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• Apr 052013

  Report: Jobs, not housing, first reason why we lose young talent by Rus Lodi

  The World Class Cities Partnership's new Talent Magnet report seems to debunk the argument that Boston is losing its young professionals due to high housing costs, noting that Greater Boston is losing most of its young talent to New York City and San Francisco - two of the most expensive cities in the country.

  The World Class Cities Partnership's new Talent Magnet report seems to debunk the argument that Boston is losing its young professionals due to high housing costs, noting that Greater Boston is losing most of its young talent to New York City and San Francisco - two of the most expensive cities in the country.

  The report, discussed at the second-ever joint city council meeting of Boston and Cambridge in March, said that recent graduates surveyed rarely said that they left Boston because housing costs. The most common reason for leaving was a lack of good jobs in their field of study.

  The report was used by the two city councils as the basis for a discussion in which 33 people discussed why Boston loses talent and how it can be retained. The event was summarized in the Boston Globe by Mike Lake and Dan Spiess, executive director and research director at the World Class Cities Partnership, an international urban research organization based at Northeastern University. The article attracted 132 reader comments about life in Boston, why people decide to leave, why some stay and what can be done to make the city more attractive.

  Lake and Spiess warn of the danger of viewing any factor in isolation, saying that while the lack of good jobs may be the reason why young people leave right after college, high housing costs may be a big reason why others leave a few years after college, when they think about setting down roots and realize the housing is too expensive. Lake and Spiess write that:

  ... too often we lump together all of these various reasons that push people out of the Commonwealth without regard for importance, timing, or life needs. We give each reason equal weight, which diminishes the effectiveness of our response. By breaking down talent needs into life stages, policy makers can better prioritize talent retention strategies.

   

   

   

   

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• Feb 272013

  New: Action on housing key to state's economic prosperity by Rus Lodi

  

  We have posted a paper by MHP Executive Director Clark L. Ziegler that analyzes why Massachusetts has struggled to compete with the rest of the U.S. and what reforms we can make in our housing policies to ensure our economic prosperity.

  We have posted a white paper by MHP Executive Director Clark L. Ziegler that analyzes why Massachusetts has struggled to compete with the rest of the U.S. and what reforms we can make in our housing policies to ensure our economic prosperity. To read the report, click here.

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• Jan 292013

  Bluestone: Population shift to alter housing demand by Rus Lodi

  In his "Economy and Equity" blog for the Boston Globe, Northeastern's Barry Bluestone says "seismic shifts" in the region's population will drastically affect housing demand.

  In his "Economy and Equity" blog for the Boston Globe, Northeastern's Barry Bluestone says "seismic shifts" in the region's population will drastically affect housing demand.

  Bluestone says by 2020, the region will see increases in the 25-34 and over 65 age groups, and less residents in the 35-54 age group. He says that's bad news for suburban home prices and it should be a wakeup call for how the suburbs zone for housing:

  ...Traditional suburban home prices are going to continue to stagnate. At current rates, they may not return to their 2005 peak until sometime early in the 2030s.
  
  Simultaneously, the demand for multifamily apartments and condos is going to soar as young millenials at one end of the age spectrum and aging baby boomers at the other both search for smaller housing units.
  
  Over the years, many of the suburban communities around Boston have enacted zoning that severely restricts the ability of developers to construct multifamily housing in village and town centers.

  But the demographic shift means that these communities are zoning not against “those” people, but against their own residents, many of whom have lived in their communities for decades -- the community’s aging baby boomers and their millennial kids.

  Unless these communities are ready to jettison their long-term residents, they need to get on with the task of rezoning sections of their communities for smart growth, transit-oriented, village and town centered, multifamily housing.

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• Dec 062012

  Gov's goal puts housing, growth on front burner by Rus Lodi

  Governor Patrick put the issue of housing supply and job growth on the front burner last month when he announced a statewide goal of producing 10,000 multifamily units per year for each of the next three years. Speaking on Nov. 13 at a state housing conference in Worcester, Patrick said the goal of keeping young professionals and working families in Massachusetts hinges on creating more multifamily housing.
  
  

  Governor Patrick put the issue of housing supply and job growth on the front burner last month when he announced a statewide goal of producing 10,000 multifamily units per year for each of the next three years. Speaking on Nov. 13 at a state housing conference in Worcester, Patrick said the goal of keeping young professionals and working familes in Massachusetts hinges on creating more multifamily housing.

  To spark this effort, Patrick outlined a new Compact Neighborhoods Program, which is designed to offer incentives to communities that build denser, multifamily housing. The program is meant to complemennt other state initiatives like Ch. 40R which promote mulitfamily housing near jobs, public transportation and urban centers.

