I mean, raising the prices of those area residential properties because of new local development is called appreciating intergenerational wealth, from another perspective.

New Luxury housing is financed by banks. Banks wont give financing if units are rent controlled because the numbers will not work. Thats why even the affordables can be an issue and why Wu is proposing waiving that requirement for the first 15 years

I disagree because those that have been living there for, say, 20 years get priced out. Their landlord sees an opportunity to make more money and increases the rent accordingly. Where are these individuals to go?

Can you explain the waiving a bit more?

Edit: downvoted for trying to get more information. This sub is, and has been, a joke.

This post is already becoming painful. Maybe the OP should research how the Real Estate Market works. Good grief…

If you add enough market rate housing, prices will drop quite significantly across the board. I think many fear requirements for affordability will just dissuade the introduction of new supply. Additionally, the middle class gains very little from affordability requirements because the new units they would be eligible for are those that need to subsidize the affordable units which likely makes them still unaffordable.

I mean…when areas gentrify, they become cleaner, have more amenities, and are able to attract uhhh more “higher quality” residents which then results in things getting cleaner/better etc and the cycle continues.

Obviously there are huge impacts to the community when this happens and people end up priced out, but that’s just life. If we want nice things, we need people that can pay for them. When we get nice things, people want to live there, high demand = high price.

1. It's an "I got mine, screw everyone else policy" where the local government essentially picks winners and losers. It would also make it more difficult for the city to maintain its high standard of living

2. If the "luxury" units aren't built, the people who would live in them would still move in and raise housing prices, they'd just move into the older units. Stopping new housing construction won't stop gentrification, it will just result in more wealthy people moving into older housing.

3. I'd have to read more about it but it seems better than indefinite rent control. New York also isn't exactly affordable despite this and other rent control measures

4. Has this been attempted anywhere else, and why would any developer agree to it?

5. Implement more statewide zoning measures to promote new construction while restricting local zoning and community input policies. Expand transit service in areas where people will actually use it (i.e. stop wasting money on projects like south coast and east-west rail)

I’m all for rent control, but I also recognize the cost of building in Boston, and would generally not consider any new developments that are walkable to transit to be anything but luxury. Their sale prices will need to be over $1000/sqft to justify the effort of construction.

Where rents are now, even if increases for existing tenants are capped at 3% annually, there’s money to be made in most neighborhoods. I don’t like to see people who pay their rent reliably displaced out of greed.

If you’re near a road, you’re near transit, move far enough out and car+housing can be affordable. I think the perpetually young city of Boston needs a reality check every so often, that walkable living and eating/drinking out a few nights a week isn’t a sustainable lifestyle for most people, certainly not for people who also don’t want roommates. Demand is high and those amenities that make city living attractive are competing with housing for land under foot. Do people really want to live that way forever? It gets repetitive, doesn’t it?

And what do you think happens when you don’t build more housing?

They still get priced out.

Unless you plan on keeping a neighborhood intentionally shitty so that nobody wants to live there.

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Gentrification happens whether you build or not.

Because when there’s an ever-increasing demand for housing, but the supply doesn’t keep up, prices rise.

And guess who can afford to pay more for that old unit than the working class family?

The doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc., who would have otherwise moved into that “luxury” unit.

Unless you find a way to somehow escape capitalism, gentrification is going to happen when there is high demand for housing and not enough supply.

Rent control doesn’t work. It just picks winners and losers, and exacerbates the problem down the road by discouraging new development.

I agree with your first two paragraphs, but I am not talking about young people, really. They are typically college graduates that have high-paying jobs. I am talking about an immigrant family that has lived here for 12 years and has 2 kids under age 10. Or couple that moved from Ohio to Mass and both 35 year old individuals work at TJ Maxx, one as a manager making $60k.

dwellings would not face a cap on rent increases if their permanent occupancy certificates are less than 15 years old and they were built from the ground up, added to an existing building or converted from another use to residential.

I think we need an all of the above strategy that combines policies that foster much greater housing construction of all types with all the tools in the toolbox for preventing displacement. I'd recommend the affordable city by Shane phillips, which I think does a much better job of articulating this case than I could!

You’re operating with two fundamental flaws.

First is the the fundamental flaw of thinking that “market rate” and “luxury” are synonymous.

What’s marketed is luxury is a means of easing the sticker shock of rent, and is only luxury when compared to the existing housing stock which was built 30-40 years ago.

These are “luxury” in Boston in the sense that a new Honda Civic would be a “luxury” car in Cuba, where the average car on the road was imported before the moon landing.

The more supply that hits the market, the cheaper rent will be.

Second, more importantly, is that the increase in price is always gentrification. You cannot ignore external market forces that depressed the price of real estate in many communities, and cry “gentrification” when the market corrects and those once desirable neighborhoods are desirable again.

Some neighborhoods that are full of tech bros were once full of Irish immigrants. Some African American communities were once Jewish. Fuck, in Boston most land used to be water.

Neighborhoods change, that’s what they do. No neighborhood has remained static in this city, ever.

“Some neighborhoods that are full of tech bros were once full of Irish immigrants.”

It’s okay to say Southie. Lol

“Neighborhoods change, that’s what they do. No neighborhood has remained static in this city, ever.”

Try getting the goddamn NIMBYs to understand this.

I don't have an opinion except to say if we taxed billionaires their fair share (not 3.4%) maybe we could use that money to alleviate the problem somehow.

Agree! I will look into Shane Phillips.

Like why build more housing if more people are going to be displaced? We have to help everyone, not just those with money.

