For better or worse, the rustbelt Massachusetts I grew up in back in the 1970s is long gone. Capes and modest apartments have been bulldozed to make way for gaudy McMansions and gilded downtown condos, while legions of super wealthy techies, bionerds and investments managers are edging out middle-class and blue-collar families.
Now there are some hard numbers to back up what frankly anyone who grew up in the Bay State before the 1980s has long known.
Our state’s capital city and economic powerhouse, Boston, is number one in the country when it comes to gentrification, outpacing even San Francisco and New York, a new report by the Cleveland Fed finds.
And while the study did not extend into the suburbs, all you need to do is check out the home prices in what were once blue collar towns like Watertown and Franklin to see that gentrification pressures are clearly reaching out to 495, if not beyond. Before our very eyes, gentrification is remaking Boston – and much of Eastern Massachusetts. And significantly, much of it is happening with a minimum of debate or even recognition.
Extreme Makeover, Metro Edition
The numbers are just astounding. More than a quarter of all Bostonians now live in formerly low-income neighborhoods that have since been gentrified, the Fed report finds. And that number is likely higher now – the Cleveland Fed study doesn’t go past 2007, which is significant, given prices have rebounded from their Great Recession lows and have hit new highs in many Boston neighborhoods.
Other hot cities, including San Francisco, Seattle or New York, don’t even come close. Washington, D.C., riding a wave of wealth driven by government expansion, is our closest rival, with 19 percent of city residents now living in gentrified neighborhoods. New York, Tampa and Atlanta weigh in a 18 percent, while in Seattle, it’s just 9 percent.
South Boston’s working-class roots are fading fast, Chinatown is shrinking, Jamaica Plain is increasingly hip and upscale, and the last rough edges of the South End are fast disappearing, with the old Boston Herald building demolished to make way for the upscale Ink Block residences. And let’s not forget Fenway, home to thousands of new, luxury apartments.
The same story is being repeated across the suburbs of Eastern Massachusetts. Just take a look at the latest numbers from The Warren Group numbers, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.
With median home price of $769,000, Needham has long since shed its middle-class roots in a frenzy of tear-downs and McMansion building, Watertown ($450,000) is now hip, and Natick ($430,000) has blown past its previous price peak set during the bubble years.
Nor is this relentless wave of upscale change limited to the now astronomically pricey 128 belt, with Medfield the new Wellesley, Franklin going from factory town to bedroom community on the rise, and once sleepy towns like Boxborough, Southborough and even Wrentham taking on a new sheen.
The impact of these changes are being felt well beyond 495, deep into Central Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire, as priced-out working- and middle-class families move farther afield in search of something affordable.
How We Got Here
So what happened?
Like New York, Seattle and other booming metros, greater Boston has ridden the wave of the New Economy.
Thriving high-tech, biotech, health care and university sectors have all combined to lure highly paid professionals seeking upper-middle-class housing – and ready to pay for it. But along our way to economic success, our local and state leaders have made a couple major long-term errors that are now increasingly haunting us all.
For starters, Boston, Cambridge and Somerville, the core of the local housing market, gutted rent control, yet failed to revamp suffocating restrictions on what can be built.
Yes, getting rid of rent control worked, in that it suddenly provided an incentive for developers to build new housing. Yet Boston, Cambridge and Somerville have retained NIMBY-driven development restrictions that have made buildable lots, especially in hot neighborhoods, worth their weight in gold.
The result has been an explosion of luxury condos, with developers unable to afford to build middle-class housing on those scarce and valuable lots officials in our urban core deem acceptable for development.
And in the suburbs, which has long suffered from a dearth of apartments and never had rent control in the first place, the gentrification pressure has been just as intense, if not more so.
Suburban leaders too often view any new housing as the enemy, especially if it is more modestly priced, a threat to their community “character” and a potential school budget buster.
But all those well-paid professionals who have been flocking to work in greater Boston’s ever-expanding knowledge economy need homes. And unable often to find enough new construction, they are either bidding up the prices of older homes or resorting to teardowns to get at the lots.
Epic Changes, Little Debate
So is all this gentrification a good thing? As they say, it’s complicated.
Boston back in the dark ages of the 1970s certainly wasn’t the wonderland that it is now, but rather a grimy, struggling city with echoes of past glory.
There were a few uptown suburbs, but middle-class and blue-collar towns were the norm – there was even a big GM auto plant in Framingham.
While Massachusetts schools now lead the country, four decades ago they were nothing to speak of, with Boston in the throes of racial riots over busing and suburban schools solidly mediocre. There’s no question that the economy we have today is much more amenable to smart, well-educated professionals.
Yet it was also a much less expensive place to live, and, for middle-class families, housing affordability is really make or break.
I have no desire to go back in time – as they say, you can never go home again. But we stumbled into our success without much debate or thought, and we are now paying the consequences.
It’s about time that changed.
Email: sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com
