The Smith | 660 Harrison Avenue | South End

[stick n move]

Phase 3 (575 albany) has been approved.

https://bpda.app.box.com/s/xc9lh278is5b86tkf71xu3tzfa2cuq40

 

[obvious_bicycle]

I've noticed increasing amounts of activity on Phase 3 (575 albany).

 

[Suffolk 83]

I voted for Wu after my first choice lost the primary and I’ve tried to be supportive of her… but this project and the Huntington ave project are moving along as well as other smaller ones but there’s basically no other large scale projects being proposed in the city. No one can continue to blame this on interest rates- this seems to rest on her policy decisions and the extra barriers she’s created to building housing. I’ve given her a lot of opportunities to prove herself and all she seems focused on is helping the severely poor in the city and no one else.

 

[HenryAlan]

No one can continue to blame this on interest rates- this seems to rest on her policy decisions and the extra barriers she’s created to building housing.

Why do you think interest rates aren't a component of a construction slow-down? For that matter, do you not attribute any of it to macro level forces? It's all the Mayor's policy choices?

I’ve given her a lot of opportunities to prove herself and all she seems focused on is helping the severely poor in the city and no one else.

If we can't help the poor, what are we even doing here?

 

[BronsonShore]

I voted for Wu after my first choice lost the primary and I’ve tried to be supportive of her… but this project and the Huntington ave project are moving along as well as other smaller ones but there’s basically no other large scale projects being proposed in the city.

This is just not true at all. There was literally a massive 31-acre development project in the heart of the city proposed last week.

 

[DZH22]

I know the conversation doesn't entirely belong here, but here's a couple more articles on the housing. The first one really shows how dismal it has been under Wu. I would also put partial blame on the short-lived Kim Janey tenure which kicked off the stagnation.

First article is comparing Boston to itself.

The Boston Guardian by Wehaa

Chart from the article:

Second article is comparing Boston to the rest of the state.

Boston falling behind rest of state when it comes to housing, Boston Policy Institute says

Once again, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has filed a bill asking the state legislature for permission to temporarily raise the commercial property tax rate beyond legal limits in order to deal with projected revenue losses tied to the sharp decline of commercial real estate values.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[DZH22]

If we can't help the poor, what are we even doing here?

The main concern should be keeping the "market rate" affordable. There's approximately 160,000 people on the "affordable housing" waiting list. With the amount of qualified "affordable housing" being added there's basically like a 1 in 200-300 shot of someone winning the "housing lottery" in a given year. Everybody else who is poor is stuck on that list and not helped at all. Everybody else who is supposedly middle class cannot even afford the normal market rate because supply hasn't kept up with demand.

If people with college degrees and middle class incomes can't afford to live in the area, what are we even doing here? Frankly, a lot of those people are formerly poor people who tried to "help themselves" and are ultimately punished by policies that instead prop up those who didn't.

"Hey congratulations, you're the first person in your family with a college degree! Now if you want to live here, you just have to pay 3x more than your high school dropout cousin!" Why work harder if you can't actually get ahead? We reward the super rich and the super poor with giveaways on the backs of the working/middle class. Super cheap housing in a super expensive city is a giveaway, plain and simple.

 

[Bruins11363]

The main concern should be keeping the "market rate" affordable. There's approximately 160,000 people on the "affordable housing" waiting list. With the amount of qualified "affordable housing" being added there's basically like a 1 in 200-300 shot of someone winning the "housing lottery" in a given year. Everybody else who is poor is stuck on that list and not helped at all. Everybody else who is supposedly middle class cannot even afford the normal market rate because supply hasn't kept up with demand.

If people with college degrees and middle class incomes can't afford to live in the area, what are we even doing here? Frankly, a lot of those people are formerly poor people who tried to "help themselves" and are ultimately punished by policies that instead prop up those who didn't.

"Hey congratulations, you're the first person in your family with a college degree! Now if you want to live here, you just have to pay 3x more than your high school dropout cousin!" Why work harder if you can't actually get ahead? We reward the super rich and the super poor with giveaways on the backs of the working/middle class. Super cheap housing in a super expensive city is a giveaway, plain and simple.

Spot on. It really boils down to simple supply and demand in my opinion. Investors to developers are only interested in making their financial returns and will look to wherever they can achieve this - in or out of Boston. Since you can't really control macroeconomic impacts like interest rates, construction costs (cough cough unions/tariffs/immigration), etc - you have to look at things the city can control: zoning, affordable requirements, building code (sustainability requirements, egress, etc).

