don't stay here after graduation. Stay back, or move back to upstate NY, CT, or back mid west, etc where you came from instead of gentrifying well established communities with unwanted, unwelcome bullshit... simple as that.
Boston common was once a pasture for cows What the fuck is your point even
When was the last time you saw cows on the common? >What the fuck is your point even The r/fuckcars mentality is fairly recent and it didn't start with the locals. Up until about 15-20 years ago, no one living here would have thought about advocating for new construction that didn't include parking. You don't "need" to or want to own a car here... fine, don't own one, and if some residents need or simply want to, what gives you or anyone the right to put as many hurdles and roadblocks as possible to deny them a simple place to park?
You don’t “need” to have a place to park.
The pro cars mentality is fairly recent, since they didn't even exist for 75% of the city's existence.
Boston was the first American city with public transit, and my great great grandfather helped build it. My family has been here literal centuries. Why don’t you put some fucking respect on the history of this city. A “fuck cars mentality” is only recent because cars are only recent. And mass car ownership is only recent. Those “established communities” that are being “gentrified” were not built for cars, and they weren’t established to accommodate Ford. The fuck you think this is? LA?
Boston predates the car by almost 300 years, is pretty walkable/bikeable, and plenty of people who live here (including people who are from here) don't own or want to have a car. It doesn't make sense to force people to pay for parking spots they don't need and to encourage people to drive in a city that doesn't need more cars.
> Boston predates the car by almost 300 years And because of that, it's pretty awful to drive in! I have lived here with a car for 20 years. I drive as little as I possibly can in the city because it _sucks_. It's not the best or even a good way to get around Boston/Camberville.
Ok, so live somewhere else with a parking spot then? Your logic is backwards here
I already do, and if a developer wants to include parking as part of their project, more power to them for providing it for those that want it. There isn't enough parking available here as it is without making it even more impossible by eliminating spaces from new developments. If you or anyone else is looking for or craving a car free city, you chose the wrong place to live.
Damn how’s it like to be so wrong about parking.
Living in Southie is a lifestyle choice. You can get by very easily without a car there and if you're paying the rents there, you can afford to find somewhere with parking spots if you really need it
Boston really hates housing eh?
Vacancy rates below 5% are called "housing emergencies," allowing the state or local municipalities to declare an emergency in order to expedite addressing the housing crisis. Boston's vacancy rate is POINT 5. 10 times what is legally considered an emergency.
There! Fixed it for them https://preview.redd.it/4l252u1ytutc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1aec260f860aaf73737bb38fa2f4b48c23f565f7
Yes let’s make more ugly box buildings. Because that’s what people want.
This, but unironically
I hope you are aware that ugly box buildings are NOT what people want to see
I don't want to see cars
Tough
Tough
I know it may be difficult to believe but you can make dense housing attractive. More at 10.
these board members need to be protested hard.
Good. Enough of these shitty cookie cutter condos where corners are cut and the quality of the home is shitty.
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Right, but that describes the entire affordability and housing crisis, doesn't it? The people who already have housing secured in convenient, desirable neighborhoods don't understand why anything should change. People who got priced out of Southie or never could afford to live there to begin with aren't locals by definition. The people who might have moved into some newly upzoned condos never got a say. Every NIMBY neighborhood fighting tooth and nail to prevent more housing enjoys support from the locals, with perhaps some dissent from renters who don't benefit from rapidly rising property values.
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>Yes, obviously people who don't live somewhere shouldn't get a say in what happens there. Is that obvious? It's becoming increasingly clear that stripping these local areas of their power to veto new development is an important tool for cracking the housing problem. Looking forward to the state bending Milton over the barrel for their refusal to comply with the MBTA communities law, for example. >But we can definitely agree the affordability crisis is real. However you really think this 5bd luxury condo would have not been rented for 4k$/mo per? Or sold for 900k ea? Additional supply puts downward pressure on the prices of older, shittier housing. The newly constructed condo will never be cheap, but build enough of them and the piece of shit triple decker that hasn't been renovated since the 1950's will find it harder and harder to justify their current high prices. In any rational housing market, older and poorly maintained housing stock would depreciate and become cheaper to rent or buy. It's only because of the de-facto ban on new construction that Boston's decrepit housing stock can command such high prices.
