Idea for fixing the housing shortage

[thepixelnation]

Just saw this diagram on twitter detailing pre-approved plans that South Bend offers for developers:

thought this was also a really interesting idea (especially for infill). Do you think this would be feasible for Boston and surrounding localities? I found mention of pre-approved plans as part of Boston's Neighborhood Homes Initiative, but have no clue what they look like.

The plans detailed above are obviously built for South Bend and Boston would require options with more units (I'm assuming the base would be a 3-unit apartment building), but could also do a lot to influence the style of this new chapter in the city, and maybe steer people away from the generic designs that new builds often are in the city.

Thoughts?

 

[BOS2BON]

Just saw this diagram on twitter detailing pre-approved plans that South Bend offers for developers:

View attachment 53306

thought this was also a really interesting idea (especially for infill). Do you think this would be feasible for Boston and surrounding localities? I found mention of pre-approved plans as part of Boston's Neighborhood Homes Initiative, but have no clue what they look like.

The plans detailed above are obviously built for South Bend and Boston would require options with more units (I'm assuming the base would be a 3-unit apartment building), but could also do a lot to influence the style of this new chapter in the city, and maybe steer people away from the generic designs that new builds often are in the city.

Thoughts?

Some pre-approved triple deckers, and more, would be a great idea. Hopefully using these can expedite some of the historic commissions/ other boards that can really drag out a development.

 

[Charlie_mta]

Good article today on the national crunch on housing development caused by NIMBYism, and its new, growing opposite dynamic, YIMBYism.

 

[DominusNovus]

I think a good idea would be for the state to discourage Boston (and other cities, but Boston is the 800 lbs gorilla) from incentivizing companies to drag workers back into the office. If I were being more assertive, I’d suggest the state incentivize remote work (IE: locate your office in MA, and keep at least X% of employees fully remote, and at least Y% remote or hybrid, and we’ll cut you Z% tax break).

This would result in people who want to live in the suburbs but hate the Boston commute being more able to do so. Also, since some in-person options for occasional meetings is mostly needed, its reasonable to think that companies will locate offices for those purposes outside of Boston - why pay premium rent if you only have your employees come in a few times a month? And its probably easier to find said office space in the outlying cities that are hurting (Brockton, Lowell, Fall River, etc) than your bedroom suburbs.

As people can more evenly spread through the state, then the housing prices should level out a bit. At the same time, it’ll be easier to justify converting older office buildings in Boston to apartments.

Not to mention the congestion benefits.

 

[kdmc]

I think a good idea would be for the state to discourage Boston (and other cities, but Boston is the 800 lbs gorilla) from incentivizing companies to drag workers back into the office. If I were being more assertive, I’d suggest the state incentivize remote work (IE: locate your office in MA, and keep at least X% of employees fully remote, and at least Y% remote or hybrid, and we’ll cut you Z% tax break).

This would result in people who want to live in the suburbs but hate the Boston commute being more able to do so. Also, since some in-person options for occasional meetings is mostly needed, its reasonable to think that companies will locate offices for those purposes outside of Boston - why pay premium rent if you only have your employees come in a few times a month? And its probably easier to find said office space in the outlying cities that are hurting (Brockton, Lowell, Fall River, etc) than your bedroom suburbs.

As people can more evenly spread through the state, then the housing prices should level out a bit. At the same time, it’ll be easier to justify converting older office buildings in Boston to apartments.

Not to mention the congestion benefits.

Do we really need to subsidize this? If fully remote work is all it's cracked up to be (full disclosure: I don't think it is) then companies should naturally jump on the cost savings of not having an office in Boston, not to mention the hiring benefits of remote flexibility.

If they are willing to pay Boston/Cambridge office rent, then clearly they see value in clustering their workers in a vibrant central area. Why would we spend money to bet against that, esp since it drives transit ridership and daytime downtown activity? We can build housing without driving away office demand, the two are not in conflict!

 

[KentXie]

Do we really need to subsidize this? If fully remote work is all it's cracked up to be (full disclosure: I don't think it is) then companies should naturally jump on the cost savings of not having an office in Boston, not to mention the hiring benefits of remote flexibility.

