City officials hoped developers would build more units per acre and pass along the savings to residents. It hasn’t turned out that way, and it’s an open question whether the pilot that permitted around 2,000 units in three years will come back.
Architectural avatars of efficient and livable middle-class housing, triple-deckers altered the landscape Massachusetts in the early 20th century. Over 100 years later, Massachusetts’ affordability crisis is prompting a fresh look at the form.
Boston’s two-year-old experiment with a new compact living model has attracted steadily increasing interest from housing developers willing to take a flier on its financial promises of lower costs.
Taylor Cain, the new, 30-year-old director of Boston’s Housing Innovation Lab, sits at the head of a team piloting a range of ideas for how to meet the city’s huge housing challenges.
Boston has a new point person as it tries to find innovative solutions to the region’s housing crisis. In the coming year, they will lead the lab’s work on projects related to resilience, multigenerational living and community wealth building.
