You’d think Las Vegas billionaire Steve Wynn wanted to level Coolidge Corner and install a giant casino from the overwrought letters and comments that have lately poured into the local papers from some of Brookline’s leading citizens.

One town meeting member warned of a wave of “carpetbagging” opportunists on the loose, while a Brookline selectwoman warned the town faces a looming “disaster.”

“Say goodbye to Coolidge Corner,” one resident cryptically announced at recent public meeting.

It’s not a casino or a mall that has Brookline on edge, but rather that other grave threat from which local officials across the Bay State have done their best to spare us all – the humble apartment building.

A flurry of proposed apartment projects, including a glass and steel luxury high-rise planned for Coolidge Corner, has stoked fears that Brookline’s school system, already in the midst of an enrollment boom, will see even more families with young children move to town.

Now admittedly, there are a large number of new apartment projects. Developers are scrambling to get their proposals in because Brookline is close to meeting the requirements of the state’s affordable housing law, Chapter 40B. Once that happens, would-be apartment builders are on their own, without any state help to cut through local zoning and NIMBY opposition that has long stifled new construction of rental housing across the state.

Yet the fear that all these new apartments will overload the Brookline school system with young children is misplaced. As is often the case with opposition to new apartment buildings, NIMBY opponents are whipping out the school cost card when in fact, stats clearly show enrollment is being driven by young families buying homes and condos in town.

Scott Van Voorhis

Numbers Don’t Add Up

There’s no denying that Brookline has seen a big jump in school enrollment. The excellent reputation of the Brookline public schools – combined with the struggles neighboring Boston and Cambridge have had with their own systems – have made it a magnet for parents looking for an alternative to pricey private schools.

Brookline schools added 1,070 students between 2006 and 2013, a 19 percent increase, according to a report written by a pair of planners involved in Brookline politics. The town is now weighing plans to expand its high school.
And there’s no denying that the town is seeing a sudden surge in new apartment projects, for the aforementioned reasons. Brookline is currently fielding 10 proposals for new apartments projects, including 14- and 21-story high-rises in Coolidge Corner. Most have a majority of market-rate units, with a contingent of subsidized units to be rented out at below market rates.

Selectman Nancy Daly was blunt in her assessment, blaming the number of new developments for the growing number of students in the town’s schools and blasting the state’s 40B affordable housing law as “disaster for this town,” The Boston Globe recently reported.

But a look at what’s being proposed and what has driven school enrollment in the past shows that there is no direct line between apartments built and more children showing up in the town’s schools.

During the years school enrollment started to take off in Brookline, a very different trend was taking place as relates to the number of renters in town, including families living in apartments.

Simply put, their numbers began to fall.

Brookline saw 1,181 renters leave town between 2000 and 2010. While most of these renters were single or couples without children, also included in this group were 406 families with children, according to a 2013 report written by Linda Olson Pehlke and Larry Koff.

So where were all the new schoolchildren coming from? Well, the number of families living in houses or condos in Brookline rose by 625 from 2000 to 2010.

Another report by a committee formed to examine the space needs of Brookline’s schools points to the 1,000 new condo units, some newly built, others converted rentals, which took shape in town between 1990 and 2010, as the draw for all those young families with children.

Overall, the percentage of renters has declined, not risen, in Brookline as school enrollment has jumped.

A Convenient Scapegoat

Now maybe some families, eager to get their children into Brookline’s fine schools, will rush to spend thousands of dollars a month to rent apartments in the 21-story high-rise in Coolidge Corner (if it ever gets built).

But based on the patterns in Greater Boston, expensive, high-rise apartments are more likely to be attractive to a mix of young professionals – some couples, some not – and empty nesters looking to downsize. This latter group may very well include residents of Brookline who have sold their homes and are grateful to have found a way to stay in the community they spent years raising children in.

It’s hardly like the apartments at the proposed Coolidge Corner mini-tower are designed to accommodate an influx of young families. Most of the units – 181 – will have one bedroom, with 94 two-bedroom units and 32 three-bedroom units.

All of the bevy of recent projects proposed under the 40B affordable housing law will also include another sizable benefit – dozens of subsidized apartments to be rented out at below market rates.

In a town where the median price of a home is $1.6 million, that housing is badly needed.

A rendering of Chestnut Hill Realty’s proposed 320-unit apartment tower in Coolidge Corner.

So what the hand-wringing? Unfortunately, in more than a few Boston suburbs, new apartment buildings have become convenient scapegoats for local politicians eager to deflect anger over rising school costs.

The reality is that costs and enrollment are rising because young families, eager for their children to get the best possible education, are buying homes and condos in communities with great school systems, and Brookline has one of the best.

It’s not a trend that is easily pointed to when scoring political points, like a new apartment building going up, but it is real nonetheless.

And short of banning young families with children from buying homes in town, it is a trend Brookline and many other communities will have to learn to live with – and may even eventually appreciate.

After all, having such great schools that families are clamoring to purchase property is a problem many communities would love to have.