If they are willing to pay Boston/Cambridge office rent, then clearly they see value in clustering their workers in a vibrant central area. Why would we spend money to bet against that, esp since it drives transit ridership and daytime downtown activity? We can build housing without driving away office demand, the two are not in conflict!

Control. There are teams where none of the individuals work in the same office and they have to go into the office just to do virtual calls with teammates. What a waste of time.

 

[DominusNovus]

Do we really need to subsidize this? If fully remote work is all it's cracked up to be (full disclosure: I don't think it is) then companies should naturally jump on the cost savings of not having an office in Boston, not to mention the hiring benefits of remote flexibility.

If they are willing to pay Boston/Cambridge office rent, then clearly they see value in clustering their workers in a vibrant central area. Why would we spend money to bet against that, esp since it drives transit ridership and daytime downtown activity? We can build housing without driving away office demand, the two are not in conflict!

Driving transit ridership is not a goal. The transit systems exist to fulfill a need for the populace, the populace does not exist to keep the transit systems solvent.

And I’m not saying we have to subsidize remote work - that is just my more ambitious plan. There are cities trying entice offices to fill up for the reasons you suggest, which means that taxpayer money is being spent on things that people *don’t want.*

Control. There are teams where none of the individuals work in the same office and they have to go into the office just to do virtual calls with teammates. What a waste of time.

My exact situation. My team is 10 people. Only 1 other person is located in my physical office, and we spend our time together bitching about RTO. All of our work is naturally remote. Our calls with vendors, our calls with colleagues, everything. We have had 3 meetings in the past year that merited in-person presence.

Upper management wants to feel important, which having a busy office fulfills. Middle management wants to feel non-redundant, which having a busy office fulfills. HR wants to have problems to solve, which having a busy office fulfills.

Doesn’t help shareholders or front-line employees.

 

[kdmc]

Driving transit ridership is not a goal. The transit systems exist to fulfill a need for the populace, the populace does not exist to keep the transit systems solvent.

You're right, transit is a means, not an end. It just happens that the real end, urban vitality, is closely into transit ridership (Forbes):

If workers continue to work remotely, it will further disrupt the ecosystem of restaurants, bars, clubs, gyms, nail salons, haircutting establishments, retail-shopping stores and an array of other businesses in urban areas. Without the steady flow flow -4.1% of people into the city, mom-and-pop shops and an array of businesses close shop, as they don’t have enough customers to keep them afloat.


For example, New York City businesses are losing customers and revenue with people working remotely. The workers coming into Manhattan are spending $12.4 billion less per year than they were before the pandemic, according to a Bloomberg report citing data from Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom’s WFH Research team.

It's understandable why Boston would want to coax businesses into RTO.

To your other points-- sure, some managers are control freaks. Personally, my manager works remotely, and I go into the office because I like the atmosphere and the conversations. We both live in the Boston area because we love how lively it is, not because we're being forced into RTO. But if nobody went into the office, my understanding of the economics is that the vitality of downtown for everybody would be at stake.

All that said, big ups for incentivizing office->resi conversion as well as new resi downtown developments.

 

[Johnnyrocket891]

The era of Mom & Pop shops is coming to an end especially in Boston. With the U.S. dollar now playing a globalized role, local businesses can no longer compete with large multinational corporations. Unless these family-owned businesses were established in the 1970s and made smart investments in hard assets like real estate, their survival seems unlikely. The government's continued support of big businesses through bailouts and generous taxpayer incentives makes it even more challenging for small, independent stores to thrive in the future.

Mom & Pop (RIP)

 

[DominusNovus]

But if nobody went into the office, my understanding of the economics is that the vitality of downtown for everybody would be at stake.

And that vitality would be spread across everywhere else.

Sorry, but I’m not sorry to see the urban cores get knocked down a peg when they’re unaffordable to live in. If they were affordable, overall, then it would be another story. As it is, if they cannot thrive on their own populations, then all this is just a shell game: shuffle suburbanites in to subsidize the “vitality” of the local metro’s downtown, then shuffle them back out because they can’t afford to live in the metro.