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Ok, you are kind of all over. Luxury apartments are priced at market rates. You are also looking at this with an economist’s view, talking about the market CoRrEcTiNg.

Do you have any responses to the questions I posed above?

Okay. That is certainly a possible solution!

I am not sure of this. There are management companies and landlords that will keep (expensive) units vacant. I will have to look into the prevalence of this in Boston and the surrounding areas.

To your second point, can government subsidize the units that middle-class renters would be in? Do you think it is plausible or possible? Any other ideas on how to make affordable units affordable?

Nice things do cost money. We need to increase wages across the board. But your use of “higher quality residents” is disgusting.

Ok, and how do you think we should help displaced families and individuals?

Can you expand on your first point about the high standard of living? I think I am missing how rent control would affect that. (Serious)

Also, is there low demand for east-west rail? I genuinely would use it but I don’t know the stats.

Then why can’t affordable housing be built? The developers can receive subsidies or tax breaks or whatever.

This is my favorite answer here so far. I’m currently taking a housing policy course and if there’s one main theme throughout, it’s that every housing policy has its pros and cons. Discussing housing solutions requires a LOT of nuance that gets lost here on Reddit discussions.

Based on what I’ve learned so far in my class, adding more supply is in my opinion the best way to go about addressing the housing crisis in the long run. There are studies that have shown that building more market rate housing does lower the price of buildings in the new housing’s immediate surroundings. Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use the tools we already have like LIHTC and inclusionary zoning to ensure that low-income families have housing options. (And even then, LIHTC and IZ don’t help extremely low income families so that’s an issue)

However, new developments take a LONG time and the LIHTC buildings have expiring requirements (only require affordable housing for a certain amount of time and then they can charge market rate rent). For families who are faced with no-cause evictions as an example, they need a place to live now, not three years from now. That’s why housing choice vouchers are so important. And for families whose income hasn’t grown as much as their rent, they need housing now and rent stabilization is the quickest way to ensure they’re not gonna be on the streets.

All that to say, housing is a huge clusterfuck, and no one solution is going to be perfect. I just wish people would talk about this topic with more humility, openness to learning and new ideas, and compassion for families who are victims of the shitty housing crisis.

Thank you

It’s important to step back and look at what is causing things to happen as they do. Boston is experiencing economic growth in high end sectors like biotech and finance - this brings in lots of high paying workers. This drives up costs for existing “nice” areas and prices out the people who may have bought there.

As a result, people who may have in the past bought in the “nicer” areas look for cheaper options. As they buy up real estate in less affluent areas it drives up prices, businesses come as the money comes, and there you have it - gentrification. This is normal and expected anytime a city is in a growth cycle. So how do you stop it?

More property is the obvious answer. Affordable housing may seem like the best option and it certainly has its place, but that really just increases the gap in neighborhoods and causes more people to need affordable housing. So while it helps, what you really need is more market rate housing - not luxury, but market rate - in existing “nicer” areas. This keeps slows the process of gentrification.

There is no easy answer. No short term fix. And at the end of the day, gentrification can’t be stopped, and won’t be stopped. But there are things that help - and the easiest and fastest is more market rate housing.

So who entitles someone to live in a neighborhood?

Just how long does one need to live in a neighborhood before they are entitled to live somewhere?

Have you gone to any Boston Civic Meeting or Zoning meeting in any neighborhood? Have you asked you local Politician their position on this before you voted for them? Have you talked to any homeowners who have benefited any the increased value of their home or their family’s home? I can only assume the answer to each of these questions.

Do you, or anyone really, have data on how long biotech, finance, etc. workers stay once they move here? I was under the assumption that they were more transient like if they wanted to have kids, they would move farther out into the ‘burbs or they move into a state with a LCOL.

What can we do to minimize the impact of gentrification?

I am asking you this question. If you don’t want to answer, that is fine.

Thank you so much for your comment. I have already learned a lot!

I also wished that commenters on this post would engage in more stimulating discussion rather than saying displacement of families is just “life.”

Can you please share what LIHTC and IZ mean? The first one being low-income housing….

To level set, it’s safe to assume that you answer to all of my questions are “No”.

The vacancy rate in greater Boston is exceptionally low.

No clue on the data, but it’s a noticeable trend. The best way to delay gentrification is to build both luxury and market rate housing in the most desireable areas.

You need enough on the market in the most sought after areas to meet and exceed demand - otherwise they will look elsewhere. It can’t be all luxury or more people will be priced out - but luxury is needed to provide that higher price point and prevent further increases to existing housing. Places like seaport are needed - although high end rentals are really not as helpful imo.

As others have mentioned, transit oriented areas will ALWAYS be the first to gentrify. This can’t and shouldn’t be avoided. If someone on DOT is priced out of an area close to the T I know it sucks - but that same gentrification creates jobs, eases traffic and is generally a net positive. Affordable housing is generally less accessible housing - that’s a worldwide truth.

Implementing rent control will make it more difficult for the city to attract developers to build new housing (see St. Paul for example). Reducing the quantity and quality of housing would make it more difficult for the city to continue growing. We can hope our local industries will keep raising salaries just enough keep their employees here like in San Francisco, but if they decide it's not worth it and leave then we could see the city end up like any of the rust belt cities that lost it's major industries and never recovered. Basically, it's very difficult for cities to maintain or improve their standard of living without growing, it's more difficult for them to continue to grow without enough housing for the people needed to keep that growth going.

Haha

Okay, thank you!!

