Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston. This is New England Weekend.
Each and every week right here, we come together, we
talk about all the topics important to you and the
place where you live. Happy New Year to you. It's
great to be back. I'm Nicole Davis. The state of
Massachusetts is in a housing crisis. That is a statement
many people agree on, from state officials to housing experts
(00:29):
to those who want to buy the combination of high
prices and low stock is putting pressure on middle and
low income families. Many are being forced to simply pack
up and leave, even if they want to stay. Some
do end up staying, but just abandon the dream of
buying their own home. And it's something that most Americans
not too long ago considered to be a rite of passage.
This is a problem impacting owners and renters the entire state,
(00:52):
not just the Boston area, and it's something the Legalized
Starter Homes campaign claims it's got an answer for with
a proposed ballot question. To learn more about this, Andrew
mccoola is a housing fellow at the Pioneer Institute for
a Public Policy. He is leading this campaign outside of work,
and he's here to talk to us about it now, So, Andrew,
thank you so much for your time. Let's start with
(01:13):
your name here, because legalized starter homes starter homes are
not illegal. We have a lot of them here in Massachusetts.
Why did you choose that phrasing?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, I mean legalized starter homes is a bit of
a snappy title. Really, it's about making the starter homes,
you know, more viable because right now, you need a
lot of land in most municipalities in Massachusetts to build
a single family home, and in order to kind of
(01:44):
clear the land value that large lots create, that requires
building big McMansions on these lots if you are kind
of using the logic of a developer. So by creating
smaller lots, you know, we're reducing the cost of homes
for buyers and making it so that developers don't have
(02:05):
to build giant mc mansions just to justify the cost
of assembling so much land. So you know, there are
definitely laws in place that prevent that from happening now,
but you know, making starter homes viable again is the goal.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Well, of course, Massachusetts, we're in a housing crisis. We
have been for several years and it's only getting worse.
Not just the Boston area either, but like western mass
and southern New Hampshire Providence area, all of these areas
are struggling with a severe lack of housing, and if
there is housing, it's really difficult for young people and
young families to afford it. You're somebody who works very
(02:46):
closely in this field. If you could kind of break
down some of the factors driving this, I think that
would be helpful as well.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, I mean, like you said, Massachusetts was named the
hardest state in the country for young adults to buy
a home a few months ago. The middle class ass
is shrinking here because the cost of housing has exploded
since the Great Recession. Seniors are trapped in their suburban
homes because they don't have somewhere nearby to downsize, and
(03:13):
as a result, a record number of Massachusetts residents, especially
young adults ages you know, maybe mid twenties to mid thirties,
are leaving, hurting our economy and separating families. And there
have been polls quite recently that show that about a
third of massachoots residents are considering leaving and cost of
(03:33):
living is their greatest concern. The Healy administration says we
need to build two hundred and twenty two thousand homes
between twenty twenty five and twenty thirty five to meet demand,
control costs, support young families remain competitive economically, and I
think that you know, doing that in part with family
(03:55):
oriented housing, you know, is really important. And that's exactly
what we're trying to do by making starter homes viable.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Again, So what exactly constitutes a starter home at this point?
This is not nineteen fifty five, It's not like the
starter homes of our grandparents or parents. Are we talking
about an EIGHTYU like a one bed, a three bed, like?
Who is this aimed for? Exactly?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, I mean, we don't have a lot of those
thresholds in the law we're trying to pass, in part
because it's a little context dependent. President land values depends on,
you know, the demographics of the particular community. But a
starter homes a small owner occupied home intended for you know,
(04:39):
first time buyers or downsizing seniors, low maintenance. And the
threshold that exists for the voluntary starter home zoning that
the state already has Chapter forty y is eighteen hundred
and fifty square feet. And I think that about half
(04:59):
of them have to be three bedrooms at least in
the statute, but that should vary in practice.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
When you're talking about young professionals, you're talking about young families,
you know, maybe with one child, who only need one
or two bedrooms. I mean, people would say, well, I
didn't get help from the state to get my starter home, right,
and why don't you just pull yourself up by your
bootstraps and so on and so forth. Well, what would
you say to somebody who says that to you.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, I'm not trying to make it be any easier
to buy a home in the suburbs than it was
forty years ago. I'm just trying to make it not
be very very much harder. And I think we need
to be realistic about what that takes. And you know,
I've been accused of social engineering and all the rest.
(05:54):
My response is, you know, the status quo is social engineering,
just of a different type. Right to say that everyone
should have half an acre of land and if you
can't afford that, too bad. So I think, you know,
these reforms are going to open up opportunities for folks
that they wouldn't otherwise have had. But you know, framing
(06:18):
it in terms of entitlement or what have you. Is
also wrong headed because it doesn't take into account you
know that we've gone as a nation from you know,
a three to one home price to income ratio to
like a six to one price to income ratio in
the last fifty.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Years, right, And it doesn't help too. I was reading
an article recently about how a lot of foreign investors
are coming in and buying up the stock that we
already have and that's being built. So when you have
a new apartment building and they have affordable housing in
the building, but yeah, there's only a couple of affordable
units and then most of the rest of the building
is bought up by foreign investors and left empty for
most of the year. That doesn't help the situation either.