Meanwhile, all this movement is just economically unproductive congestion and strain on the local infrastructure.

Infographic: Congestion Costs U.S. Cities Billions Every Year

This chart shows average annual economic losses from traffic congestion in U.S. cities.

www.statista.com

Boston lost over $4b/yr (in 2019) to traffic congestion. Sure, shutting down society pretty much resolved that for a year or two, but imagine the economic gains for everyone if I-93 weren’t a parking lot every single day. Imagine if some of the economic gains were put instead toward housing construction as demand moderately rose in every outlying suburb.

 

[Blackbird]

And its probably easier to find said office space in the outlying cities that are hurting (Brockton, Lowell, Fall River, etc) than your bedroom suburbs.

As people can more evenly spread through the state, then….

I think this is the big flaw in the argument: that if people/companies formerly tied to Boston were given the opportunity, they’d choose to reside instead in Brockton and Fall River. Wishful thinking to the extreme!

 

[TheRatmeister]

I think this is the big flaw in the argument: that if people/companies formerly tied to Boston were given the opportunity, they’d choose to reside instead in Brockton and Fall River. Wishful thinking to the extreme!

Following on from this, all the biotech companies haven't just independently decided that Boston is the best for them, Boston is the best for the biotech companies because that's where the biotech companies are, there are benefits to clustering like this and it's not random.

 

[Justbuildit]

I think a good idea would be for the state to discourage Boston (and other cities, but Boston is the 800 lbs gorilla) from incentivizing companies to drag workers back into the office. If I were being more assertive, I’d suggest the state incentivize remote work (IE: locate your office in MA, and keep at least X% of employees fully remote, and at least Y% remote or hybrid, and we’ll cut you Z% tax break).

This would result in people who want to live in the suburbs but hate the Boston commute being more able to do so. Also, since some in-person options for occasional meetings is mostly needed, its reasonable to think that companies will locate offices for those purposes outside of Boston - why pay premium rent if you only have your employees come in a few times a month? And its probably easier to find said office space in the outlying cities that are hurting (Brockton, Lowell, Fall River, etc) than your bedroom suburbs.

As people can more evenly spread through the state, then the housing prices should level out a bit. At the same time, it’ll be easier to justify converting older office buildings in Boston to apartments.

Not to mention the congestion benefits.

This is really a great idea...if the sole goal is to devastate Boston's tax base by further cratering office building values. Incentivizing people away from the city with tax breaks that would only compound existing concerns on Boston's tax base sounds like a plan to specifically hose the city, which would be absurd for the Commonwealth to do, since Boston/Camberville are responsible for a huge part of the state's GDP.

I think if you, as an individual, would like to work remotely then you should find a career that allows it. In the meantime, one of the greatest economic engines in the world will continue to return to a new normal that's a mix of in-office and remote work. Total square footage demand will marginally decrease over time, hopefully without a true collapse, and the slack demand will mean offices will be more affordable than the astronomic market prior to the pandemic.

The city should use all the tools it has to entice people and companies to come back rather than flag defeat because of traffic concerns. Conversion to residential purposes is also of course a great idea, especially in places like Downtown where there are few housing units to begin with.

 

[Justbuildit]

And that vitality would be spread across everywhere else.

Sorry, but I’m not sorry to see the urban cores get knocked down a peg when they’re unaffordable to live in. If they were affordable, overall, then it would be another story. As it is, if they cannot thrive on their own populations, then all this is just a shell game: shuffle suburbanites in to subsidize the “vitality” of the local metro’s downtown, then shuffle them back out because they can’t afford to live in the metro.

Meanwhile, all this movement is just economically unproductive congestion and strain on the local infrastructure.