Adding an additional note to the already excellent answers others have already posted:

Rent stabilization heavily incentivizes landlords to increase rent by the absolute maximum allowed every year even if they wouldn't otherwise, because failing to increase rent one year will restrict the possibility of increasing it next year. That means exponential growth: at 10% growth/year, rents go up by 2.5x in the next decade. It's a truly awful policy which looks good on a very cursory glance but will hurt exactly those its designed to help (since it only applies to older apartments).

On your last paragraph: Can you please elaborate on gentrification creating jobs and easing traffic?

I think that there would not be a change in traffic, or there may potentially be a slight uptick in tradfic. My thinking is that if the new residents use the T, that is the same as the now-displaced residents using the T so net zero change. I am also thinking that wealthy individuals moving in will want to bring their car(s), which can lead to an uptick in traffic if they use it any more frequently than “rarely.”

For jobs, my thinking is that there would be a net zero difference in jobs even as new shops open up.

Again, this is based on my thinking. I would love to hear your thoughts.

That is true, but in NYC, for example, the board votes on what the maximum % increase can be. Such as 2.5%. Do you think such a policy could be beneficial here?

We should do a few things, some of which that will certainly never, ever happen in any political environment even half-resembling what we currently have:

1. Take zoning regulations away from localities and then overhaul and streamline them at the state level. All the usual suggestions of eliminating single-family-only zoning, parking minimums, minimum setbacks, along with a plethora of others can be tossed in here. Take away (most) opportunities for community input in regards to what developers can do on the properties that they own. This is going to result in a lot of new market rate housing.

2. Yes, do a little bit of rent control. Do it in ways that don't neuter the private market.

3. Implement a land-value tax so that the parking lot owners and the slumlords and single-family home owners will start to sell their lots in denser areas and those near to transit. This is unlikely to happen.

4. Make improvements to transit, both small ones like much better and more frequent busses and larger ones like electrified regional rail. This will reduce the crushing demand that surrounds our limited areas with great transit accessibility.

5. Get Congress to repeal the Faircloth amendment and pass laws that give hundreds of billions of dollars to states that construct and manage high-quality mixed-income public housing of all densities and sizes. Charge both market rate and below-market rate rents on a lottery system. After the government has recouped their investment rents should be set in a way that merely maintains the building and pays off any debts. This will never happen.

We live in a capitalist system so displacement is inevitable, whether you build or not, unfortunately. However I think that the world I pictured above would be a better one for displaced people and the rest of us.

Regarding point 2.

https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article/doi/10.1162/rest_a_01055/100977/Local-Effects-of-Large-New-Apartment-Buildings-in

Not just billionaires. Massachusetts really should have a progressive income tax that sits somewhere between Virginia's and California's, and at the federal level we should repeal the Trump and Bush tax cuts.

Your point 2 Is generally known as the "induced demand" hypothesis and is deeply controversial (to say the least) among economists who study housing. And starting with "are you aware" is pretty close to gaslighting and very likely to rub people the wrong way.

I can only see the abstract. Can you link to the pdf?

Thank you for your detailed response!! I appreciate you. I am going to educate myself on that amendment.

You're going to have a hard time getting an answer to this from people who worship Capitalism.

That’s true. I thought a discussion might help, but it obviously has not.

Even in the burbs, I can't stand the "I grew up here so I matter more". Nah, you're just one vote guy.

Of course! And I agree with you. I wish more people would approach the topic with nuance rather than just “rent control = bad” “more supply = good”

And on your point about displacement/gentrification being just “life”, absolutely agree with you. If you take the time to learn about redlining, urban renewal, white flight, etc you’ll learn that there is nothing natural about the housing market. The government has intervened in the past to fuck things up and they can intervene now to help fix what they messed up.

As for LIHTC and IZ, here are some links! (Since they’re complex and I won’t do it justice)

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-low-income-housing-tax-credit-and-how-does-it-work

https://inclusionaryhousing.org/inclusionary-housing-explained/what-is-inclusionary-housing/

Local Effects of Large New Apartment Buildings in Low-Income ... - Gwern.net https://gwern.net/docs/economics/2021-asquith.pdf

To clarify, I was referring to another commenter talking about how “life is life” in regards to gentrification and displacement of long-term residents.

I am veryy familiar with those policies and the history of real estate, but I hope others on this sub can learn about them!

Thank you for the links!

No problem. Some good discussions along these lines happens over at /r/left_urbanism!

> Why do many commenters on this sub advocate for gentrification?

Nobody is. It's a biproduct of other things that happen - such as investments in infrastructure, increased demand for skilled labor, improved education, etc.

We cannot stop gentrification. We can only prepare for it, smartly. Of course, almost no community ever does because of NIMBY assclowns.

> luxury housing

Frankly, we do not have the luxury to pick & chose what kind of housing we need.

Building specifically middle-class and lower-income housing is not a very profitable venture for housing developers. If we say "no" to a luxury building, then we risk nothing being built. The BPDA certainly doesn't make it attractive for developers to want to build here anyways.

High skilled workers are moving to Boston faster than we can house them. If there is no luxury building for them to move to, they will move into a 100-year old triple-decker typically occupied by working class families and deepen our already extraordinary housing crisis.

> Why are many of you against rent control?

Rent control doesn't work.

> Are you aware that building luxury housing... is gentrification?

That's not how it works.
Again, new workers will either move to luxury housing - or move to the housing typically occupied by working-class populations. Landlords will raise rent with demand, and long-term renters will be priced out and forced to move. And the condos will still come later, when there are fewer community hurdles.

You either build condos now and buy working class people some extra time. Or you kick them out now. What would you rather have?

For clarity, building new housing in those Chelsea, Revere, Malden is only possible because there are fewer NIMBY roadblocks. I'd love for more luxury housing in already wealthy parts of town.

