Quite possibly America’s earliest form of ‘market’ affordable housing.

 

 

Triple-deckers in Dorchester

 

Though affordability is defined economically, it must have a physical expression — a place whose market value yields an affordable rent or home purchase price.  While government can use the four kinds of money to narrow and close the cost-value gap, affordability can be approached from the other direction: the scale and density of the property.  Just as zoning is destiny, construction is its skeleton: the physical cord that determines the organism’s life.

 

When you build a cheaper home, it will tend to remain a cheaper alternative, and therefore a likely affordability and regeneration magnet. 

 

For more than 125 years, such a fate has been in store for the humble triple-decker, New England’s unique affordable housing configuration. 

 

The Platonic ideal triple-decker

Places like Jamaica Plain are dotted with triple-deckers: wood-frame buildings of three flats. 

 

Triple-deckers in Jamaica Plain

 

Triple-deckers were the affordable housing innovation of the late 19th century, when they were built in great numbers in Boston’s streetcar suburbs of Cambridge, Somerville (note the triple-decker on its home page!), Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, and West Roxbury. 

 

Indeed, one finds them throughout the Northeast, but especially in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where land is scarce and expensive, wood plentiful and cheap.

 

 

Solving the density problem the right way!

 

Places like Worcester, a quintessential mill/ manufacturing town:

 

We lived, when I was a child [1902-11] . . . in a triple-decker tenement a quarter way up the long hill that was Providence Street.  The street belonged to a few Irish, to a few Poles, and to us. The . . . two white houses at the opposite corners of Waverly and Providence Streets . . . [were] the residual islands of a lovely, tree-shaded New England street. . . . These triple-deckers, which straggled up our hill, were mostly sadly in need of paint jobs and their mass appearance was somewhat depressing. But in many other respects they were not so bad. They had balconies, front and back, which we called piazzas. The yards in the back had fruit trees–cherry and pear and apple. . . . The contemplative and withdrawn could sit on the back piazzas and look at the fruit trees; the urban and worldly could sit on the front piazzas and survey the passing scene. . . .

 

A hundred-year-old photograph

 

Today, triple-deckers are coming back (were they ever away?) as a new source of affordable homeownership:

 

David Scott has a philosophy that seems to go against the grain of a go-go housing market. ”Eat little and live longer,” he says.

 

For Scott that translates into a simple business plan: establish a reputation for quality, make a reasonable rate of return, and then leverage both by reinvesting in a community.

 

And a new generation of owner-landlords:

 

One such buyer is Marie Firman, an educational consultant, who with her son and nephew bought all three units in a Roxbury three-family that Scott and his company, Metro Property Partners LLP, are converting to condos.

 

”We were looking to buy a triple-decker,” says Firman, who grew up in the neighborhood and now wants to move back.  ”We found this and it made sense to buy all three units.  We plan to live in two and rent out the third.”

 

Triple-deckers thus represent a source of raw material, and their renovation signals — and stimulates! — urban regeneration, as it moves from close-in Cambridge to ‘far-out’ Worcester:

 

 

To a Bostonian, Route 9 seems an eternity!

 

She knew her money would go further in Worcester, where a growing number of investors are helping to meet the regional demand for affordable housing by converting aging multifamily homes into condominiums.

 

The trend that began decades ago in Cambridge and Somerville has migrated west to Worcester’s promising stock of triple-decker homes, realtors say. Condominiums have become an increasingly important gateway to ownership as the city’s single-family home prices have grown more exclusive:

 

There’s also the gravitic effect — triple-deckers are a more acceptable form of affordable housing because there are so many of them:

 

According to the US Census, more than 24,000 — or 37% — of Worcester’s housing units are located in two-, three- or four-family structures.

 

These folks are urban pioneers:

 

Dave Frechette, vice president of Mackinac Savings Bank in Auburn, said investors first began seeking loans to buy and rehabilitate homes about 18 months ago. The cost to rehab each unit can be $10,000 to $40,000, he said.

 

The wave of potential buyers seeking loans to buy the rehabbed units began about three months ago. The buzz has led to an increase in the cost of multifamily properties, said Frechette, who is starting to see listings that read ”good condo potential.”

 

… who stimulate urban regeneration:

 

But both he and Hayman said ownership can spur more investment in a neighborhood. ”It tends to create stability,” Fellenz said.

 

A hundred years ago, triple-deckers were a route to homeownership and wealth accumulation, part of the essential diversity of configuration and price points that characterizes a healthy housing ecosystem.  They still are today, as new triple-deckers are being built as infills in neighborhoods dominated by triple-deckers for over a century.

 

New construction, Heath Street, Boston

 

Next time you pass a triple-decker, tip your mental cap to an American innovation in housing affordability.

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