Photo courtesy of the city of New Bedford
Joshua Amaral
Director of Housing and Community Development, city of New Bedford
Industry experience: 10 years
Age: 32
Joshua Amaral is steeped in efforts to make New Bedford better – even running for School Committee before he was out of college. Now, he’s leading the city’s drive to bring in more housing development, including market-rate projects. Amaral likens the city’s strategy to a “kitchen sink approach” where his department pushes on everything from re-tenanting vacant buildings through streamlining the permitting process and creating as-of-right development zones. He’s held his current position for three years, and before that spent seven years in various roles at PACE, the city’s anti-poverty agency. That job helped introduce him to the multifaceted nature of the city’s housing shortage.
Q: A big part of New Bedford’s housing strategy is its eagerness to attract developers from outside the South Coast. What’s your elevator pitch to them, because it’s clearly more than the city’s new MBTA commuter rail connection to Boston?
A: We’re a city on the rise. The economy here is doing much better, with relatively low unemployment compared to where cities like New Bedford have been historically. And our industries are doing well, whether that’s offshore wind, fishing, the social service sector, the health care sector, New Bedford has a an industrial park that’s full and to the point that we’re looking to develop another one.
We have deep relationships with all the financing agencies that one might encounter, so we have a pretty stocked-up pipeline when it comes to the state’s HDIP program or other subsidy sources that are needed to make development happen. And we do some of the work internally as a city that, in other communities, is left to solely the development community to take on. So, I would say, we’re a true partner, and we take the approach that we need to hustle for that investment.
Q: For someone who knows New Bedford as a place of fish and whales, what are the big economic drivers here? What’s powering the demand for new market-rate housing?
A: Our rich maritime history is still strong. New Bedford is still the number-one fishing port in America, and we’re proud of that. But we’ve looked at diversify our portfolio of maritime businesses – arguably New Bedford has been the primary city for offshore wind staging on the East Coast.
On the way here, I passed an underwater robotics company.
Yep. We’re looking at different ways to embrace technology, particularly technology as it pertains to wind. And so there’s been talk of innovation in that sector taking root here. We have a robust health care sector here, as well. A lot of the best-paying jobs in the region are, frankly, in healthcare.
Q: And city data shows rents are on the rise here. What’s been fueling that?
A: Like anywhere else, rents go up in response to supply and demand, and our supply’s not meeting the demand. Some of that demand is a response to all the good stuff that we have going on that makes New Bedford a desirable place, and I think the statewide housing crunch has a lot to do with it as well. A lot of people are moving here because it’s more affordable than wherever they were before, so they’re moving here for the marginal $200 to $400 a month, or the $1,000 a month that might be different from here to Boston.
It’s really putting pressure on New Bedford residents that are not acclimated to higher rents. It wasn’t too long ago that you could find a quality apartment in New Bedford for $1,000 or $1,200 a month. And in a relatively short amount of time those opportunities have pretty much dried up, and the average one-bedroom apartment, now, is in the $1,400 to $1,500 range. Two-bedrooms are between that and $2,000.
Q: You say the city is taking steps to smooth the way for developers. When a developer comes to you, what does that permitting journey look like?
A: From the inception of a project, we want to scope out what the permitting process will look like, so we have very clear expectations early on. Our attitude should be: How do we do what we need to do to make this project work?
We meet with developers early, so even at a conceptual stage, we’ll pull together all of the permitting departments to review just the concept and give some initial feedback and then may have several other checkpoints along the way to keep things rolling. Our zoning and planning boards have seen the value in adding housing units, and so we try to evaluate projects not from a lens of, “Are you clearing this really, really high bar?”
It’s tangential to permitting, but we’ve been just as involved in helping projects get financed. So, whether it’s using local resources to make deals pencil out or help navigating state and federal funding sources to do that, we can get creative making projects work. If there’s a pool of money available to aid in housing development, we have conceived of a pipeline to access it, and we’re acquainted with what the requirements are in those programs who the key decision makers are in those programs. If you’re an emerging developer across the state and you’ve been taking an interest in New Bedford, or you’d like to learn more about those projects we want to talk to you.
Q: You’re suggesting that there’s a political consensus in the city to build more housing, including more market-rate housing. How old is that? What drives that?
A: I think it started with the production of our housing plan, “Building New Bedford,” in 2023. We were able to really establish this consensus that what we face, fundamentally, is a supply and demand challenge, and so we should be trying to produce every new unit of housing that we can.
Oftentimes, frankly, given the wealth of subsidies that are out there, it’s easier to produce income-restricted housing than it is to produce market-rate housing in New Bedford. But we also recognize that there are residents who have a hard time finding housing, who also make too much money to qualify for income-restricted units. And so, if we’re not really intentional trying to build housing at all income levels, it won’t get done.
We’re also interested in new first-time homebuyer opportunities, whether that’s condominiums or new single-family developments in parts of the city where that makes sense. New Bedford’s not entirely urban core, right? We have suburban wings, and so we still have some sensitivity to where the right places are to reduce parking requirements
We can quibble about individual projects from time to time, but in general, there’s widespread consensus between our mayor, city councilors, legislative delegation and so on that these projects are worth doing, and that we have to hustle to get them to happen.
Amaral’s Picks for New Bedford’s Five Best Dishes
- Portuguese steak from Café Mimo
- Pastel de nata from Goulart Square Bakery
- Pan-seared scallops at The Black Whale
- Linguica cheese roll from The Golden Greek
- Shrimp Mozambique from Antonio’s
