Everyone agrees we need a lot more housing in Massachusetts. We’re spending billions of dollars and passing laws such as the Affordable Homes Act and the MBTA Communities Act, hoping to create that housing.
But we’re losing housing for low- and moderate-income people at the same time. This chart compares data from the governor Maura Healey administration and Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
In “A Home for Everyone,” the Healey administration says “We are at risk of losing the homes we have, especially the affordable ones …The availability of modestly priced homes and apartments is dwindling as they are acquired and upscaled by investors who sell or rent at a much higher price point.”
Nationally, we see the same trend: more total housing, but less of it for low- and middle-income people. The New York Times reports that “in cities that aggressively built housing in recent years, rents rose dramatically for low-income households and stabilized for wealthier ones. The new rental housing that was built was often luxury housing, with studios and one-bedrooms, units that targeted young, single professionals but were too small and too expensive for low-income households with children. New single-family homes for sale were larger than they were in the past, aimed at wealthier buyers, rather than cash-strapped, first-time homebuyers.”
The Harvard center writes in “The State of the Nation’s Housing” that “rather than being replenished by units filtering down to lower rents, the existing stock of low-rent units is shrinking.” This chart is from the report:
We need preservation, not just building
Chris Dwan, a Cambridge Somerville Independent writer, has observed that “You can’t build old and cheap.”
The chief executive of the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corp. writes in The Boston Globe, “The state cannot build its way out of the current housing shortage. It must also prioritize purchasing existing affordable housing that is at risk of conversion to market-rate units. In many cases, acquisition costs are nearly half that of new construction.”
Naturally occurring affordable housing is not the same as “affordable housing,” which is income-restricted and subsidized.
That naturally occurring affordable housing is being replaced rapidly by luxury housing in many communities, as explained in the graphic here by Homes for All.
Zoning can eliminate moderately priced housing
One example of many of how zoning can eliminate moderately priced housing: A multifamily home in Somerville sold two years ago for $710,000. The buyer demolished it and built four condos, as allowed by zoning, each selling for between $925,000 and $1.4 million. So there’s more housing, but fewer units available for people with modest incomes. (Want a tour of the new condos?)
Moreover, upzoning can raise the market value of a property because of the opportunity to build more expensive units. Potential homeowners are outbid by corporations who can pay cash with no conditions. The Metropolitan Area Planning Council report, “Homes for Profit, Speculation and Investment in Greater Boston,” notes that from 2004-2018 in East Somerville, more than half the triple-deckers and almost two-thirds of two-family homes were sold to investors. The situation is much worse now, though there’s no more recent data.
A recent opinion piece by a developer in Commonwealth Beacon makes a similar point about upzoning in suburbs: Zoning “affects what land is worth. If an older $600,000 house sits on land that can suddenly support two more valuable homes, that property is no longer competing only as a $600,000 residence. It is competing as redevelopment land. A builder can pay more for it because the development rights are worth more. The existing house may become more valuable to demolish than to preserve.”
In earlier years, a triple-decker could be a “starter home,” allowing a family to rent units to help pay their mortgage, or share with their extended family. This is no longer possible.
We need to preserve some naturally occurring affordable homes by removing them from the speculative market. Zoning should not create or increase incentives to demolish those homes and replace them with luxury units.
