The top floors of Boston City Hall. Mayor Michelle Wu has declined to include the most vocal critics of her policy proposals to advisory committees meant to find compromise on housing issues.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu isn’t shying away from Boston’s housing crisis, which has resulted in a ridiculously large percentage of city residents unable to afford either the city’s sky-high rents or its astronomical condo and home prices. 

And Wu clearly wants to make some very big – and likely very politically contentious – changes aimed at increasing the number of affordable apartments and condominiums in the city and reining in runaway rents in market-rate properties. 

Wu last week unveiled plans for an advisory panel on whether the city should dramatically boost the number of subsidized, below-market-rate apartments and condos developers are required to build. 

That followed the mayor’s decision in March to form a similar panel to examine whether to plunge ahead with some form or “rental stabilization,” a.k.a. rent control. 

But in what looks to be an emerging trend, in both cases Wu is leaning heavily on housing advocates for advice on these highly-charged real estate issues, while excluding outspoken critics. 

 Outspoken Critics Pushed Aside 

Take the case of the inclusionary zoning panel, which will look at whether Boston should require developers to sell or rent 20 percent of their units at below-market rates, up from the current 13 percent level. 

There’s just one executive from a major, market-rate developer – Samuels & Assoc. – on the 11-member panel, which will work with a pair of consulting firms and also look at linkage fees as well. To be fair, there’s also a pair of reps from small firms, and the CEO of a large commercial real estate trade group. NAIOP-Massachusetts. 

But six of the 11 members of Wu’s advisory panel hail from housing advocacy groups and nonprofit builders that are, at the very least, highly amenable to mayor’s push to require developers to sell or rent 20 percent of condos and apartments in new projects at below-market rates. Rounding things out, there’s also an MIT professor as well.

There are potentially serious economic repercussions, including the possibility that we could see a drop in housing construction. 

It stands in contrast to a group formed a few years ago by former Mayor Marty Walsh, which also looked at whether to raise the bar to 20 percent. 

That group, which recommended a sliding scale based on various neighborhoods, featured a number of developers, union officials and members of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, a major industry voice that is not part of Wu’s just-announced inclusionary zoning panel. 

Wu’s team didn’t invite the real estate board, the Small Property Owners Association nor MassLandlords, to take part in the rents panel, either. 

In fact, there were just six real estate industry types on that 23-member committee, with just four who could reasonably qualify as housing developers: Curtis Kemeny, head of multifamily property manager and developer Boston Residential Group; Brian Kavoogian from National Development; Kirk Sykes of Accordia Partners; and Kim Sherman of Related Beal.  

The group also include one small, noncorporate landlord. 

“Most of Boston’s housing stock is provided by small rental property owners, and they aren’t being given a voice at the table,” SPOA President Allison Drescher said in a statement. “To say the deck is stacked in favor of the radical and outdated idea of rent control is putting it mildly.” 

 ‘20 Percent of Zero is Zero’ 

A cynic might say one way to combat the perception that the deck is stacked is to include critics and skeptics when trying to chart a path forward on a lightning-rod issue like rent control. 

But there is an important political dimension, too. There is absolutely no way Wu is going to avoid a knock-down, drag-out fight on these issues. Better to have it up front by including opponents in both panels, even if the idea of finding consensus or some sort of compromise might seem naïve. 

Moreover, issues like boosting the percentage of affordable units in projects, or imposing some form of rent control, are not simply a fight between different interest groups. 

Scott Van Voorhis

There are potentially serious economic repercussions, including the possibility that we could see a drop in housing construction that would make life even more miserable for Bostonians of all economic classes. 

That’s certainly a concern for Ted Tye, managing partner and co-founder of National Development, which has transformed what was once a gritty industrial stretch of the South End into the gleaming Ink Block residential and retail complex. 

Tye praised the mayor’s decision to commit $380 million to invest in an array of affordable housing initiatives. 

 But he is also concerned about the potential hike in the affordability requirement to 20 percent, which would effectively require all developers to find subsidies for these homes or take a financial hit on a fifth of all units in every new project.  

“As someone once said, 20 percent of zero is zero,” Tye said.  “Burdening new housing, which we badly need, with 20 percent  affordable at the same time that construction costs are increasing, interest rates are rising, rent control and transfer fees are proposed … means that less market-rate housing will be built, and that does not help create more affordability.”