> Would you be open to luxury housing that is initially rent-controlled for some years before it can become market-rate? This would be similar to 421-A in NYC.

If it's a nice place to live, sure.

> Would you be open to luxury housing that is initially rent-controlled that can be sold to the renters there for a below-market-rate price?

Already happening, sort of. Most luxury buildings are required have a certain number of affordable housing units (obtainable by lottery). These are bought and sold at reduced rates. There isn't enough of them, IMO.

> Do you have another idea

Build as much and as fast as possible. That's all there is to it. MBTA investments would be nice, but the Commuter Rail is not a solution when people moving here want an urban life and grab a train that comes every 10 minutes, rather than every hour.

The Suffolk Downs project is something I'm looking forward to, but even that's somehow getting fucked up by parking requirements and stupid fucking bullshit. Still gonna be worthwhile, but the red tape is ridiculous.

If the we expanded Blue Line to Lynn, it would help a lot since downtown Lynn has a lot of unoccupied apartments and weak access to the city.

Thank you. I have started reading through this but want to confirm.. is this a pre-print? In between paragraphs in the data section, it literally says “[Figure 2 here].”

Scroll to the bottom for the figures. I don't know why they chose to format it that way either.

I’ve had arguments on here and on the Massachusetts sub with suburban NIMBYs who literally think that when a person buys property that there is a “reasonable expectation” that things won’t ever radically change.

Yeah, no. There isn’t. You own your property, and nobody else’s.

> market-rate housing (i.e., luxury housing)

"New" housing is not the same as "luxury" housing. By this logic every new car is a luxury car.

> 1. Why are many of you against rent control?

It is at best flawed, at worst actively harmful to the goal of letting more people afford to live in a given place

> 2. Are you aware that building luxury housing, especially in communities with marginalized or disadvantaged populations (e.g., Malden, Chelsea, Revere), is gentrification? Ultimately, the luxury housing will raise the prices of nearby properties and lots. It will also bring businesses that cater to those in luxury apartments and, subsequently, are not as affordable as neighborhood grocery stores, hardware stores, etc.)?

Neighborhoods change over time, whether or not housing is built in them. There are ways to support the people negatively impacted by gentrification, but "build no market rate housing anywhere" is not one of them. Note that a big driver of negative impact on the poor is that often poor neighborhoods are the only ones in which NIMBY's allow ANY housing to be built

> 2. Ultimately, the luxury housing will raise the prices of nearby properties and lots

And this specific bit ^ is at best hugely misleading. Building more housing reduces the cost of surrounding housing. The literature on this is clear. While the value of land and of existing commercial structures may go up as a neighborhood becomes more desirable, building more housing is going to lower the cost of surrounding housing

> 3. Would you be open to luxury housing that is initially rent-controlled for some years before it can become market-rate? This would be similar to 421-A in NYC.

> 4. Would you be open to luxury housing that is initially rent-controlled that can be sold to the renters there for a below-market-rate price? Essentially, the renters would get priority and could decide if they wanted to continue living there (buy) when the hypothetical rent-control period ends? The renters would then be on the path to homeownership, which has numerous benefits that I will not get into here.

I'm open to anything that increases the housing supply, but why complicate ourselves? Building just affordable housing ignores the majority of the housing scarcity problem, since most people don't qualify for it, whereas just building market rate housing drives down costs for everyone.

> Do you have another idea on how our state can build new housing to increase our stock while allowing for low-income - and really, middle-income - households to become homeowners (ideally) or be able to afford better housing? Better meaning closer to transit, no slumlord, no roaches, closer to parks, in better school districts.

Yes. Make it legal to build more housing. Lots of it. In every city, and every suburb. Current zoning rules make it illegal to build things that aren't single family homes in the vast majority of residential neighborhoods. This needs to end.

This country had about a four-decade run in which market-rate housing was affordable for everyone but the very poor. We've just zoned-away the market's capacity to balance supply and demand, and we're dealing with the fallout...

It sure is https://www.boston.com/real-estate/renting/2022/07/22/boston-rents-hit-highs-vacancy-lows/

It looks like the results were from a simulation based on real-world data. This is certainly an interesting paper that I will have to spend more time on, but my initial critique is that out-migration was not stratified. I think the aggregate data would be different compared to that from stratifying by race or income. Additionally, know that the sources from the data broker include USPS changes of addresses, differences in magazine subscriptions, and whatnot but I don’t think data on couch-surfing-but-truly-homeless-individuals, new immigrants such as those from Afghanistan, individuals that are undocumented, and data on individuals that do not update their address with USPS when they move is adequately captured. This data is, likely, difficult to collect but I feel it could be a valuable contribution to this data(set).

I am also concered about the low power of the study. While the authors confirmed that the sample was actually representative, I wonder about the external validity.

>Are you aware... Ultimately, the luxury housing will raise the prices of nearby properties and lots.

I'm not aware, and most who know what they're talking about, aren't aware either.

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2019/06/104783-doubt-cast-induced-demand-housing

https://cityobservatory.org/another-housing-myth-debunked-neighborhood-price-effects-of-new-apartments/

https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/is-induced-demand-a-phony-theory

https://sf.curbed.com/2020/5/1/21240992/sf-home-prices-supply-skepticism-development-bay-area

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.32.1.3

Point #2 has been debunked, repeatedly, in large scale statistical analyses performed by numerous different groups around the country. So no, I am not "aware" of it because it isn't true.

​

#1 - it discourages development of new homes. it leads to people living in homes that no longer suit their needs (elderly widows living in 3 bedroom apartments in Manhattan being the common and infamous example). it doesn't help the people already displaced or needing a place to live near their work. It is an exclusionary policy.