  One week later, Boston Globe op-ed contributor Paul McMorrow wrote that in order for the Patrick Administration to achieve its ambitious goals, it must convince cities and towns to overcome their resistance to housing and realize the importance of balancing housing supply and demand. Otherwise, he predicts communities won't take advantage of the various programs that provide incentives for multifamily housing.

  MHP's Foundation for Growth initiative was created to tackle this problem. Our objective is to enable more robust job growth through state polices that require responsible land use planning and eliminate unreasonable local constraints on housing supply. Governor Patrick's aggressive goal is right on target and it brings the issue of housing and economic growth to the forefront. McMorrow's candid political assessment highlights the need for new state polices to get us there.  

   

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• Jun 272012

  Hub tops Chamber's 'Talent Index' but can we stay there by Rus Lodi

  On the heels of Ed Glaeser's article that high prices and the lack of housing supply are big reasons why homeownership rates are down among young people comes a report from the Boston Chamber of Commerce that Boston ranks number one for its college graduate talent pool and resulting innovation.

  On the heels of Ed Glaeser's article that high prices and the lack of housing supply are big reasons why homeownership rates are down among young people comes a Boston Chamber of Commerce report that the Hub ranks number one in college graduate talent and resulting innovation.

  The chamber has created a new Global Talent Index which compares the 15 largest U.S. Metro areas and 15 major international capitals in three areas - university academic performance, college degrees and patents. Boston's strong performance in each of the three metrics generated its overall first-place ranking. Other cities in the top five were London, Beiijing, San Francisco and Paris.

  The chamber stresses that talent is not a given, that it is attracted to regions that welcome and help talent flourish (meaning jobs).  The chamber makes several recommendations on how Boston can maintain its lofty ranking, including keeping more college graduates in the region by expanding internships and immigration reforms that will make more visas avaiable for foreign-born students. The chamber reports:

  While the region retains half of its students upon graduation, half leave for other regions,with studies showing that the primary driver of these departures is job availability.

  The chamber's report focuses on making academic and post-academic conditions more favorable for college graduates. But it's not a stretch to brinig in Glaeser's concerns that the state's strict zoning rules are squelching production and not allowing us to build the housing we need to keep talent. To maintain and grow Boston's talent pool, housing must also be a priority.

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• Jun 262012

  Report: Appetite for large-lot homes may wane by Rus Lodi

  Conservative blogger David Frum points out a new study that predicts that the single-family housing we have been building will not be wanted by future generations. The Bipartisan Policy Center report predicts that there will be a low demand for larger single family homes that demand lots of energy, especially in the Midwest. Here's the money quote Frum pulled from the report:
  
  

  Conservative blogger David Frum points out a new study that predicts that the single-family housing we have been building will not be wanted by future generations. The Bipartisan Policy Center report predicts that there will be a low demand for larger single family homes that demand lots of energy, especially in the Midwest. Here's the money quote Frum pulled from the report:

  Most observers expect the next 20 to 30 years to depart from this historic picture, with more expensive energy, growing diversity in race, ethnicity and in household structure, and more intense international economic competition. All of these factors will likely reduce demand for large single-family homes on large lots far away from established centers of employment and entertainment.

  The Foundation for Growth has also reported on large-lot zoning  and issued a report in 2006 that found that half of the metropolitan area's new homes built between 1998 and 2002 were built on lots of 0.9 acres or larger, or about the size of a football field. We're in the process of updating that report. The Bipartisan Policy Center report seems to be indicating that future generations may desire smaller housing closer to jobs, public transportation and urban centes.

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• Jun 212012

  Supply, price reason why young aren't buying by Rus Lodi

  Boston Globe contributor Ed Glaeser recently wrote a compelling opinion piece on the state's dropping rate of homeownership among people ages 25-34. According to the cenus, the homeownership rate for this group has dropped 19 percent since 2005.
  
  

  Boston Globe contributor and Harvard economics professor Ed Glaeser recently wrote a compelling opinion piece on the state's dropping rate of homeownership among people ages 25-34. According to the cenus, the homeownership rate for this group has dropped 19 percent since 2005.

  Glaeser says the culprit is not the sputtering economy but Massachusetts home prices and the rules that squelch adequate development and limit housing choices, especially for young professionals.

  Our high prices ultimately reflect the Draconian limits on Boston-area construction. We don’t lack land, but our rules don’t let us build on that land. An overwhelming number of communities near Boston have enacted fearsome land use controls, including minimum lot sizes that are often over an acre, which make it all but impossible to produce significant numbers of starter homes.

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• Apr 262012

  Warning from McMorrow by Rus Lodi

  The whole thrust of our Foundation for Growth effort is to ultimately put forth leglislation that will allow our state greater flexibility to build the housing it needs where it needs it so we can sustain and grow our economy. It's no accident that as our housing production has dipped and our prices have risen, our job growth has lagged behind the nation's for the last two decades, save for just recently.
  