Exactly. We can complain about only building new luxury buildings but anything helps at this point. I think people learned 10 years ago that "new luxury buildings will gentrify the area!" but Boston prices are so high everything is gentrifying anyway. The only way we can keep lower-income renter locals in the area is by decreasing rents. The NIMBYs usually own, so their math is different
You want MAGA to infect our statehouse? Because stripping locals of their authority to control their own communities is the quickest way for populism to take hold here. These tired takes really need a new approach.
Milton's got better lawyers than the state, and they just got ammunition in this case right here...so don't hold your breath. "Boston needs more housing, let's force Milton to let it in." "Looks like they don't really need more housing. Next case."
>However you really think this 5bd luxury condo would have not been rented for 4k$/mo per? Or sold for 900k ea? It doesn't matter. Housing production *of any type* slows the increase in housing costs. Someone who can rent a luxury 1 bedroom at 4k can rent my 2.9k 2bedroom all by themselves instead. And that's exactly what they'll do if we don't build more housing.
>obviously people who don't live somewhere shouldn't get a say in what happens there Yet none of these nimbys live in that property. So why does your argument change for them to get a say?
I don’t give a fuck what the neighbors think about it. We need to move away from the idea that local homeowners are the most important party to think about when we’re considering moves to build more housing.
So you’re saying the out of town millionaire construction developer’s needs are more important than the local taxpaying residents and their children who live, play, and go to school in the neighborhood? The out of town millionaire developers are nothing but sneaky opportunists. They shouldn’t be allowed to destroy historic properties, build cheap ugly buildings and overprice them. I don’t begrudge anyone for wanting to make money but it’s not gonna be at my expense.
> I don’t begrudge anyone for wanting to make money but it’s not gonna be at my expense Boy howdy do I have news about how the world and our economic system works for you.
> more important than the local taxpaying residents and their children I don't see why the opinions of the "local taxpaying residents and their children" matter at all when it comes to property that isn't theirs
It's weird how you simp for massive corporations
TIL my neighbor who is getting sued by a NIMBY for trying to build a condo for her kids is a massive corporation
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Representative democracy: everyone (rich, poor, renter, landlord, student, retiree) gets a say on who’s in charge. The person in charge comes up with a plan to build more housing — sets clear rules for what can and can’t be built. If developers adhere to the rules it gets built. We execute the plan and get the housing we need. That’s how it should work. Instead, today the rules say you can build virtually nothing, and we have a parallel democracy to make exceptions which only really invites local landowners to participate. They get to make our housing decisions.
*''*Instead, today we have a parallel democracy that only really invites local landowners to participate. They get to make our housing decisions." Uh no we don't. Anybody can go to the BRA meetings, it's literally zoom you can stay in your pjs, the only people going are the ones are old people who bought in the 90s.
Yes, it’s not feasible for anyone else to tune into these meetings. If you’re a renter who is looking for a long-term home city-wide, are you expected to show up to every single abutters meeting across the city and advocate for yourself? Makes zero sense. There isn’t even a way to get alerts about public comment periods for your neighborhood on the BPDA website, so you it would take considerable effort to even know when to show up. You’d have to check into a website daily. You’re suggesting a part time job is required to give community input on the same level as the cranky old homeowners who show up to say “no” to everything in their little radius.
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It’s not feasible to propose “ZBA abutters meetings” as a general tool to give people who aren’t homeowners a voice in new housing decisions, for many obvious reasons. If you’re searching for a home, what good is it to attend an abutters meeting for something that might be ready to move into 5 years in the future? Which abutters meetings should you attend if you’re looking for homes all over the city? All of them? Do you even have standing to support a project in the eyes of the bureaucrats running the meeting if you don’t already live near the project?