Easing up on any or all of those could open up the floodgates for investors/developers to move forward with projects, generate way more supply for a seemingly infinite demand of housing, and all of the sudden developers will have overbuilt resi. Just look at the lab growth when it became attractive for investors/developers. If you can unlock resi to allow projects to start flowing, I think we'd see the same thing.

 

[sean99090900]

The main concern should be keeping the "market rate" affordable. There's approximately 160,000 people on the "affordable housing" waiting list. With the amount of qualified "affordable housing" being added there's basically like a 1 in 200-300 shot of someone winning the "housing lottery" in a given year. Everybody else who is poor is stuck on that list and not helped at all. Everybody else who is supposedly middle class cannot even afford the normal market rate because supply hasn't kept up with demand.

If people with college degrees and middle class incomes can't afford to live in the area, what are we even doing here? Frankly, a lot of those people are formerly poor people who tried to "help themselves" and are ultimately punished by policies that instead prop up those who didn't.

"Hey congratulations, you're the first person in your family with a college degree! Now if you want to live here, you just have to pay 3x more than your high school dropout cousin!" Why work harder if you can't actually get ahead? We reward the super rich and the super poor with giveaways on the backs of the working/middle class. Super cheap housing in a super expensive city is a giveaway, plain and simple.

80-100% AMI is kind of absurd for this type of stuff. Following this to its logical conclusion it would mean that for the program to address the entirety of the problem we would have to spend tens of billions to house anywhere near the number of people on the "affordable housing" waitlist. This makes no sense when there exist developers willing to take on the entire financial risk to build. I think the most responsible use of government money should focus on things where the state is the only viable solution like building transit or housing the disabled.

 

[FPJ]

Spot on. It really boils down to simple supply and demand in my opinion. Investors to developers are only interested in making their financial returns and will look to wherever they can achieve this - in or out of Boston. Since you can't really control macroeconomic impacts like interest rates, construction costs (cough cough unions/tariffs/immigration), etc - you have to look at things the city can control: zoning, affordable requirements, building code (sustainability requirements, egress, etc).

Easing up on any or all of those could open up the floodgates for investors/developers to move forward with projects, generate way more supply for a seemingly infinite demand of housing, and all of the sudden developers will have overbuilt resi. Just look at the lab growth when it became attractive for investors/developers. If you can unlock resi to allow projects to start flowing, I think we'd see the same thing.

The re-zoning of Gowanus in New York is a perfect example of this. See the number of mid-to-high rise apartments proposed, approved and now under construction in what were 1-story post-industrial lots along the canal just in the last 4-5 years is astonishing (below).

It's particularly frustrating to think of this and then see uninspired 2-4 story aluminum boxes with 10-25 units (cut from 15-30) presented as progress on the housing Boston. The lack of residential growth here is driven by onerous process and litigation, and clearly has very little to do with interest rates.

 

[HenryAlan]

The main concern should be keeping the "market rate" affordable. There's approximately 160,000 people on the "affordable housing" waiting list. With the amount of qualified "affordable housing" being added there's basically like a 1 in 200-300 shot of someone winning the "housing lottery" in a given year. Everybody else who is poor is stuck on that list and not helped at all. Everybody else who is supposedly middle class cannot even afford the normal market rate because supply hasn't kept up with demand.

If people with college degrees and middle class incomes can't afford to live in the area, what are we even doing here? Frankly, a lot of those people are formerly poor people who tried to "help themselves" and are ultimately punished by policies that instead prop up those who didn't.

"Hey congratulations, you're the first person in your family with a college degree! Now if you want to live here, you just have to pay 3x more than your high school dropout cousin!" Why work harder if you can't actually get ahead? We reward the super rich and the super poor with giveaways on the backs of the working/middle class. Super cheap housing in a super expensive city is a giveaway, plain and simple.

I was interpreting the comment differently -- that we shouldn't have programs to help the poor. Most of what you describe, I'd consider to be programs to help the poor.

 

[Stlin]

The re-zoning of Gowanus in New York is a perfect example of this. See the number of mid-to-high rise apartments proposed, approved and now under construction in what were 1-story post-industrial lots along the canal just in the last 4-5 years is astonishing (below).

It's particularly frustrating to think of this and then see uninspired 2-4 story aluminum boxes with 10-25 units (cut from 15-30) presented as progress on the housing Boston. The lack of residential growth here is driven by onerous process and litigation, and clearly has very little to do with interest rates.

