The housing crisis in our city and neighborhood requires bold moves—and soon. As neighborhood-based groups that are daily witnesses to the displacement of low-income people by an unrelenting increase in housing prices, we are writing to ask residents to let Mayor Walsh know they want changes in the City’s Inclusionary Development Policy (IDP) that will protect low-income renters and support new affordable housing development.
Currently, two in three households in the City of Boston are renters. According to Mayor Walsh’s recent report, “Housing a Changing City: Boston 2030,” less than 1 percent of the overall rental housing stock remains affordable to family households earning $25,000 that spend 35 percent of their annual income on housing.
At the same time that developers are building condominiums to sell at prices of $2,000 a square foot and apartments are commanding rents that only households earning over $80,000 can afford, the creation of affordable housing remains astonishingly low. In 2014, only 146 low-income rental units were created in Boston—the lowest number in five years. With Boston ranking third highest in income disparity among the top 50 biggest U.S. cities, this income disparity coupled with a lack of affordable housing stock ultimately translates into displacement.
Boston’s IDP was implemented by former Mayor Thomas Menino in 2000. The focus of the IDP is the generation of affordable housing in new developments with 10 or more units. Presently, a developer seeking to build a qualifying development, per the IDP, need only create 15 affordable units for every 100 market rate units or 13 percent of the total units.
An off-site and buyout option is also built into the IDP, permitting the developer to build the required affordable units at another location or pay $200,000 per required affordable unit into a general fund for the creation of affordable housing off-site. In today’s market however, the cost of creation of an affordable unit in the Metro Boston area is in excess of $400,000, which encourages developers to buy-out. The depth of affordability of these corresponding affordable units is then tied to the Area Median Income (AMI). The problem, however, with tying affordability levels to the AMI is that as a result of the inclusion of wealthy Boston suburbs, the AMI does not reflect true affordability for Boston households.
The Boston Tenant Coalition (BTC) is calling for the City to:
- Increase the level of IDP required affordability to 25% of all newly constructed units with priority upon on-site construction;
- Apply the proposed IDP’s affordability requirements to substantially rehabbed developments of 10 units or more seeking zoning or tax relief—not just new construction;
- Increase the developer buy-out option to correctly reflect costs of construction;
- Tie affordability, at a minimum, to the Boston Median Income as opposed to the AMI and deepen affordability requirements.
Boston is a crucial juncture. The need for homes that are affordable has never been greater.
Be part of the solution. Sign the IDP petition at bit.ly/1Hv3zTi.
Kyle Smith
Jamaica Plain resident
[Editor’s note: Kyle Smith is a lawyer who is working with the Boston Tenant Coalition on the affordable-housing effort.]