Posts filed under 'Housing'
The indispensable Amy Dain reports from the provinces:
Today the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) released its recommendations for the future growth of the region. Its goals for increased housing choice are right on.
Implementation will be no easy task, though. A recent report from Pioneer and Rappaport Institutes has shown that the current system of housing regulation does not allow for many needed types of housing to be built. To learn more about your community’s regulations, look here.
The MAPC plan calls for new apartments, townhouses, and condos near town centers, as well as more modest single-family houses for people who either cannot afford or do not need McMansions. The plan estimates that over half of the new moderately priced housing would be in suburban towns, providing more opportunities for lower income families to live anywhere in the region.
Great idea, but the cities and towns of eastern Mass have created zoning rules that make it very hard to build anything but single family homes on large lots. The incentives and mechanisms are not in place for localities to adopt rules in concert with the regional plan.
MAPC has promised an implementation plan to be released this fall. Localities on their own will not act to allow the market to meet the range of housing needs in the Commonwealth. State action is needed to let the market do its job.
Pioneer recommends the state adopt incentives to localities, exemptions from local zoning for certain compact projects, and new regulatory tools for municipalities.
May 1st, 2007
Good news, everyone. According to today’s Boston Globe, Massachusetts’ economy is growing again – and at almost 4 times the rate as that of the national economy.
But, a note of caution. Massachusetts’ economic growth is imperiled by – surprise, surprise – the state’s high cost of housing. As tech companies expand, they require young, highly educated workers, precisely the demographic that has shown an aversion in recent years to settling down in old, cold and expensive Massachusetts.
In a macro sense, the solution to Massachusetts’ high housing costs is a fairly straightforward one: increase the supply of housing to meet demand. The question is: does the political will exist in Massachusetts to overcome the entirely rational, though somewhat shortsighted interest those who already own their homes have in seeing home prices appreciate as demand outstrips supply? If it doesn’t, Massachusetts’ renewed economic growth will be short-lived indeed.
April 28th, 2007
I think we have heard that one before.
So now we are going to build a $1.4 billion commuter line to New Bedford, even though the T can’t afford it, even though that will add to the ongoing costs of the T to maintain the line, and even though expected ridership is dismally low so it won’t even pay for a tiny fraction of the ongoing costs. Okay, what else is new? Perhaps we can build a convention center at the end of the line to soak up all the excess demand for conventions in Massachusetts.
Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District (SRPEDD) and I did an op-ed on this months ago for the New Bedford Standard Times, calling for a clear understanding of the project’s economic impact, potential environmental consequences, and a comparison with other projects. But what did we know anyway – we (and everybody else at the time) estimated the project cost at between $600 and $900 million.
The only way we will ever do these sorts of comparisons is if we create a real Secretary of Transportation, with control over more of the state’s transportation assets. Currently air is fragmented from light and heavy rail, which does not talk to highways, and then the regional players don’t have any real venue for coming together to develop a statewide strategy.
So what you are left with is pure politics. And, leaving aside the merits of the project, the decision to build the New Bedford line is all about politics.
Reality is the project could be a good one. But it would take some action upfront from the Commonwealth. That is, the Commonwealth would need to put forward a single set of selection criteria for all transportation/transit projects. If one of the principal goals is smart growth, then make one of the major criteria in the selection process housing growth. This way, if politicians want to build the New Bedford line or any project, they will have to line up the support from communities up and down the line, so that the communities will change their zoning and allow that sort of growth to happen.
Doing it after the fact will not work. The zoning laws just won’t allow for dense commercial and residential uses. And with the issue (and fear) of school costs driving local decisions on development, don’t expect even a train to change that.
April 22nd, 2007
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