Why more construction near Boston might not mean cheaper living in Mass.
Just last week, over 1,100 units of new housing in Boston were approved — a level of development the rest of the state can only dream of. A shift in the concentration of housing development towards the inner urban core is leaving many suburbs out of the area’s building boom and contributing to stubbornly high housing costs, according to the The Boston Globe.
According to the Globe report, close to 25,000 new units were permitted outside of Boston’s core in 2005, while less than 5,000 were permitted in the metro Boston inner core, which includes Arlington, Belmont, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Lynn, Malden, Medford, Melrose, Milton, Needham, Newton, Quincy, Revere, Saugus, Somerville, Waltham, Watertown, and Winthrop.
But 10 years later, tables have turned, as the inner core permitted close to 10,000 units in 2015 and the communities outside of the core permitted just 15,000 units.
According to the Globe:
“It’s the result of growing demand to live near the core of a vibrant city, especially among young professionals. But it’s also the product of decades of decisions that dampened development in many suburban towns, making it harder to build in places beyond the crowded and increasingly costly city.”
In 2005, most new construction in the state took the form of suburban single-family homes — now, you can expect a large condo or apartment complex in or close to the city, the Globe wrote. Because it’s more expensive to build near the city, the influx of new housing units are still out of the price range of many families in Massachusetts.
“Nobody has figured out how to build housing the middle class can afford,” Barry Bluestone, a Northeastern University professor who studies the region’s housing market, told the Globe. “We’ve got to come up with some new answers.”
Read the full Boston Globe story here.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com