​

#3 - So "luxury" housing is OK just as long as you get it first?

​

#4 - Maybe. Who is paying for that and how?

#5 - Every policy that tries to help group A over group B inevitably screws over anyone who falls *just* outside the aided group and isn't really a member of the other group. People earning $1 over an income maximum are no better off than people inside the maximum, yet they are excluded from the program.

​

"Market rate" renters/buyers are humans who need a place to live, too. And to claim that they don't have just as much of a right to live in your neighborhood as you do is to make the same mistakes that got us in to this mess in the first place.

Great answers here. I'd also add that single family homes are also very much luxury housing, in that they frequently have many of the same amenities as so called 'luxury' apartments while also enjoying many subsides on the public dime.

(developers: please just call them 'new' unless you're saying something truly unique, you're not doing anyone any favors)

One of the biggest problems with rent control is that it prevents mobility. Then restricting future generations.

As families age and kids move out a family no longer needs the 3bed apt. However that family of 2 elderly folks and then the single widow never move out because the rent is controlled. Then a unit that can hold a family of four is now only housing 1 person. The problem is clearly visible.

I work in biotech and we are putting down roots and planning on starting a family in the city. Don't paint us all with a brush.

Where are new single family homes being built en masse?

Here's a recent paper about this process (housing chains) working in Helsinki:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3929243

While this is frequently derided as 'trickle down housing', it's not like the supply side economic theory about always lowering taxes on rich people. Housing chains are more like the used car market- someone paid to have a new car and eat the cost of depreciation while selling their previous car at at a much lower price than they bought it.

Ok I hear you but rent-controlled units can be passed down in families. Of course, some may hold onto it and maybe Shari’s kids don’t want it.

For the single widow that won’t move, should they move to a smaller rent-controlled apartment? Assuming a system could be designed to allow this and for it to be easy. Or do you have another suggestion? (Serious)

Do I really have to say “not all…” Keep it moving.

Hmm ok. Inflation right now is insane, obviously, but I will read this paper in a bit. Initial thought is that the older (relative term) being sold still isn’t affordable to the ‘average’ person, aka someone that isn’t a software engineer or works in biotech.

To add to this, parking requirements and lot size restrictions frequently add extra costs to apartment buildings such that parking has to be built in a separate building at great expense, or even worse underground at an even greater expense.

My city's inclusive housing ordinance only requires that the development not affect traffic too much, but there's no density bonus to allow the developer to make up losses on the affordable units and the parking requirements remain.

Thank you!

That's fair, but I would say what you are looking for is for any price gradient to not go up as steeply and hopefully wages rise to meet it in a more sane place (that paper suggests in two years you can see a clear impact).

As an example of where this is going well, Tokyo builds enough housing supply that a recent college graduate can rent without roommates to my understanding.

I have never heard or read anything about passing rent controlled apt down to your children. I have listened to some Freakonomics podcasts about it so I am not an expert.

I personally would not want to have me and my wife’s room be my dead parents room.

As for a solution I don’t know if I have one.

To be honest I don't even think we're building enough single family housing to meet that demand given how expensive they've become as well. Not that I am a huge fan of that type of housing anyway...

Yes and thank you - I was not aware of that in Tokyo!

In NYC. rent-controlled apartments, not rent-stabilized ones.

Lots of pharma and biotech workers end up settling down in greater Boston, because many of those jobs simply don't exist in LCOL areas. College and grad students are often transient, but most of the people I know who got their first real grown-up job in the area are still here. They do almost always move to the suburbs once they have kids though.

Gentrification = money. Both inherent and disposable in that area. Case study: Southie. When I was younger southie was mostly known for murder and being on fire. Now, not so much at all.

>I disagree because those that have been living there for, say, 20 years get priced out.

no, they get PAID OUT when they move.

You can only redeveloped after someone SELLS and then VACATES, riiiight?

Quick , move the goalpost again!

And even then, there is a whole bunch of asterisks attached to owning property.

Rent control is the worst possible course of action. It discourages new development which is what we need the most, and it leads to subpar maintenance, black markets and corruption.

Maybe don’t make sweeping assumptions about people then?

“Luxury” condos are the only condos built here since, oh, 2000 anyway. It’s a meaningless word - marketing bullshit.

Have you ever been inside a “luxury apartment”? I assure you they are not very nice.

And the poster you are replying to is correct. City housing values were massively depressed by social, cultural, and economic forces in the 1950s-1990s.

Cities became desirable to live in again and prices went back up, but they kept going up because the population increased but no homes were built in the interim.

The suburbs.

I think the government needs to be more directly involved in the construction and ownership of housing stock. There's a proven track record in this country of rent control in combination with heavy public investment in housing, we did it during the Truman administration and it helped unleash decades of abundant, affordable housing. I'm honestly amazed at all the anti-rent-control people on here who aren't aware of that history. Unfortunately state and federal government began neglecting public housing in the 60s which has led to their current decrepit state and notoriety for crime and whatnot. I encourage people to read up on the wonderful communities that flourished between 1935 and 1960 in public housing complexes when we actually invested serious money in them. They are not lost causes in the way most people have been made to believe.

The city of Vienna has one of the most successful public-housing-and-rent-control systems in the world and it's been going strong for almost a century. The majority of units there are publicly owned and the competition with the government helps keep the market-rate stock relatively low-priced. You can rent spacious, borderline luxurious apartments in the public stock for under 1000 euros a month, many as low as 600. We'd do well to emulate them.

