With home ownership at the heart of issues like displacement and the racial wealth gap, one candidate for mayor says she’ll push for more home ownership help and seek “a better balance” between condominium and apartment construction.
When it comes to combatting ever more expensive housing prices and rents, Boston mayors have pretty much drawn from the same playbook over the past quarter-century.
The late Thomas M. Menino and his successor, Marty Walsh, relentlessly pushed new construction and new supply as the answer to rising costs, even after it clearly led to a preponderance of luxury condominiums and apartments.
Along the way, the city’s last two mayors did their level best to squeeze as many affordable units out of developers as possible, whether in specific developments or via payments to the city’s housing fund.
Whether that strategy is actually working is a matter of much debate, though, with prices and rents higher than they have ever been before in neighborhoods across the city.
But with the election of the city’s next mayor come Nov. 2, City Hall’s long-standing approach to the housing crisis is poised to undergo a major shift.
City Councilor Michelle Wu, the outspoken progressive, has long made it clear that she plans to shake up the way Boston deals with this chronic issue.
Wu has embraced reviving some form of rental control, while also having proposed scrapping the city’s power development arm, the Boston Planning & Development Agency.
Her rival, City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, has cast herself as the more practically-minded counterpoint to Wu and her big, transformative ideas.
But Essaibi George, during an interview last week with Banker & Tradesman editors and reporters, also made clear she also believes the city’s efforts on the housing front are in need of a makeover.
Idea Grounded in Racial Equity
Essaibi George, a former teacher, has been vocal on the campaign trail about her desire to boost homeownership in Boston in order to help city residents build equity.
It’s also an idea that has been gaining traction among housing advocates as a way to build wealth among historically disadvantaged communities.
A 2015 Boston Fed report that found the median net worth of area Black families to be just $8, compared to $250,000 for their white counterparts, who also more likely to homeowners, thrust the issue into the forefront.
Essaibi George, in her meeting with B&T, said she would like to get more city residents into their own homes through subsidies for “first-generation” home buyers whose families have always been tenants.
That could mean buying a two-, three- or four-family home and renting out the other units, a path to homeownership often taken by prior generations of city residents, she noted.
The city, for example, could dip into is stock of publicly-owned land in order to ease the way for new condos or other projects featuring for-sale units, she suggested, citing a proposal put forth by fellow City Councilor Andrea Campbell during her own preliminary election campaign.
But Essaibi George also stressed that along with more homeownership opportunities, she would like to less emphasis on building new rental projects in the city’s neighborhoods.
“I think we need a better balance,” Essaibi George said. “I do think there has been an overemphasis on the rental market.”
A Savvy Play? Or Caving to NIMBYs?
New condo or other homeownership projects would be more likely to win neighborhood approval, since local residents could potentially own a piece of it by buying a unit, she argued.
“If Bostonians and neighbors actually see an opportunity for themselves to either own a piece of that project, or for their kids to own a piece of that project, it really does change the temperature of a room,” Essaibi George said.
It’s not as eye-catching as some of Wu’s proposals, but what Essaibi George is talking about would certainly represent a shift in city housing policy.
What to make of it is another issue, though.
Is this a sign that Essaibi George, a veteran of neighborhood organizations, is savvy about how to get new housing proposals through the hoops in change-resistant neighborhoods?
Or is it a cave to the NIMBY types who are typically the loudest voices in the room during hearings on new housing proposals?
Sadly, rental housing has been a lightning rod for the antis, both in Boston and in many suburban neighborhoods as well.
Of course, the mayor can’t control the financing markets – developers aren’t going to convert proposed apartments into condos if the numbers don’t work.
But a mayor who is cool to new rental housing could definitely have an impact. It’s already tough going through the gauntlet of neighborhood hearings, and the lengthy City Hall permitting process, without wondering whether the mayor has your back.
And there is the possibility such a shift could result not in more homeownerships opportunities, but less. Developers who would rather build apartments may opt to build nothing instead.
That would be an unfortunate outcome given Essaibi George also made pretty clear she wants to be seen as the candidate of growth, speaking at length of ways to streamline the city’s permitting process.
City Needs Strategic Rethink
Still, Essaibi George’s preference for condos and townhomes over rentals is of a piece with Wu’s skepticism of luxury housing, who in a July debate dubbed the Seaport “a playground for the rich.”
We are clearly at the end of an era when mayors were cheerleaders for pretty much all types of new housing construction in the theory that growing supply would eventually put a check on prices and rents.
“There is certainly a supply response to that, but Boston is not going to magically become less expensive to live in overnight,” Essaibi George said. “Production will solve for some of that, but not for all of that. We really need to help our city residents create wealth.”
A reappraisal of Boston’s housing strategy is certainly warranted. It’s hard to see how the thousands of luxury condos and apartments built downtown have had any trickle-down effects in terms of lowering prices and rents in the test of the city.
Scott Van Voorhis
But neither are these units totally useless for the broader market either. There is probably some beneficial easing of demand for existing homes, just not as much as some had hoped for.
We still need more housing – lots more – not just in Boston, but across Greater Boston.
So, the trick for Boston’s next mayor, whether its Essaibi George or Wu, will be to redirect housing development into more constructive channels while also not scaring off developers and triggering a decline in production.
That could prove to be a tough balancing act for whoever wins to pull off.
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