I mean, there's thousands of housing units across Metro Boston in mid rise and other substantial developments that have completed the planning process and have been fully approved for more than a year - they're just not financed. Examples like 24 Pratt, One Mystic, 819 Beacon, 2 Charlesgate, Midtown Hotel Revelopment... The list of stalled significant would-be housing projects abounds. 7000 approved units doesn't do anything if they're never built, and the major developers already have their pipeline... So why invest in new proposals before building what they already have? One would assume that they penciled out as approved, so the question is what macro factors caused so few of them to move into construction. What changed between 2021 and 24? Interest rates. We accept that developers want to make money, and so things that increase costs and reduce revenue are bad from their perspective. The average consumer, unlike companies, have a much firmer ceiling for what they can pay, limiting total revenue. IZ, parking, carbon zero mandates all increase costs, and therefore reduce margin and therefore developer appetite. That said, while those projects were approved prior to the most recent updates which aren't retroactive, it's worth looking at what the city can do to incentivize actually going vertical.

But the cost of capital (lending), material and labour? Those 3 are not currently trending in favorable directions, and I'd personally argue those probably account for ≥80% of a buildings cost, more than any mandates the Mayor may add.

An additional opinion is that we focus too much on PDAs and major high profile developments while the neighborhoods are neglected. PDAs like Gillette, Bayside, On the Dot ... They can each produce a lot of housing, but not if the massive global developer doesn't move on it. Squares & Streets and Neighborhood zoning reform, plus things like fire code, can't come soon enough to allow those "mom & pop" developers who build the infill developments (which actually get built) to build more units everywhere.

 

[Suffolk 83]

Why do you think interest rates aren't a component of a construction slow-down? For that matter, do you not attribute any of it to macro level forces? It's all the Mayor's policy choices?

If we can't help the poor, what are we even doing here?

She’s ONLY helping the poor that’s the problem. My property taxes DOUBLED in two years and she barely made any cuts and only did so in the latest budget. Still a net increase in the city budget of 4.something%. Some is definitely out of her control as office vacancies are the biggest to blame but how about making some cuts?

New building is way down the last years, granted Walsh was hyper aggressive on this front because he wanted union jobs but there has to be a happy medium. She’s now replacing private development money with city money…. There’s a big problem here. City roads are terrible and gotten much worse in the last 4 years, the parks department has had a noticeable slip, she’s giving money to friendly causes like the White Stadium improvement that directly helps the private soccer team when she jacks up taxes and refuses to make cuts of any significance. She seemingly ignores large swaths of the city. It’s not right

 

[Scott]

Spot on. It really boils down to simple supply and demand in my opinion. Investors to developers are only interested in making their financial returns and will look to wherever they can achieve this - in or out of Boston. Since you can't really control macroeconomic impacts like interest rates, construction costs (cough cough unions/tariffs/immigration), etc - you have to look at things the city can control: zoning, affordable requirements, building code (sustainability requirements, egress, etc).

Easing up on any or all of those could open up the floodgates for investors/developers to move forward with projects, generate way more supply for a seemingly infinite demand of housing, and all of the sudden developers will have overbuilt resi. Just look at the lab growth when it became attractive for investors/developers. If you can unlock resi to allow projects to start flowing, I think we'd see the same thing.

The Big Dig is a perfect example of cost certainty using union labor. Everything else went to shit for a myriad of reasons, but not that. I don't suppose you remember that. The only comparison between that and immigration is that both problems are fake news.

 

[Bruins11363]

The Big Dig is a perfect example of cost certainty using union labor. Everything else went to shit for a myriad of reasons, but not that. I don't suppose you remember that. The only comparison between that and immigration is that both problems are fake news.

Union labor saved the big dig?!?

 

[Jeremi]

I know the conversation doesn't entirely belong here, but here's a couple more articles on the housing. The first one really shows how dismal it has been under Wu. I would also put partial blame on the short-lived Kim Janey tenure which kicked off the stagnation.

First article is comparing Boston to itself.

The Boston Guardian by Wehaa

Chart from the article:
View attachment 62083

Second article is comparing Boston to the rest of the state.

Boston falling behind rest of state when it comes to housing, Boston Policy Institute says

Once again, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has filed a bill asking the state legislature for permission to temporarily raise the commercial property tax rate beyond legal limits in order to deal with projected revenue losses tied to the sharp decline of commercial real estate values.

www.cbsnews.com

This is just a graph of interest rates.