Boston’s Jamaica Plain (JP) neighborhood – where the arrival of a posh Whole Foods supermarket has sparked a battle over gentrification – may seem to have little in common with suburbs like Franklin, Needham or even Arlington.
But think again.
While the food fight in JP has been grabbing the headlines, a subtler strain of gentrification has been at work in suburbs of Greater Boston, quietly putting the squeeze on blue-collar and middle-class homeowners. Frankly, JP is just the tip of the iceberg of a trend that even the real estate downturn has been unable to stop.
Now more than ever, the Boston area is a beacon for the best and brightest in the fast expanding life sciences sector – and to a lesser, but still significant extent, in the high-tech industry as well.
We are basically importing high-priced talent and forcing them to compete for a limited stock of well-maintained or new homes, driving up prices in the most coveted communities, even as prices tank across the rest of the state and the country as well. The new jobs are great, but the way we are managing the impact on the local housing market is nothing short of disastrous.
Wealthy Hordes
In an observation that remains right on the money, Northeastern University economist Alan Clayton-Matthews noted the trend a couple years back on these pages.
“It’s not so much there were hordes of new families coming in,” Clayton-Matthews explained of the demographic changes that have transformed the Boston area over the past few decades. “The new families that were replacing the older families made lots more money.”
The New Economy Boom, just now getting back into gear along hotspots like Route 128, has lured a steady stream of researchers, software gurus and money managers to the Boston area over the past few decades.
With higher salaries, the newcomers have been able to outbid the middle managers and blue-collar workers that had formed the backbone of many Greater Boston suburbs right through the 1970s.
The changes, if viewed over time and with the aid of hindsight, have been nothing short of dramatic in a town like Franklin, a poster child for gentrification in the suburbs.
Perched strategically on Interstate 495, Franklin has seen its population soar, sparking a mini building boom and a steady escalation in prices. The once-sleepy factory outpost with a dull downtown is now almost unrecognizable, with its array of restaurants and handsome new homes.
Needham is another town with humble roots, with a profusion of post-war slab ranches now viewed mainly as potential teardowns for new McMansions. Today, Needham has more in common with Wellesley or Weston than with the modest middle-class town it once was.
Sudbury and Wayland have become stepping stones to the elite towns while Medfield, always more upscale than its neighbors, has graduated to the next level as the quiet suburb where local sports celebrities like to bed down.
Closer in to the urban core, once thoroughly working-class places like Arlington and Watertown have gone upscale and hip, at the same time as Cambridge has become the global headquarters for the booming life sciences industry.
And it is a trend that has continued apace, despite an historic real estate downturn that has pulled home prices down across the country and much of the Bay State as well. If anything, these newly upscale suburbs have resisted the downward pressure, staying near or even building upon peaks set during the bubble years.
In fact, there is a lively debate right now in local real estate circles as to who’s next on the gentrification list. There’s Medford, which may eventually get a green line stop; and even Quincy, which is slated for a major downtown revamp. Other candidates include Dedham, Canton, Melrose and even Raynham – which, while it is home to a struggling and nearly defunct racetrack, may someday be linked to Boston via commuter rail.
I am sure this is news to the JP activists who have been railing over how evil Whole Foods bumped off the local grocery store, but we are dealing with a long-term economic trend that is well-entrenched and at this point pretty much unstoppable. In fact, the JP activists need look no further than now-fashionable Somerville neighborhoods like Davis Square, where the bubble never burst, to see the future.
But really, faced with the alternative, who in their right mind would wish all those high-tech and biotech jobs away? Homes were a lot cheaper in the Boston area back in the 1970s, but then again the Bay State was considered just another aging industrial state facing a long, downward slide.
Even so, just because it seems unstoppable does not mean this trend can’t be channeled. But so far the failure to do so has had harsh consequences for the local housing market.
New home construction has fallen steadily since the 1980s across the Boston area and is now down to unprecedented lows, with no signs of a major comeback anytime soon. To blame, in large part, is a stubborn anti-new-housing mindset among elected officials who call the shots in towns and suburbs across the Boston area.
While the region’s long-term economic health depends on a vibrant housing market, including new construction, town officials are terrified of rising tax bills that might come as more children move into town.
The result is that we have bidding wars for modest – and too-often outdated and badly in need of work – homes that, in most other metro areas across the country, might fetch half or a third of the price.
And once the real estate market gets back onto track, the steady but quiet gentrification of Boston’s suburbs will only intensify.
