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Truly shocking: Subsidized apartments sit empty in the suburbs, even as urban units amass epic wait lists
That fairly stunning revelation can be found in a new report just out this morning on the Greater Boston housing market.
Amid an epic housing crunch, subsidized apartments with below market rents were vacant and languishing as recently as this summer in Kingston, Bellingham, Scituate, Plymouth, and Shrewsbury, among other communities, the annual Greater Boston Housing Report Card finds.
And five of 11 new subsidized housing projects that opened in Boston’s suburbs and on the Cape in early 2022 wound up with more apartments than takers, according to the Boston Foundation report.
By contrast, 17,000 people were on the wait list for openings in Allston-Brighton Community Development Corp.’s roster of 500 subsidized units, as of 2020.
If only this were just a case of bureaucratic ineptitude, with state and local housing authorities unable to work together effectively in order to get the word out about available units in a housing starved market.
But there are reasons to think there is more to this story.
Most of these overwhelmingly white suburbs can use local preferences to ensure units are reserved for their own residents, even if there is not enough demand in town to fill them. The units in question are also often too expensive, even with the subsidies, for many working class families, and/or are nowhere near public transportation, the report notes.
“Producing more subsidized housing cannot reduce racial disparities if households of color do not have access to that housing, including those on the decades-long waiting lists at many local housing authorities,” the report notes.
It apparently took some major teeth pulling by the Boston Foundation researchers who worked on the report just to get this basic info.
It certainly sounds like the local powers to be have no interest in shaking up a system that is almost scandalous in its dysfunction.
Sure, maybe there are more benign explanations. But given many of these same suburban communities are also fighting tooth and nail to prevent new apartment projects of any type from being built, it certainly doesn’t look good.
Another key finding of the Boston Foundation report: We are losing the war when it comes to building new housing
There really is no other way to put it. Despite two decades of cheerleading by governors and mayors alike urging the construction of more housing of all types, the number of new homes, condos and apartments rolling onto the market continues to lag.
The Metropolitan Mayors Coalition, which includes the elected leaders of Boston, Quincy, Cambridge, Newton, Revere, Braintree, and nine other cities and towns, unveiled ambitious plans a few years back to build 185,000 new housing units by 2030.
But by 2021, just 38,639 new units had been permitted, or only a little over half the amount needed to keep pace with the goal, the Boston Foundation report finds.
Local news revival: New Concord paper springs to life in void left by stumbling corporate chain
By Mark Pickering
Even as investor-owned newspaper chains are floundering, backers of the Concord Bridge newspaper have laid the groundwork for success and launched a first edition. The nonprofit paper is backed by the Concord Independent Foundation ‑ which has hosted community meetings and rallied residents to provide a strong base of financial support.
The paper’s first editorial promises to distribute a print edition weekly, while also offering content online. The paper is being delivered to Concord households – all 8,700 of them.
The paper said it will cover the full range of what people have traditionally looked for in local publications. That means reporting on the “decisions being made in local government, seasonal events, businesses, the arts scene, schools, and most importantly, the interesting people of Concord.”
“Concord has always prided itself on being a civic-minded community with an engaged citizenry,” said Alice Kaufman, the foundation’s president. In the first edition’s lead story, she added that, “participation in local government has fallen off here and elsewhere.” She blamed this trend on the loss of newspapers that had been part of “the fabric of community life.”
In fact, the newly minted Bridge is filling a gaping hole in local news coverage due to the seismic changes going on in the industry.
In the past, the upstart paper would have had a big fight on its hands from the Concord Journal. However, since Gannett, a national newspaper chain, bought the Journal and other papers three years ago, the chain has continued the industry trend of relentlessly cutting staffing.
In upscale Concord, at least, this has left a vacuum for new competition.
“When people have access to thoughtful, insightful, authentic and accurate coverage of local news, they are able to participate more fully in the important issues of the day, whether it be about our schools, our government, or local elections,” added Kaufman. The former Concord Select Board member now helps oversee the town’s municipal light department.
For its part, the foundation’s board also includes Virginia “Dinny” McIntyre and John Clymer, both former members of the Concord Select Board; Margaret “Peggy” Burke, formerly director of foundation development at WGBH; Andrew Peddar, who has worked extensively in the financial technology industry; veteran journalist Kate Stout; and Alan Lightman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
As reported by Contrarian Boston, the Concord Bridge hired local journalist Jennifer Lord Paluzzi as editor in chief in the run-up to the paper’s first edition.
Mark Pickering is a veteran of the local news business, having worked on the business desk and the opinion pages of the Boston Herald.
About Contrarian Boston
I have fielded emails over the past couple of months asking what Contrarian Boston is about.
Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.
For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.
An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.
Our focus is:
· Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;
· Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;
· The media and why it does what it does;
· Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;
· And whatever else catches our fancy.