100% correct on all points.
Recent changes to the home mortgage interest deduction will have just about no effect on anyone in the middle class, and very little to no effect on housing affordability for anybody at all. The biggest losers from the changes will be people trying to sell multi-million dollar properties, not people trying to buy them. And if you're selling a multi-million dollar property you're doing just fine, especially in this housing market.
In Greater Boston today, essentially any household of two wage earners who both have college degrees makes at least $100k. Households making less than that either have no college education and/or less than two earners. That being said, about half of Bostonians over 25 don't have college degrees, and a ton of families only have one earner. This is the driver of inequality in our society today, and the source of the fight over "middle class" semantics. Many of the stereotypical "middle-class" jobs actually pay really well. The average "teacher and fire fighter" couple in Boston makes $150k per year easily. The average "nurse and construction worker" couple probably makes even more. These people have no problem affording to live in Boston. But are workers like this middle class? In the traditional sense, yes of course. But looking strictly at the numbers, it's not so clear...
The calculus is totally different for single parents and for dual earner families in which neither earner went to college.
While there are large numbers of single parents, for families with both parents in the picture both parents work in the vast majority of cases.
I would love to see the average household income of families with two working parents and kids. That takes out the people who just got out of college or high school and are starting up in the workforce and it takes out retirees. And the average income in the Boston area, not the average income of the United States.
If you look at states by GDP per capita Massachusetts is at 65.5k while the USA as a whole is at 50.5k. And Massachusetts as a whole includes the Springfield area, full time residents of Cape Cod, the Worcester area, and the south coast. If you just look at Boston and surrounding areas, even say inside of 495, I'd bet that the GDP and average income is a good bit higher then the state as a whole.
So what i'm saying is that the Urban Institute defining middle class as 35k to 100k, I don't think that is true for the Boston area. 35k is poor in the Boston area for a family, two people parents working full time at Mcdonald's can easily beat that. 30 hours a week at minimum wage with two household earners equals 35k. That's definitively not middle class in my opinion. It's working poor. I'd honestly say that for Boston the middle class for a family would be 60k-200k or something along those lines. I'd say that the average wage for a single earner person without a college degree is probably about 35k a year, or even more in some areas.
Even looking at two earner households, 60k is very low. That's 30k a year.
Many lower level service workers make that and basically all governmental, middle management, skilled tradesmen, and other traditional "middle class" jobs make more then that.
Even a 200k family is not going to be affected by the mortgage interest limit. That just seems like something that the Globe put in their piece because they don't like Trump and not because it was relevant. Of course not being able to deduct the income tax hurts a little, but the higher standard deduction and the slightly lower bracket rates will definitively make up for it. It just seems like the Globe was like "lets bash the Trump tax deal" without it being relevant or true for the argument they were trying to make.
I think a big reason for Boston becoming a place for only rich and poor families is the school system. The Boston School system just does not rate as well as the suburbs. So middle, and upper middle class families are gravitating towards suburbs whose schools rank higher. A family making 120k or so can afford a place in Boston, not in the Seaport but in a place like Roslindale. And with a two income family that's two people making 60k a year. Solidly middle class. Even people without college degrees make that kind of money in this area if we aren't looking at the lowest level service jobs.
I just think that the Globe article had an idea what they wanted to write about and what their beliefs were and looked for evidence to support those beliefs. It also tends to add a bit of sensationalism, which all media outlets add.
I still think that there is a housing shortage in this area, but it's not as dire as it first appears. Any city with a top notch economy is going to be expensive. Boston is an area that pays more on average yet it also costs more. As far as living standards the higher incomes basically make up for the higher rent and other costs of living in Boston. Of course I hope the region keeps building, because I don't want Boston to end up like San Francisco. Though one disadvantage that SFO has is that it's surrounded by water on three sides, Boston is only surrounded by water on one side so there is more room to grow.
I will also point out that Boston outside of West Roxbury makes it much easier to live without a car. If you take a car out of the equation i'd say that it's reasonable for people to pay more then the 30% rule of thumb amount for rent in the area. So while the suburbs are more affordable for the same amount of space, having to pay for two cars takes out a lot of the cost advantage.