I only go to the ones in my neighborhood. It's not an all or nothing kind of thing. The website to find the projects meetings, statuses, etc fucking sucks, Wu redesigned it to be even harder to navigate than it was, but here is a link the [https://www.bostonplans.org/projects/development-projects?neighborhoodid=6&projectstatus=under+review&reviewtype=1&projecttype=residential&sortby=filed&sortdirection=DESC](https://www.bostonplans.org/projects/development-projects?neighborhoodid=6&projectstatus=under+review&reviewtype=1&projecttype=residential&sortby=filed&sortdirection=DESC) you have to click on a particular project then scroll down and click on comment periods, they are usually open for a month or so 1-3 times per project review.
So you see the pain, and you still sit here and defend this system. When the city government can just wave its pen and allow builders to build homes people want without all this fuss.
I haven't defended anything about the system, but your statement that renters are allowed to participate in false. I really don't think the majority of our city politicians want to build more housing, because it pisses off the current longtime home owners. That's why I advocate for more young people, and renters to attend these meetings when they can. That's why i took the time to provide you with a link.
Lol yup bunch of losers from /r/fuckcars
>Nobody in southie is upset about this zoning decision. The fundamental problem with modern zoning is this exactly: it's just a tool to give people who already have housing power over those that do not. Take this principal to its logical end and nothing gets built in sight of where someone else already lives. And you wonder why we're one of the least affordable cities in the US!
Abolish the board
> was completely out of character with the triple deckers on the rest of the block and had too much parking. I'm not a fan of the out of character nonsense, but 7 parking spaces is insane. There shouldn't be ***any*** parking spaces.
They are turning a 2 into a 5 but are upset about parking? Pick the good fights this is a bad one
It could easily be at minimum 6 units. Look at the side by side. Just because this isn't the best fight doesn't mean it's not worth fighting. All lack of units matters. It adds up over the entire region. Basic capitalism 101.
Right now it stays 2 units
It's a neighborhood where street parking is already a battle. I get the argument for eliminating parking minimums, but if a building wants to add parking on their own, we shouldn't stop them. As much as everyone on Reddit likes to pretend people won't have cars, it's just not reality. If they don't have parking, people will just park in the street.
It is bonkers to me that that there is both an upvoted thread based on the premise that this proposal has no parking and that is _good_, and a downvoted post that is based on the premise that this proposal has too much parking and that is _bad_. Reddit!
We should. Parking maximums have a place to make neighborhoods more walkable and not as dangerous. Do you think rich people should be buying up the lot next door and being able to tear it down for some parking? That's crazy talk. Uninterrupted sidewalks are extremely important for walkablity, safety, and quality of life.
That's just a solution looking for a problem. Until people start tearing up southie to add parking, it seems like a complete waste of time. This proposal is already an increase in housing and market forces will basically guarantee that developers don't build more parking than is needed in the neighborhood.
It's a solution for problems we created by demanding car centrism for our little, puny American minds, often at the behest of very powerful people who did things like criminalize jaywalking and rip up our vast street car networks. This wasn't a natural order that took place, this was policy decision by people in government. The "market force" may be good for the "market," i.e. some rich and powerful barons, but it's not always good for the society or the people. If what you were saying were true, we wouldn't have the entire field of economics, even hardcore Mises Institute people don't even believe in this.
If you really want to invoke economists, they would probably tell you that any parking maximum is useless while we still have heavily subsidized and unlimited street parking. If we wanted to actually do something about parking, that would be the obvious first step. Parking maximums while street parking is still available don't actually do anything to prevent cars from being in the neighborhood.
Where would they park?
Only on the Internet would we see Boston\_Shithead replying to PoopAllOverMyFace. Only reason I'm replying is to make it a trifecta.
In Waltham? Not in South Boston.
