Boston has plenty of attractive aspects going for it. The educational institutions are top-notch, healthcare facilities are unparalleled its tech and innovation scenes are booming, and late-night public transportation may actually become a longterm reality. The only item missing from such a lucrative equation is affordable housing for middle-income residents.
The City of Boston is notoriously expensive in terms of both housing and quality of living. Rarely does one come across a comfortable apartment without having to worry about cutting spending elsewhere.
In fact, a recent study by local renting startup Jumpshell contends that the cost of living in Boston on average runs as high $1,642 per month – $19,429 annually – or 49 percent more costly than the U.S. average.
Couple that with the fact that, according to information provided by the Department of Neighborhood Development, the real median family income, adjusted for inflation, has fallen by 7.3 percent in greater Boston over the past ten years, while rent is up 59 percent since 2004 – and we’ve got ourselves a bit of an issue here.
So, while Boston’s luxury housing continues to skyrocket, the mayor is trying to figure out new methods of keeping the city’s lifeblood – recent college graduates, young professionals and optimistic transplants – from being priced-out to somewhere else.
The same study by the DND shows that approximately 38 percent of all renters who earn between $25,000 and $50,000 yearly spend at least half of their salary on rent. Boston’s housing pipeline is currently developing 20,964 housing units out of the projected 31,861 units needed in the city by 2023.
For those in the $50,000 or less salary range, 2,203 projects are already underway. But 13,549 units are still in demand.
In an interview with Bloomberg last week, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh offered up an intriguing solution to retain Boston’s young talent: workforce housing in the form of skyscrapers.
It’s a move that starkly contrasts with any in his predecessor’s arsenal. Mayor Tom Menino, as you might recall, absolutely abhorred the idea of skyscrapers along the waterfront and pulled out all the stops to prevent them from going up.
Mayor Walsh, however, is still in the early stages of writing his own chapter in Boston’s storied history and included in that is residential development not bound by height.
“I’m not afraid to build a skyscraper for workforce housing,” the mayor told Bloomberg. “The middle class is being pushed out, and it’s happening everywhere.”
Workforce housing in particular is not a novel idea. Mayor Menino made progress in creating affordable living spaces for multiple workers to live in and emphasized targeting homelessness, but the idea never really took off. Now, as Boston continues to enjoy the boons of its luxury housing growth, Mayor Walsh is turning his eyes to penniless innovators and startup hopefuls.
“We have to create workforce housing,” continued Mayor Walsh to Bloomberg.
A lot of these startup companies, they’ll come here and eventually they’ll be successful and can afford to move into the high-end rental units in Boston. But they can’t afford to buy a house in the Back Bay, they can’t afford to move into the buildings being built under all the cranes in Boston. So three or four of them will move into an apartment together but after a while people want their own place.
The question remains as to where Mayor Walsh hopes to build. Certainly areas in South Boston, in close proximity to the Seaport’s Innovation District, would be the most sensible given the amount of commercial growth in the area.
But the mayor is trying to pull all of Boston’s neighborhoods into the innovation fold and therefore, may look to build in the city’s outer neighborhoods like East Boston, Mattapan, Dorchester and Roxbury.
The process of gentrification has rendered many neighborhoods unlivable simply due to prices. West Roxbury, Downtown Boston, Charlestown, the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, the South End and South Boston have all seen an increase of at least 24 percent of people moving in with salary of at least $100,000 annually. On the flip side, Mattapan has seen a six percent decrease in residents who boast a salary of such high magnitude while East Boston has seen a 10 percent decrease.
Perhaps its these neighborhoods that will benefit the most from workforce housing. As Mayor Walsh continues to fertilize them with tech and innovation resources, the demand for nearby housing will theoretically rise. Given that the mayor has also helped to implement the MBTA’s late-night pilot program and is trying to revamp licensing and permitting to keep Boston’s food service industry open later as well, it’s certainly possible that people will be willing to commute to these neighborhoods.
The DND’s study is meant to be a briefing of just some of the housing issues facing Boston’s housing task force. Stay tuned to BostInno for more details on the solutions provided by the task force and Mayor Walsh’s plan to implement workforce housing in Boston.
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