Understood and agreed! The title is just misleading

I don't think Lincoln has much of the latter anyway, does it?

dwellings would not face a cap on rent increases if their permanent occupancy certificates are less than 15 years old and they were built from the ground up, added to an existing building or converted from another use to residential.

I agree with your first two paragraphs, but I am not talking about young people, really. They are typically college graduates that have high-paying jobs. I am talking about an immigrant family that has lived here for 12 years and has 2 kids under age 10. Or couple that moved from Ohio to Mass and both 35 year old individuals work at TJ Maxx, one as a manager making $60k.

Gentrification happens whether you build or not.

Because when there’s an ever-increasing demand for housing, but the supply doesn’t keep up, prices rise.

And guess who can afford to pay more for that old unit than the working class family?

The doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc., who would have otherwise moved into that “luxury” unit.

Unless you find a way to somehow escape capitalism, gentrification is going to happen when there is high demand for housing and not enough supply.

Rent control doesn’t work. It just picks winners and losers, and exacerbates the problem down the road by discouraging new development.

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And what do you think happens when you don’t build more housing?

They still get priced out.

Unless you plan on keeping a neighborhood intentionally shitty so that nobody wants to live there.

I’m all for rent control, but I also recognize the cost of building in Boston, and would generally not consider any new developments that are walkable to transit to be anything but luxury. Their sale prices will need to be over $1000/sqft to justify the effort of construction.

Where rents are now, even if increases for existing tenants are capped at 3% annually, there’s money to be made in most neighborhoods. I don’t like to see people who pay their rent reliably displaced out of greed.

If you’re near a road, you’re near transit, move far enough out and car+housing can be affordable. I think the perpetually young city of Boston needs a reality check every so often, that walkable living and eating/drinking out a few nights a week isn’t a sustainable lifestyle for most people, certainly not for people who also don’t want roommates. Demand is high and those amenities that make city living attractive are competing with housing for land under foot. Do people really want to live that way forever? It gets repetitive, doesn’t it?

1. It's an "I got mine, screw everyone else policy" where the local government essentially picks winners and losers. It would also make it more difficult for the city to maintain its high standard of living

2. If the "luxury" units aren't built, the people who would live in them would still move in and raise housing prices, they'd just move into the older units. Stopping new housing construction won't stop gentrification, it will just result in more wealthy people moving into older housing.

3. I'd have to read more about it but it seems better than indefinite rent control. New York also isn't exactly affordable despite this and other rent control measures

4. Has this been attempted anywhere else, and why would any developer agree to it?

5. Implement more statewide zoning measures to promote new construction while restricting local zoning and community input policies. Expand transit service in areas where people will actually use it (i.e. stop wasting money on projects like south coast and east-west rail)

I mean…when areas gentrify, they become cleaner, have more amenities, and are able to attract uhhh more “higher quality” residents which then results in things getting cleaner/better etc and the cycle continues.

Obviously there are huge impacts to the community when this happens and people end up priced out, but that’s just life. If we want nice things, we need people that can pay for them. When we get nice things, people want to live there, high demand = high price.

If you add enough market rate housing, prices will drop quite significantly across the board. I think many fear requirements for affordability will just dissuade the introduction of new supply. Additionally, the middle class gains very little from affordability requirements because the new units they would be eligible for are those that need to subsidize the affordable units which likely makes them still unaffordable.

This post is already becoming painful. Maybe the OP should research how the Real Estate Market works. Good grief…

Can you explain the waiving a bit more?

Edit: downvoted for trying to get more information. This sub is, and has been, a joke.

I disagree because those that have been living there for, say, 20 years get priced out. Their landlord sees an opportunity to make more money and increases the rent accordingly. Where are these individuals to go?

New Luxury housing is financed by banks. Banks wont give financing if units are rent controlled because the numbers will not work. Thats why even the affordables can be an issue and why Wu is proposing waiving that requirement for the first 15 years

I mean, raising the prices of those area residential properties because of new local development is called appreciating intergenerational wealth, from another perspective.

Mixed-use zoning still reduces the commercial tax base because is typically used for low value commercial like nail salons, coffee shops, and dentist chains. High-value commercial like manufacturing, pharmaceutical, chemical, R&D lab, nuclear medicine isotope production would still be isolated in an industrial ghetto. They should be colocated with residential so that the people that work in these companies can live within walking distance.

The solution to homelessness is giving developers subsidies is what you're saying.

The only surrounding town that would reasonably apply to is Lincoln. If they lost the commercial space next to the train they'd have none left. I don't know that the legislation can force the cities/towns to build mixed use but that's been their plan for years. Everything got put on hold until the details shake out.

“Poochie was from another planet???”

Yeah, I realized after I posted my comment that's exactly something they would demand.

Still in favor of using the stick. Next time Middleborough needs any state aid, too bad.

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> they can request the MBTA close the station down

Careful what you wish for b/c that appeals to home owners who live along the rails.

> Your original town character

The original town character was probably a wetu before it had a two level house.

It's called fascism. What you're encountering now is called fascism. It's like a cult only its...well, no, it's pretty much a cult.