The New Bedford waterfront. Massachusetts’ older, industrial cities want to draw more market-rate housing in their downtowns, but developers need state help to make projects work iStock photo

Conservatives certainly have their blind spots when it comes to the housing crisis.

They may say they are all for the free market, but when it comes to a proposal for a new apartment or condominium building in their neighborhood, that’s a different story.

Then it’s all about pressuring or town officials to block the project and preserve community “character.”

But progressives have their own blind spots when it comes to the housing crisis and what needs to be done to bring down grossing inflated and unaffordable prices and rents.

Sure, progressives are all for multifamily housing – just the right kind of multifamily housing. And by the right kind, I mean mostly subsidized and not to tall or dense either – big is bad since it means more profits for developers, plus all those dreaded wind and shadow effects as well.

And while progressives are all for public housing or heavily subsidized private-market housing, they are ready to fight to the last espresso or croissant against any proposal that involves expensive homes and apartments.

More luxury apartments and condos means higher rents and prices that in turn will attract more well-off people and displace neighborhood residents of more modest means, or so their argument goes.

Yes, we can solve the housing crisis, they say, but only if we stick with the morally pure solution – affordable housing.

An Idea that Won’t Die

But progressives, in their skepticism and even anger at luxury apartments and condos, which they see as furthering the national divide between the haves and have nots, are mixing up cause and effect.

Prices and rents are out of control not because developers got greedy and only wanted to build luxury housing. Rather, housing costs are crazy because we have a massive shortage of new houses, condos and apartments thanks to decades of under-building.

But the idea that luxury housing is the root of all evil and a driver of high prices and rents – rather than a reflection of them – lives on.

We saw a good example of this when Gov. Maura Healey proposed a big boost to the state’s Housing Development Incentive Program, better known as HDIP. Under a tax bill the state legislature ultimately passed earlier this year, HDIP will provide more than $300 million over the next several years in tax credits to developers to build market-rate housing in the state’s older, industrial cities like Lawrence, Lowell, Brockton, Springfield and Worcester.

The Massachusetts Law Reform Institute helped lead the charge against the HDIP expansion with a report that made much of the fact that some of the units in these projects are fairly expensive.

And yes, they are often expensive – thanks in no small part to the NIMBY environment of “no, no, no” when it comes to building new housing in Massachusetts and the stifling level of local red tape developers must cut through.

Yet there is nothing to stop various Gateway Cities from insisting that some percentage of these new apartments and condos be subsidized and priced affordably, and some have.

A new project in Barnstable that a developer built with help from HDIP money features 10 affordable units, or about 20 percent. Ditto for Worcester, which is now requiring that 20 percent of all units in new projects be affordable.

Prevents Gentrification, Not Worsens It

That said, the aim of the HDIP program is to encourage market-rate construction in Gateway Cities that don’t necessarily have a lot of this type of middle- and upper-middle-class housing.

Speaking practically, the tax credit helps make up for the fact it’s both expensive and potentially risky to be building market-rate housing in cities that are often outside the core Boston metro market and are looking to revitalize their downtowns.

Progressives’ opposition to HIDP also has some strange logic. You’d be forgiven for wondering if these advocates are trying to limit the kinds of housing that can be built in Gateway Cities because they think only low-income people can live there.

But beyond playing up the idea that some of these units are really expensive and even in some cases cross over into the luxury category, critics are attempting to link these new projects with rising rents and evictions.

However, the idea that new housing, even expensive new housing, is leading to the displacement of existing residents is tenuous at best.

Scott Van Voorhis

Rents and prices in the Gateway Cities are going up as these traditionally less-expensive markets draw interest from buyers and renters from the Boston area.

These housing price refugees are not necessarily coming for the nice, new market-rate housing as much as being driven out by higher prices and rents closer to Boston.

And you can guarantee that if the state were to cancel the HDIP programs and put a halt to these market-rate apartment and condo projects in Gateway Cities, prices wouldn’t fall. Rather they would climb even faster and higher than they are now.

All those renters and buyers, armed with Boston salaries and going up against people making only Fall River wages, would snap up older homes and apartments, gentrifying these cities much faster and more thoroughly than a new apartment building ever would.

Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.