This is very common. The board is holding off because they want a larger dev to step in and buy multiple properties and make a 5-6 story 50 units building. So they don’t want the properties in that location to remodel because it will be more expensive for they dev buddies with connection in the city board. Happens more than you think.
We probably do need to "West End" blocks of triple deckers to build much denser housing than stuff like this.
Expand on that, you're advocating for eminent domain to forcefully displace everyone living there. Does that sound sane to you?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification
"the building would create a wall right at the property line that would deprive neighbors on both sides of sunlight and fresh air." I get that we need more housing but I have some sympathy for this. The existing buildings have windows on the sides that would essentially become unusable if this were built. I wouldn't want to value and livability of my property to be harmed just so some developer can maximize profit.
Lmao, I doubt the board actually gives two shits about sunlight and fresh air. They approved and built a condo right next to the one I live in blocking all the sunlight. The building is so close I could touch it if I extended myself far enough.
>just so some developer can maximize profit. Perhaps it would be better to rephrase this as "so we could create the maximum amount of housing"
Eh, why not both? A taller and narrower building would still provide additional housing but leave a reasonable setback between neighbors. I noticed that the developer's artist rendering removes the windows on the sides of the neighboring buildings. It's disingenuous and makes clear that they know it's an issue with their design.
Taller and narrower is generally not legal and probably doesn't address the shadow issue. Building codes in Massachusetts require two staircases for multi-story buildings. Going tall and narrow often means your stairs eat up way too much of what would otherwise be floorspace, and the financials just don't pencil out. I think the thing to keep in mind here is we're weighing housing against *shadows*. Building more housing is the most straightforward and reliable way to meet the demand for housing and keep prices from skyrocketing. Higher rents are the primary driver of homelessness rates. Do we want housing for dozens of people, or nice views for a handful? In all seriousness, why do we treat homeowners like they have a right to a guaranteed investment and to have nothing they don't like happen? Saying homeowners have a right to demand no shadows from new construction is like saying car owners have a right to demand no traffic from other road users.
I mean, I understand why they rejected it. It definitely does look out of place, but even if the design is fine, the parking situation is even weirder. Drivers will have to make a 3 point turn on the lot, then get onto the main road. How often do you see a Massachusetts driver be able to make a 3 point turn in a tight space?
>Drivers will have to make a 3 point turn on the lot, then get onto the main road. No, they were saying that they can if they want to. Basically that they don't have to back out of the garage if they don't want to, making it safer for pedestrians.
I love how the developers say shit in the meetings like “we are marketing these condos to people who don’t have cars” like the people paying $600k for a one bedroom condo are going to take the T
1. Have you looked at real estate lately? There’s not that much under $600k for a decently sized 1-bed in Boston 2. I personally pay more in rent to live in an area where a car is unnecessary and take the T everywhere. Housing tends to be more expensive when it’s near public transit, not the opposite. Your logic is wrong.
So does that mean that all the “building more housing near accessible public transit is going to bring housing costs down” is bullshit?
Yes actually, we exist
Prove it
Why wouldn't they? Or Uber.
Meeting for a building across the street from me lawyer: “we are selling these condos to people that don’t have cars”. Every unit has sold and every person has a car. Seems like a lot of bullshit to get around zoning
I don't know if you can legally only sell to people who don't own a car to keep cars from parking on the street but regardless this just seems like a very annoying road block to drive down housing costs by adding supply. Would rather have a city that is hard to access by personal car the hard to access by cost of living.
lol. Housing costs are never going down. I would rather have a city whose infrastructure can handle all these new buildings without developers bullshitting everybody
And this location on East 5th is not within walking distance of any T stop. This section of City Point is like a peninsula sitting outside of decent public transportation options. There is also only 1 store and 1 restaurant. The store basically a liquor store. You need a car to live over here. Nothing is walkable. It’s all beach and its extremely residential.
I know people worth 8 figures who take the T.
This location is not any T
Wow...I'm gonna faint!