We have to stop building out and start building up, no more sprawling suburbs which promise a mix of city and country but deliver on neither (there are so many "quiet" suburbs outside 128 that are just choked with traffic from 7am - 7pm every day).

1. High-quality studies—including one on Cambridge’s rent control—show that while remit benefits existing tenants, it has large negative effects on other people (including those who are also low-income). It reduces rental supply, which in turn exacerbates the affordability and accessibility problem it intends to solve. Summary of academic literature: https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/

2. It can be helpful to frame this in causal terms. What will happen to existing residents of mixed-income neighborhoods near Boston if additional housing is built? Now suppose everything else is identical, except you do not build additional housing. What will happen to the residents of mixed-income neighborhoods? Middle and high-income demand to live in the Boston metro area is there in either case. Therefore, relative to the counterfactual of building more housing, restricting new supply increases rents and leads to more displacement of existing residents. Sources: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119021000656, https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/rest_a_01055/100977/Local-Effects-of-Large-New-Apartment-Buildings-in

3/4. As you can see by looking around town, it’s currently more profitable in many places to build lab space than new housing. The policies you’re suggesting make housing relatively less attractive to build, so they would likely hurt housing supply and increase prices that most people pay. These do benefit the low-income beneficiaries lucky to get them, so it’s not entirely unreasonable to do this in conjunction these with other policies that make building more housing feasible and attractive.

5. Policies that make building more housing feasible and attractive include zoning predictability and greater density. Zoning predictability means laws with clear requirements that allow developers to quickly break ground without costly delays and litigation. Greater density can be achieved by relaxing various zoning requirements: allowing taller heights; larger floorspace-area ratios; fewer minimum parking requirements (both for residential and commercial properties; smaller minimum lot sizes; smaller setback requirements, allowing accessible dwelling units; and allowing duplexes, triplexes, or other forms of multi-family housing rather than mandating single family homes.

Subsidized housing is a scam. Landlords are incentivized to raise rents because they get automatic payments subsidized from the state. Luxury apartments lol. Yeah so they jacked rent up and get those subsidized units in there so they get your tax dollars while you pay more in rent.

That completely goes against the whole purpose of rent control. People who need it, need to be able access it.

I currently own an affordable-income condo, through the BPDA, and while I don’t need to prove my income anymore, after purchasing it, anybody I sell it to, or leave it to in my will, needs to submit their income to the BPDA for approval.

Philips puts together a pretty good 3 legged stool analogy: supply, stability, subsidy.

Supply: Unless there are enough homes for everyone, people will get priced out. The region has added jobs faster than housing for decades, and we have a serious supply problem. Adding to the total quantity of homes is necessary but not sufficient.

Stability: tenants need protection. Even when there's enough supply, people can still get screwed by landlords, and we need to have good protections.

Subsidy: even when there's lots of homes and tenant protections, not everyone can pay market rent. So we need subsidies.

Now, the subsidies go further when there's more supply. The tenant protections are bolstered by the ability of tenants to go "f this I'm moving" and find another apartment.

All three reinforce each other.

Did you reply to the wrong comment?

What? Many long-term residents in these areas are RENTERS.

Ah, yes, let the state, who can't keep the trains running, or not have massive Statie fraud problems, make the same regulations for every city and town, whether it's Pittsfield or Boston.

Where oh where could that go wrong?

Maybe we could go full on Russian concrete monstrosities from the harbor to the western state line. That'd solve the housing problem easy right? Ooh, maybe have the state own alllll the land, that'd work right? I mean, with your idea, fuck what the owner of the land they bought wants right?

The STATE knows all and will provide all /s

It ain’t the 40’s anymore where the rest of the world was rebuilding so America had hurricane force wind at our backs and Government regulations didn’t add 25+% to cost to build back then. That government housing may have been ok 80 years ago, many recent decade have shown the government is a terrible manager of housing.

Luxury apartments are very new money. I know.

Elaboration on creating jobs, thought that was an easy connection that more money lends itself to more jobs in the area, as fires and murder do not.

THANK YOU. Many of these other commenters already have their beliefs and are unwilling to have them challenged by deflecting or posting one (1) study that aligns with their beliefs. I will look into Vienna!

That's wild. I didn't know you no longer need to provide income once you purchase one of those units. You'd think they would do checks every 2-3 years. Sounds ripe for abuse but I guess they are hard to get so not like there are many opportunities

We are in a sinking ship. Rent control is filling a bucket and throwing it overboard into the ocean. Increasing supply of market rate housing is patching the actual hole that creates the problem in the first place. Cities that do that do not have housing crises in the first place, because they are meeting the actual demand for housing that exists.

Rent control prioritizes current residents at the expense of new ones, by disincentivizing housing construction. It does not stop displacement. It changes who is displaced. Instead of the people who currently occupy the housing, it’s the people who are looking for a place to live, broadly, in the metropolitan area. It is the “fuck you, I got mine,” of housing policy.

Massachusetts attracts the brightest, most talented people from around the world every single year who come to attend one of our many world-class universities. It is where many come to escape from places where their civil rights are substandard. The idea that newcomers are less valuable, that we should close off to anyone who comes after us, is not a great value system. If you think those people should be priced out to other, cheaper parts of the country, where abortion is restricted, where lgbt people are villianized, where there is rampant racism, you cannot claim to care about groups facing those issues.

We can accommodate pre-existing populations while also adapting for growth in the future. It’s by increasing housing supply to meet the demand that exists for new homes.

