The housing crisis in Boston is like many major cities restricted to the affordable housing segment of the real estate market. With an increase of 118% in the past ten years, the Boston Home Price Index clearly shows how vastly unaffordable the market has become. As a city attracting more and more people due to its education, engineering and technological spaces the problem is only foreseen to get worse. Additionally, Boston cannot sprawl as the east side of the city borders the ocean. This along with the need to factor in infrastructural projects causes developers to prefer constructing luxury housing as this affords them a greater return on investment.
However, there are workable solutions to this issue key among them being partnerships between developers and the Federal governments and Civic organizations. Gonzalez writes in an article about the various ways this partnership will help the Mayor, Martin Walsh fulfill his promise of delivering 69,000 housing units by 2030.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
One way this partnership works is to give developers access to areas that were previously only affordable housing was built. They are now allowed to build market – rate housing in exchange for the preservation of the affordable units in the same space. The “One Charlestown” project is an example of this. The preservation and reconstruction of 1,100 affordable units in exchange for an additional 1,600 market – rate units that will include retail units.
Re zoning is also an option being explored by the partners. Areas previously deemed as the hazardous like the Brownfield Redevelopment opens opportunities for the repurposing of spaces to affordable higher density multifamily settlement. As financing is always a matter to consider with large projects Government – sponsored agencies such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are incentivizing borrowing to make it easier to access. They are going as far as matching the interest rate on loans taken for affordable housing through programs such as the Healthy Housing Rewards. Through these initiatives the looming affordable housing crisis should be lowered with the continued efforts of partners on both sides.
