If at-large Boston City Councilor and possible mayoral candidate Michelle Wu’s critiques of New England Development’s project next to the Boston Landing commuter rail station in Allston seem unreasonable, we have some unfortunate news for you.
Many Bostonians agree with her stance that large projects need to contribute more to the city’s stock of affordable housing, and those numbers are likely to only get worse for developers.
Humans will always object to change – it’s in our nature – and more than a few of the people who rally to the banner of affordable housing at public meetings are using it as a smokescreen for NIMBY sympathies. But specific demands for more affordable housing like Wu’s, which can eat into a multifamily developer’s profit margins like crazy, are directly tied to the region’s housing crisis.
That crisis is on full display in The Warren Group’s most recent report on home sale numbers.
The statewide median single-family sale price rose 4.4 percent on a year-over-year basis in July to $425,000, an all-time high for the month. So far this year, the median sale price in the state’s 32,643 single-family home sales – a 1.8 percent decrease from the first seven months of 2018 – is an even $400,000, up 3.9 percent from last year.
The condominium market isn’t much better, with the number of sales dropping 2.5 percent year-over-year and the median sale price year to date rising 1.3 percent, to $380,000.
It’s an environment that makes New England Development’s 895-unit, four-building development a tempting target for anyone trying to squeeze a bit of benefit for the worker out of a business that does much more to help the rich.
Wu is wrong – to a degree. The kind of planning consensus she wants is hard to build overnight, and the wheels of government turn frustratingly slowly.
At the same time, New England Developments’ offer to boost the project’s share of affordable housing from 13 percent to 17 percent while lopping off 155 units shows Allston Yards may well create the kind of value that can support the 20 percent affordability requirement Wu wants.
Legislators have an opportunity this fall to reduce the pressure on Bay Staters’ rents and mortgages, and thus on the development community. As Beacon Hill has a major debate on transportation funding, it must hinge around an aggressive and thorough update to our bus and commuter rail systems that bring their level of service much closer to that of a subway. Combined with multifamily-friendly zoning changes at the local level, this can spread demand over a much broader area, helping restrain housing costs.
Whether you believe, to paraphrase former President Franklin Roosevelt, that taxes and quasi-taxes like affordable housing requirements are the price we pay for living in a civilized society, make no mistake that calls for more affordable housing will only get worse as home prices keep climbing.
And whether you fear these requirements will put a fatal drag on developers’ ability to build anything at all, you should loudly support efforts to cut this Gordian knot.
The alternative is pitchforks.
