Urban housing morality quiz
From the ever-reliable Boston Globe comes this tale of urban change that invites a multi-question multiple-choice quiz:
Some Jamaica Plain residents fear that gentrification would cause them to lose neighborhood markets like this one at Centre and Wyman streets, stamping out the area’s unique flavor and pricing out the very people who rebuilt the neighborhood. (Globe Staff Photo / Essdras M. Suarez)
Today, residents find themselves immersed in another battle, this time from the front steps of The Blessed Sacrament Church, the 115-year-old landmark shut down last year by the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston to help deal with financial woes caused by the clergy sex abuse scandal.
As the archdiocese considers offers on the 3-acre property, perched at a prime spot on
O, the horror! the horror!
And that, they fear, would accelerate the wave of gentrification that has crept down
Question 1: Whose fault is this?
- Nobody’s, these things happen
- The Church
- The City of
- The prospective developer
- The state
Boston’s strong economy is making neighborhoods with good bones, like Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, close to the city but much lower values, suddenly hot:
House prices have already spiked in recent years. In 1998, the average price of a single-family home was $252,000, according to city figures. The average price in 2003, the latest figures available, was $510,000.
That’s quite a jump: 15.1% a year.
The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Jamaica Plain has jumped from $1,100 in 1998 to $1,325 last year, according to the latest figures from the city’s Department of Neighborhood Development.
Rents have “jumped” 3.1% per year.
House prices rising much faster than rents both fuels condo conversions and sometimes signals a market top, which will be of no consolation to those priced out of buying, and even less to those who buy only to discover they have called the top.
Question 2: Who gets blamed?
- Only one guess allowed!
Neighborhood activists have also targeted one luxury condo developer, who has expressed interest in the site.
Someone who does not even own the property … and such estimable tactics:
In a letter posted on the Internet with the man’s name, address, and phone number, Neighbors Against Gentrification [NAG – Ed.] asked residents to let him know that they will do everything within their ”power to make the zoning process extremely difficult for him.”
Xerxes Agassi, project manager of JP Lofts LLC, confirmed yesterday that he put in a bid for that property, and said he was surprised the campaign was launched against him.
To quote George C. Scott from Anatomy of a Murder, “you haven’t lived.”
‘’The first few people who called I had a few conversations with,” he said. ‘’And then bunches of calls came, and people were saying the same thing. I wasn’t aware until later on that someone was probably passing out leaflets telling them what to say.”
For the most part, Agassi said, the conversations were civil, but they did not change his mind about wanting to build condos there. ‘’I just don’t think it’s the correct way to approach the issue of housing affordability,” he said of the calls. ‘’I feel it is an important issue, and that it should be discussed within the City of Boston and its government, not by harassing market-rate developers.”
Agassi said he has had previous conversations with other residents and that he was considering setting aside some affordable-housing units even before the campaign was launched.
A community that values affordable housing can always seek to acquire it for neighborhood use:
The nonprofit Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corp. has also put in a bid on the property, promising a mix of affordable housing and condos for moderate-income families.
How then can the housing affordability be provided? Here’s the final question, the real and hard one:
Question 3: Which
road to affordability is best?
- Do nothing, people who rent should simply move somewhere cheaper.
- Pressure the Church to impose a land use restriction: housing should be part of the charitable purpose.
- Use zoning (down-zoning or inclusionary) because zoning is destiny.
- Inhibit market conversion using differential real estate taxation that penalizes market use
- Fund non-profits or other
preservation entities to
buy the property at market and preserve it for long-term affordability (link in .pdf). - Use eminent domain (link in .pdf) to compel sale.
- Enact state-level or city-level incentives to provide preservation entities with money to match market prices.
- Vilify developers and drive them away.
