And then there were two... (Boston, Fall River: cabinet, cabin, deposit)

[mdovell]

Well to be fai public housing is a state list not a local list and yet the city of Boston still has residency requirements.

It's hypocritical to argue for affordable housing and residency requirements at the same time.

[Boston Shudra]

Originally Posted by mdovell

It's hypocritical to argue for affordable housing and residency requirements at the same time.

Is it? Residency requirements wouldn’t be a huge burden if housing wasn’t so expensive and the schools were good (which are two things that I think literally everyone in the city want).

[Space_League]

I just dont' know how we are going to drive prices down. It's not an easy problem as it might seem. Rent control has a track record of not working. New residential building in big cities already skews way towards luxury megadevelopments even in cities without affordable housing requirements and other rent control measures.

Not to mention with the inflation going on now the costs of building new construction is going to keep going up

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by Space_League

I just dont' know how we are going to drive prices down. It's not an easy problem as it might seem. Rent control has a track record of not working. New residential building in big cities already skews way towards luxury megadevelopments even in cities without affordable housing requirements and other rent control measures.

Not to mention with the inflation going on now the costs of building new construction is going to keep going up

The way you push housing prices down is either to increase the supply or reduce the demand. It would be cheaper to improve the transportation infrastructure to get to Boston jobs from 60 miles out than to try to create affordable housing. You cluster the affordable high density housing units around mass transit stations in places that won't fight it with zoning. I'm sure New Bedford and Fall River would love to have 10,000 commuters per day doing a 30 minute express rail ride to Back Bay and South Stations and would fully support ripping down ancient triple deckers to put in modern high density housing walkable to the train stations.

[Space_League]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

The way you push housing prices down is either to increase the supply or reduce the demand. It would be cheaper to improve the transportation infrastructure to get to Boston jobs from 60 miles out than to try to create affordable housing. You cluster the affordable high density housing units around mass transit stations in places that won't fight it with zoning. I'm sure New Bedford and Fall River would love to have 10,000 commuters per day doing a 30 minute express rail ride to Back Bay and South Stations and would fully support ripping down ancient triple deckers to put in modern high density housing walkable to the train stations.

Every time I see transit oriented projects going up across the country, they tend to be marketed to young professionals and priced accordingly (studios, 1s, 2s, price points 1300+, 1700+, 2100+) This is in random cities in the South too. A few of them ahve gone up in Haverhill and they are basically the most expensive apartments in town it's way cheaper to rent a spot in a crusty old victorian down the street or some 40 year old townhouse development in bradford than in whatever high density TOD lofts and mills.

[GeePee]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

The way you push housing prices down is either to increase the supply or reduce the demand. It would be cheaper to improve the transportation infrastructure to get to Boston jobs from 60 miles out than to try to create affordable housing.

This is dead on. and always a topic of conversation when people who do not take transit gripe about paying for it. People really don't understand the true benefits of have a functional transit in a city, and not just for the city itself.

[WestieWhitie]

That’s because new construction is expensive and developers are not charities - would you build rentals and rent them out for $1,200 if it takes $2,100 to break even?

Originally Posted by Space_League

Every time I see transit oriented projects going up across the country, they tend to be marketed to young professionals and priced accordingly (studios, 1s, 2s, price points 1300+, 1700+, 2100+) This is in random cities in the South too. A few of them ahve gone up in Haverhill and they are basically the most expensive apartments in town it's way cheaper to rent a spot in a crusty old victorian down the street or some 40 year old townhouse development in bradford than in whatever high density TOD lofts and mills.

[Space_League]

Originally Posted by WestieWhitie

That’s because new construction is expensive and developers are not charities - would you build rentals and rent them out for $1,200 if it takes $2,100 to break even?

I'm saying how hard it is to lower housing prices and why I don't expect it to happen. Rent control and housing restrictions has a track record of not working and there's no logical reason to think it would ever work. It's only going to benefit a subset of the existing population who are locked into those lower rents and likely harm a bigger group than it helps.

The other argument is for building more housing, specifically TOD in the suburbs and outlying cities with existing rail service. I'm saying even doing that doesn't appear to have the immediate impact of lowering prices because the majority of dense transit oriented new construction is more expensive than the existing housing stock. Inflation is only making it worse.

This is the kind of stuff that gets built:

https://www.zillow.com/b/the-cordova...ill-ma-5XjD4y/
https://www.zillow.com/b/residences-...ell-ma-9nKJBL/
https://www.zillow.com/b/the-vintage...mpa-fl-5XhzPB/
https://www.zillow.com/b/belmont-on-...ond-va-BgmrTg/
https://www.zillow.com/b/union-house...ham-ma-964jgC/

Putting a bunch of these in Fall River will just make them the most expensive place to live in fall River ..

e.g: https://www.zillow.com/b/the-residen...ver-ma-96MVJt/

However maybe if you build enough it will drive down the price of the triple deckers in the neighborhoods, helping lower income residents. Might hurt a few small time landlords, but probably won't since having rich people housing and rich people in FR might help their property values at the same time.

I guess I don't know what effect it would have overall other than I'm sure the new housing itself won't be cheaper than what's already existing

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by Space_League

Putting a bunch of these in Fall River will just make them the most expensive place to live in fall River ..

e.g: https://www.zillow.com/b/the-residen...ver-ma-96MVJt/

However maybe if you build enough it will drive down the price of the triple deckers in the neighborhoods, helping lower income residents. Might hurt a few small time landlords, but probably won't since having rich people housing and rich people in FR might help their property values at the same time.

I guess I don't know what effect it would have overall other than I'm sure the new housing itself won't be cheaper than what's already existing

You'd only build upscale new multi-dwelling units near train stations. There will still be plenty of triple decker tenement buildings. There is also an enormous amount of square miles to build single family homes with the quick car ride to the express rail with infinite parking at the train station. To increase the housing supply, you need to increase the diameter of the commute. The only way to do that is to fix commuter rail infrastructure so it's not life-destroying to take a train from 50 or 60 miles out.

[Lampert]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

so it's not life-destroying to take a train from 50 or 60 miles out.

50-60? Like Manchester, Sturbridge or Providence?
You just need to improve the 20-30 miles. 50-60 miles is always going to be brutal, a local train is going to be pretty slow. It's always going to take over 1hr for a line that long and that is just pure train time. A door to door 90 min is a very fast commute for someone living that far by train.