I will concede, the problem you describe relates to the trend that new housing only seems to get approved in low-income communities. Thus, they face an overwhelming portion of the burden in accommodating new residents. The real solution is to permit housing at a large-scale, which is predominantly what motivated the state legislature to require 175 Boston-area municipalities to ALL relax zoning conditions. Because when every rich, small town is so heavily incentivized to block any development, we have seen that nothing gets done to address our current housing crisis.

So instead of thinking less needs to be built in any particular neighborhood/town, it’s important to realize that more needs to be built across the entire region, and that each community needs to do their part to accommodate growth.

Luxury housing is just new housing. It has to be built. You don’t expect new cars to be less expensive than identical used cars. As that new housing stock becomes older, it BECOMES more affordable. With “affordable housing,” market rate units subsidize the income-restricted ones, causing the very problem you mention of middle-income people being too poor to afford market-rate, but too rich to qualify for the subsidized homes.

We need to do whatever it takes to have more housing be built. Housing doesn’t have to be this zero-sum game that we have created in MA.

Which ones?

To your second bullet, I don’t think it’s accurate to say all market rate housing is luxury housing. New housing that is built tends to be tagged as luxury house for a few reasons 1) it actually is luxury 2) it’s not, but needs to be branded/market as luxury because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to get the rents needed to make a project financially viable. Both of these stem from housing construction costs in Massachusetts being incredibly high, making them more difficult or non-viable with high rent.

You fucking NIMBY

I've enjoyed reading through this thread, but your attitude is just insufferable.

Anyone remember when the giant “new” BU dorms went in? Anyone?

After hearing nothing but how “the students” were ruining the neighborhood, thousands of them were gone. Into the dorms. Rents in Allston and Brighton held steady, or even fell. Suddenly all of the news coverage switched from “wild house party ruins everything” to “how is this poor mom’n’pop landlord going to be able to pay off the mortgage (on their investment rental property)?” The sky was falling.

Too tired/late to look up citations, but if you build a ton of housing that existing residents move into, it depresses the prices of the vacated housing.

Okay, OP, I'm not sure what you're trying to start or prove here with this post about Gentrification in the Boston area and it seems like you're very new here on r/boston .

Your post and comment history, including a strong hatred of cats and posting in a sub with discussions about killing cats, and posts and comments about harming yourself are very concerning.

Have you sought counseling or professional help for these issues?

Honestly, talking with someone in-person would likely be a lot more helpful than posting about Gentrification and posting really critical comment replies to other people.

What do others think? Honestly, this person's post and comment history are really disturbing.

Yeah, I agree, it's pretty rough.

OP has some concerning post and comment history to say the least, so I'm not entirely sure what the true intent of this post was.

And escaping capitalism doesn't solve the scarcity issue either. It just leads the distribution of resources to be according to some other criterion. Sometimes something fairer... sometimes not. Ultimately the solution is abundance.

So many people will look down at anti-immigration conservatives and then say that an ethnic group or community basically "owns" a neighborhood through some amorphous moral right. At the end of the day, free movement of people had pros and cons, but it's the same basic principle at stake.

They're not perfect, but community land trust programs have been a successful way for communities to pool resources and work within the market framework to improve ownership and stability that mitigates the effects of gentrification without the negative effects of blanket rent control. This site has some Boston specific examples. https://www.solidaritymass.com/greater-boston-community-land-trust

[deleted]

Yeah I'm prepared to get downvoted like I always do on this topic but whatever. I think my views are also mostly in line with the "all of the above" commenter above. But the Vienna case is just too successful and long lasting to be ignored.

https://youtu.be/geQsSNWK79o

Imposing rent controls take away incentives to build new apartments and to keep apartments on the market. It furthers the housing crisis. Rent controlled apartments only help the people who can manage to get them, building more housing will lead to lower rent prices in the suburbs.

Ok true. Thank you.

Because these entitled pricks don’t want to live among the poors.

There's no precise definition of "luxury" housing.

Any newly built construction is going to cost more than older housing stock. People seem to understand that new cars cost more than used cars, but for whatever reason this understanding doesn't always translate to housing for some reason.

Developers then slap the word "luxury" on the marketing materials to make prospective buyers feel mildly better about spending $800K on a studio apartment. The studio doesn't cost $800K because it has fancy countertops and a gym with ellipticals that will be broken down within five years. It costs $800K because of local land prices and Boston's extremely low vacancy rate.

Ironically, you're helping out the developers you dislike when you perpetuate their advertising strategy of referring to high-priced apartments with basic amenities as "luxury units."

Solutions? The solution is actually pretty simple on a technical level but impossible politically.

1. Seize every golf course within 15 miles of the State House dome under eminent domain and build tens of thousands of cross-subsidized social housing units (similar to what you see in Vienna and Singapore) on the land.
2. Take zoning authority away from towns and give it back to the state. The state then does a Japan-style zoning reform where they define 10-15 different types of zoning categories, and local governments can have input on how those categories are applied locally. This makes permitting and construction cheaper and easier because you don't have every special snowflake town creating its own arcane zoning rules which means that all 351 cities and towns have to be approached differently with a legal team and political connections to get anything built.
3. Institute zoning minimums near public transit stations, and once that's established pull a Hong Kong MTR by using the "Rail + Property" business model to get real estate developers to fund public transit extensions along dense and valuable corridors.

I was unaware of the BU situation. Thank you for imforming me and for adding context. That is a great example!

Edit changed ? to !

I have gotten help and am continuing to do so. Not sure what disliking cats has to do with anything?

Had not heard about these! Thank you!

I agree with you. Also thank you for sharing your experience with rent control.

Upvoting, not because I agree with everything you wrote, but because we should be having healthy discussions on housing.