  

  One person who understands that we need to allow for more housing production to grow our economy is Commonwealth Magazine associate editor and Boston Globe contributor Paul McMorrow. In a recent column for the Globe, McMorrow writes that the recent uptick in our economy will be shortlived.

  The state's chronic inability to keep up with housing demand meant that Massachusetts leapt straight from its last recession into a lost decade of slow job creation, stagnant population growth, and out of control housing costs. That cycle is about to repeat itself — unless cities and towns get serious about building housing.

  The costlier housing becomes, the more it squeezes life out of the state. Massachusetts has oriented its economy around workers the state is uniquely unqualified to attract and retain. The state's technology sectors demand steady supplies of young talent. But over the last decade, while the Massachusetts population was growing at a meager 3-percent clip, it lost 9 percent of its 25- to 34-year-olds. These are the recent college graduates and young families that the state’s economic future is built on. They're also the population that's most sensitive to the state’s deeply ingrained affordability crisis. And they're voting with their feet.

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• Apr 182012

  A list of what we need to build by Rus Lodi

  In an April blog post for Better! Cities and Towns, architect Dan Parolek itemizes the types of housing we need to address the demand for walkable urban living as defined in recent research by the Urban Land Institute and other publications. Parolek writes:
  
  

  In an April blog post for Better! Cities and Towns, architect Dan Parolek itemizes the types of housing we need to address the demand for walkable urban living as defined in recent research by the Urban Land Institute and other publications. Parolek writes:

  Missing Middle housing types, such as duplexes, fourplexes, bungalow courts, mansion apartments, and live-work units, are a critical part of the solution and should be a part of every architect’s, planner’s, real estate agent’s, and developer’s arsenal. 

  Well-designed, simple Missing Middle housing types achieve medium-density yields and provide high-quality, marketable options between the scales of single-family homes and mid-rise flats for walkable urban living.

  They are classified as “missing” because very few of these housing types have been built since the early 1940’s due to regulatory constraints, the shift to auto-dependent patterns of development, and the incentivization of single-family home ownership.

   

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• Mar 142012

  Abt analyzes costs, benefits of housing, job growth by Clark Ziegler

  As part of its Foundation for Growth initiative, MHP engaged Abt Associates to evaluate the benefits and costs of increasing job growth in Massachusetts and of allowing sufficient housing production to support that growth. The higher growth scenario, which would represent a modest increase above our pre-recession employment growth rate, was outlined in a previous analysis for MHP by the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts.
  

  As part of its Foundation for Growth initiative, MHP engaged Abt Associates to evaluate the benefits and costs of increasing job growth in Massachusetts and of allowing sufficient housing production to support that growth.  The higher growth scenario, which would represent a modest increase above our pre-recession employment growth rate, was outlined in a previous analysis for MHP by the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts.

  Baseline job growth projections are a moving target because of the sluggish national recovery, so the value of the Abt analysis is not predicting what specific outcomes are achievable by the year 2020 but rather understanding whether stronger job and housing growth would be preferable to our slow historical growth rate in Massachusetts.

  Several conclusions emerge from the Abt analysis:

  • The net benefits of growth are strongly positive and are likely underestimated because the recurring economic benefits from higher permanent employment would continue well beyond the ten-year period that was analyzed,
  • Higher growth does not diminish the value of existing homes, and while it slows the rate of housing price appreciation relative to the baseline it actually helps stabilize home values over time.
  • Balancing rental supply and demand would substantially reduce monthly rents, with annual rent reductions relative to baseline totaling more than $1.3 billion by the year 2020.  In metro Boston, for example, a competitive rental market would reduce apartment rents by an average $161/month by 2020.
  • New state and local tax revenue from higher job growth appears to significantly exceed increases in the cost of public services.  While many state-level impacts are simply income transfers (e.g., using tax revenues from some residents to pay Medicaid costs for others), more analysis is needed of other state-level impacts resulting from higher growth such as increased public transportation costs.
  • Most of the increases in costs from higher growth are local while new revenue attributable to higher growth flows mostly to state government.  A new state-local fiscal partnership is needed to share increased revenues with the communities that facilitate growth and that are most impacted by it.
  • Without a change in school funding higher growth would create significant inequities because of the way we fund public education in Massachusetts.  With the greatest state economic growth potential concentrated in metro Boston, stronger job growth would impose school cost increases on some communities that are not adequately covered by higher local revenues and by state Chapter 70 education aid.

  MHP welcomes comments and questions on the Abt report and suggestions for additional policy analysis relating to the benefits and costs of increasing housing and job growth in Massachusetts.

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