General Boston Discussion

[#bancars]

Can This Man Blow up Boston Development's Status Quo without Destroying the City?

Last year, Arthur Jemison took over as head of the Boston Planning and Development Agency with thegoal of reforming the notoriously developer-friendly organization.

www.bostonmagazine.com

 

[stick n move]

Good read. I particularly liked this part

“One of the cities Jemison told me the BPDA is looking to as a model is Seattle, which undertook a series of incremental zoning reforms between 2017 and and 2019, and is on the way to hitting a five-year record in new apartment construction.”

I think seattle is a good model to shoot for. The amount of housing and transit they have built and are building is impressive.

 

[theSil]

Wu is proposing a rent control bill that would allow annual rent increases up to 6 percent higher than the federal government’s Consumer Price Index, i.e. if inflation is 2 percent, landlords could increase rent by up to 8 percent. Rent increases would be capped at 10 percent.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/01/18/business/wu-floats-rent-control-proposal-that-would-cap-rent-hikes-10-percent/?p1=StaffPage

 

[Charlie_mta]

Good read. I particularly liked this part

“One of the cities Jemison told me the BPDA is looking to as a model is Seattle, which undertook a series of incremental zoning reforms between 2017 and and 2019, and is on the way to hitting a five-year record in new apartment construction.”

I think seattle is a good model to shoot for. The amount of housing and transit they have built and are building is impressive.

Seattle is one of the most expensive cities in the US for apartments rentals, condos, and houses. It also has a huge number of homeless encampments, in large part due to that super-expensive market.

 

[#bancars]

Seattle is one of the most expensive cities in the US for apartments rentals, condos, and houses. It also has a huge number of homeless encampments, in large part due to that super-expensive market.

Seattle has also grown faster in the last decade than pretty much any large city in the country, but has managed to slow rent price increases and in some instances even level them off. Seattle outbuilds all but some sprawling Sun Belt metros; it would be a much more expensive city given the population growth pressures without the impressive growth figures. It's definitely a model Boston should be emulating, especially given how similar the two cities are in a lot of ways in terms of economy, population, etc.

 

[737900er]

Wu is proposing a rent control bill that would allow annual rent increases up to 6 percent higher than the federal government’s Consumer Price Index, i.e. if inflation is 2 percent, landlords could increase rent by up to 8 percent. Rent increases would be capped at 10 percent.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/01/18/business/wu-floats-rent-control-proposal-that-would-cap-rent-hikes-10-percent/?p1=StaffPage

This is very nitpicky, but I don't understand why it would be tied to the national CPI rather than the local one that BLS publishes.
Also, if we are going to go down this road we should have special rules for landlords who include heat/gas in their rents -- the Boston area faces unique energy challenges from the rest of the country.

 

[DZH22]

The problem with the "barely reasonable" height limits is also illustrated nicely in Seattle. They have a huge section of the city now that's all exactly 440', and then another section that steps up where it's all 484', etc. Basically, it encourages every single building in the area to be the exact same height. Imagine the Seaport effect, but spread to other neighborhoods and affecting/infecting the main skyline.

The other issue is that, hey, 400' would be exactly our 40th tallest building. So are they saying that nothing will be allowed that's taller than our 40th tallest building? I'm having a bit of a hard time fully deciphering this.

 

[WhackyCharlie]

Agree that there are neither conspiracies nor magic bullets to fix things. I’m a very reasonable person but radical in a few ways, especially around zoning (and realize those ideas will never come to pass). I’m running on two simple principles:

1. Some candidates/policies are more favorable than others
2. The actual effort to shift the balance in meaningful ways is relatively small, especially in a place like Boston where true partisan politics are nonexistent (yay one party rule?)

Michelle Wu the Mayor of Boston is actually from Chicago, IL. This mayor truly knows what Boston needs.

 

[Justbuildit]

Who am I to argue with the wise people of Boston? AEG was her opponent and is as Boston as it gets. Seems like the electorate didn’t care. Whatever you think of Wu she did her time on city council and ran a campaign that was effective. Are you suggesting Wu is too…foreign to be mayor?