“The NYU researchers even concede that some of these concerns have merit—for example, some new housing developments probably really will drive up prices nearby (more on that later), and the paper emphasizes that market-rate development alone won’t fix the housing crisis without the help government subsidized housing.

But Been and her colleagues still believe that “adding new homes moderates price increases and therefore makes housing more affordable”—period.”

Thank you for the sources. I feel like i understand this a bit more. Sounds like we need market-rate and affordable or subsidized housing, not just market-rate. Many commenters mentioned that developers are not incentivized to build affordable housing. How can we incentivize them?

There was about a 10 year gap between the time I graduated college and the time my parents could retire. I’m pretty sure it will be at least another 10 years before they move on to “new accommodations.” Great, so I get an apartment I haven’t lived in for 20 something years!

It is definitely a marketing thing. I should have specified that I mean “luxury” apartments. The apartments that look nice but are often built cheaply and quickly.

Sure thing.

Maybe I am socially inept but how are my replies critical?

? I want more housing

I am seeing that now, sort of

I like your ideas a lot

Would you consider renovating it and renting it out or selling it?

Thank you

My god as a 5th generation resident of Chelsea point #2 really pisses me off and further reinforces the fact you haven’t been here and have no idea what you’re talking about. The hardware store has been gone for decades. Market Basket has been in Chelsea for decades, and 10 years ago they invested millions into building a flagship location in the city, one of the biggest grocery stores on the east coast. They’re not going anywhere.

​

Rent and real estate are high, but the city is also vastly improved from what it was 30 years ago; politically corrupt, financially ruined, and suffering with outdated infrastructure. I could write a novel on the amount of effort that went into getting us from the 90’s to now, but suffice to say, we don’t want to go back. We have a hugely diverse set of businesses, but there are plenty of locals hitting Starbucks in the morning, and folks that are even more excited that we have two new independent coffee shops open in the city in the past year. We are fighting our way up. Please do not begrudge us these positive changes.

​

And hand in hand with all of these changes we have built and refurbished parks across the city, we have some of the most well established support organizations for those in need, and the city is constantly working to make sure it stays that way.

Gotcha thank you

I never said that I live in Chelsea? I was giving examples of areas that are being gentrified and fellow Bostonians have re-educated me on #2

I shop at Market Basket and am thankful for it

Thank you for sharing your experience

As things become more desirable, they become more expensive. Things don’t rise in prices because someone decided to make them more expensive. A thing rises in price because someone is willing to pay a higher price for it. The only way to reduce the price of housing is to build more houses, ie, change the balance of supply and demand. Outside of market forces, low income housing programs exist. But you can’t make an entire city into low income housing. If you want cheaper housing, move further away from the city, or move to a less desirable city. Or figure out how to leverage the growth and the desirability of the city you are currently in, to increase your income so that you can continue to live there and grow with it.

Amateur housing wonk, glad to talk about it, DM me if you want to know about local housing advocacy groups. :)

Think about it though… if they evict you because you suddenly pass some arbitrary threshold, that would discourage you from seeking higher paying jobs.

I didn’t say you lived in Chelsea. I said it was clear you have very little context on the changes that have taken place here and in the surrounding areas.

> Many of these other commenters already have their beliefs and are unwilling to have them challenged by deflecting or posting one (1) study that aligns with their beliefs.

This is a much better description of OP than the commenters.

We aren't, but you also literally can't without sprawling too far from the central areas to be able to commute. That's why we need multifamily housing, as denser land use lets more people be close to the target location. It's also why single families would naturally be more expensive than a unit of multifamily (since they represent a potential of many more units of redeveloped), but that's absent the artificial influence of zoning.

This is all hypothetical - but I don’t know that I could.

I don’t think I’d want to rent it out myself, since I don’t really want to be a landlord. There’s enough to deal with at my own place. I don’t want to deal with collecting rent, and managing the property. (That’s assuming I COULD sub-lease it, and that the lease wouldn’t end at my parents death.)

If I have my own place, I might not want to renovate another, then move. I might not be able to afford it. Even cheap rent is still rent. Renovations are expensive. (And as a rental, I still don’t own it, so I can’t just change whatever I want how I want.)

I think the bigger point I’m suggesting is that even with rent control, the turnover can still be pretty long. There’s also other factors - like after college, I was single. So I find a bachelor pad - really cheap, and rent controlled - but what if I start a relationship, and start a family - do I stay cramped in a cheap apartment, or find something bigger? (The same could be said about a new job - if I keep the cheap housing, is it worth doubling my commute?)

I could see rent control actually encouraging a bit of stagnation in housing. I’d rather see rents in general coming down on their own, or maybe making it easier to buy in like a condo style apartment instead.

Of he deleted this Post. Ha

I have a friend who lives in Stuy Town in Manhattan. All her adjacent neighbors are 80+ year old widows in 2-3 bedroom apartments. The word “all” Is not an exaggeration.

One of these neighbors gives her cat an entire bedroom. In Manhattan.

I don’t think the policy in nyc has been a smashing success

I can think of two good questions you could ask yourself:

1. How are the assumptions you carry around anyone elses responsibility? it'ss a good question to ask!

2. And then ask yourself how anyone elses assumptions, are your responsibility.

And then work on the gap between the two answers, for the rest of your life. The rest of us are, and its your time to now too.

>Do you have any responses to the questions I posed above?

Those were responses.

The problem is.... this isn't a Burger King.... and so you didn't get it your way.

I am asking how my replies were critical. I am trying to learn here.

That’s for rent control. Rent-stabilized apartments are only stabilized for a number of years.