Infographic: Congestion Costs U.S. Cities Billions Every Year

This chart shows average annual economic losses from traffic congestion in U.S. cities.

www.statista.com

Boston lost over $4b/yr (in 2019) to traffic congestion. Sure, shutting down society pretty much resolved that for a year or two, but imagine the economic gains for everyone if I-93 weren’t a parking lot every single day. Imagine if some of the economic gains were put instead toward housing construction as demand moderately rose in every outlying suburb.

I think you have the causality backwards. Boston isn't shuffling people into the suburbs to subsidize the urban core; the jobs are in Boston and because of the last 70 years of suburbanization it means many people need to come to the core for work.

The city is indeed unaffordable, and strain on the roads is indeed a time and money killer. I would simply zone for substantially more housing across Boston proper to (a) allow more people live near work and feed into the tax base of the city and (b) reduce infrastructure strain on the roads. It's a win-win!

I cannot think of a reason why upzoning the hell out of Boston would fail to resolve each of the concerns you laid out above.

 

[ritchiew]

I think a good idea would be for the state to discourage Boston (and other cities, but Boston is the 800 lbs gorilla) from incentivizing companies to drag workers back into the office. If I were being more assertive, I’d suggest the state incentivize remote work (IE: locate your office in MA, and keep at least X% of employees fully remote, and at least Y% remote or hybrid, and we’ll cut you Z% tax break).

This would result in people who want to live in the suburbs but hate the Boston commute being more able to do so. Also, since some in-person options for occasional meetings is mostly needed, its reasonable to think that companies will locate offices for those purposes outside of Boston - why pay premium rent if you only have your employees come in a few times a month? And its probably easier to find said office space in the outlying cities that are hurting (Brockton, Lowell, Fall River, etc) than your bedroom suburbs.

As people can more evenly spread through the state, then the housing prices should level out a bit. At the same time, it’ll be easier to justify converting older office buildings in Boston to apartments.

Not to mention the congestion benefits.

Regardless the other merits of this proposal, I'm at a loss how this would fix anything to do with the housing crisis. There is a housing shortage. That's true in the city, in the suburbs, across the state, and basically nation-wide at this point. There is already a huge demand for more people to live in the suburbs, but no spare capacity. And cities, towns, and suburbs have largely blocked any new housing. More WFH might encourage more demand to live in the suburbs, but overwhelmingly those suburbs are allowing very little new supply of housing. So.... how does more WFH address the housing shortage?

 

[Justbuildit]

I think the above proposal was crafted quite nicely to do a few things:

1. Own the city dwellers
2. Rationalize and effect greater demand for suburbs to further inflate on-paper housing prices of single family homes thus increasing incumbents' net worth
3. Complain about traffic
4. Be provocative

 

[TheRatmeister]

I think the above proposal was crafted quite nicely to do a few things:

1. Own the city dwellers
2. Rationalize and effect greater demand for suburbs to further inflate on-paper housing prices of single family homes thus increasing incumbents' net worth
3. Complain about traffic
4. Be provocative

I think you're forgetting Hanlon's Razor here. It's an interesting "hmm, what if we..." but then you think about it for a bit and realize that no it's not a great plan. That's all.

 

[kdmc]

I think the above proposal was crafted quite nicely to do a few things:

1. Own the city dwellers
2. Rationalize and effect greater demand for suburbs to further inflate on-paper housing prices of single family homes thus increasing incumbents' net worth
3. Complain about traffic
4. Be provocative

You lost me there. Despite the fact that I disagree with @DominusNovus I'd rather not jump to bad faith conclusions. If I wanted to jump all over people's character I'd go back to arguing on community Facebook pages lol

 

[bigpicture7]

You lost me there. Despite the fact that I disagree with @DominusNovus I'd rather not jump to bad faith conclusions. If I wanted to jump all over people's character I'd go back to arguing on community Facebook pages lol

I'm with you in spirit, but there's a fine line between "jumping" to conclusions versus "reaching" a conclusion when there's a long history of thematically similar opinions being posted by someone. This said, when there's such a history, they're unlikely to change their mind when someone challenges the integrity of the opinion, so in either case it's probably not worth posting the response

 

[KCasiglio]

I don't think we need the government incentivizing people moving out to the suburbs more than they already do.