(06:58):
I mean, it's literally housing stocks sitting there that we
just can't use.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, that might be a little different because it's probably
mostly rentals that applies to. But what I'd say is
research that I've seen finds that generally institutional investors lag
but don't read home price increases, so they might be
taking advantage of the problem. But the root of the
(07:23):
problem is we don't have enough homes in general.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Okay, well, then let's talk specifically about what your campaign
is all about. By the way, your campaign hitting a
huge milestone recently getting enough signatures to possibly get on
the ballot. If Beacon Hill doesn't do anything with it,
but lay it out for me exactly what you all
are looking to get done.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yes, so we would make it legal to build single
family homes on lots as small as five thousand square
feet about the size of an NBA basketball court in
areas of the state with public sewer and water services.
Each one of those lots would also need to have
fifty feet of frontage along the street, meaning there's a
(08:05):
contiguous kind of length of you know, lot lined along
the street where you can have access for dryways and
things like that. Okay, so it's taken. And the big
change there again is most cities and towns in Massachusetts
(08:26):
require much more than five thousand square feet to build
a single family home.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
What is the reasoning for that? Do they say they
don't want things to be too crowded or like, what
is the reasoning behind needing that much room to build
these homes?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I mean, historically it may have been about infrastructure, but
most of the communities that are in the immediate Boston
area today are fully sewered or almost fully sewered, and
so that tends to you know, fade away a bit.
And of course, course we increasingly have regional infrastructure, especially
(09:04):
since the middle of the last century in terms of transportation.
But yeah, I think there are a lot of people
who are going to make excuses about you know, traffic
or school capacity. My take is, you know, by concentrating
in areas with this utilities infrastructure, but we're also concentrating
(09:28):
in areas close to major job centers and transit and
places that will minimize the traffic problem. And then you know,
fully two thirds of public school districts in Massachusetts have
seen declining enrollment in the past ten years, especially since
COVID and I so I think that there's more capacity
(09:50):
in a lot of schools than people would realize. And
it's important to note that this development, you know, is
going to be for or six or eight homes at
a time, and so I think that that level of
incrementalism will give some talents the ability to plan ahead
more so than if it were three or four or
(10:12):
five hundred.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, no, that makes sense, because we see a lot
of this pushback. I think with the MBTA Communities Act,
where a lot of people are nervous about zoning in
their towns because they say, we don't want these massive
apartment buildings showing up in what normally is a small,
bucolic little town. So do you think that that's where
some of the anxiety might come in.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I think that those arguments are going to be prevalent
and pretty whenever you're talking about new development. But I
think we really have tried again by focusing it on
smaller scale subdivisions and tying the housing capacity to the
location of critical infrastructure, We've tried to get ahead of
(10:52):
those concerns a little bit and also emphasize that you know,
you can react, you can you can be proactive on
some of these things, maybe in a way that you
weren't before, especially with the infrastructure. Right, if this is
the the kicking the pants, some towns need to be
(11:16):
more proactive about, you know, encouraging growth in the long run.
I think that's a good thing because our state is
growing and you know, now we just need kind of
the support for it that supports a regional economy and
you know, treats the economy as regional when you know
(11:36):
it means towns need to adapt as well as when
you know they get benefits from jobs nearby and other things.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
More property tax revenue is probably not a bad thing
at this point. I mean, right, if you want to
talk about just the fiscal benefits it could have for
a community, some people might say, you know, my property
value is going to go down because you're bringing in
big buildings and that's going to impact my research I value.
But on the other end, more property taxes. People talk
all the time about oh, we don't have enough to
(12:05):
pay for schools, we don't have enough to pay for roads.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, I mean directionally, I've heard it both ways. You
know you're going to like increased service requirements and that
means my tax bill is going to go up. And
you know you're going to build a bunch of housing
like mine near mind, which is going to decrease my
property values. But I think the magnitude is something that
(12:28):
gets a little loss there. And empirically, again, when we're
talking about a few homes in a time, I don't
see the kind of the level of catastrophic rhetoric matching
the effect, especially when in the last five or six
years we've seen property values go up forty percent already
hypothetically under Prop two and a half. A lot of
(12:51):
towns do need to rely on new growth in order
to grow their tax base. So it's really a matter
of city and town management. How this is going to
affect existing homeowners' property taxes. It's not an I wouldn't
I've heard again, I've heard it all. This is automatically
(13:11):
going to raise people's water bills, et cetera, et cetera.
I think it's much more complicated than that, and more
contact dependon.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Well, then let's talk about what comes next, because again,
you just hit this signature threshold. We're kind of narrowing
down our ballot questions here. What comes next for your campaign?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, so right now, it's going before the legislature. They
have until early May to either act on it or not.
We anticipate they will ultimately take no action, send it
back to us for a second round of signature gathering,
and then we'll have until I believe early July to
(13:51):
send another round of signatures to the Secretary of State's office,
and we should know by early July whether we're on
the ballot.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Okay, I mean that's going to be a big deal,
no small fee, because even just getting to where you are,
that's a lot of signatures and a lot of walking around.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah, and we're trying to you know, expand opportunities for
folks to you know, thrive in Massachusetts, a new generation
of homeowners and that's you know, no small feet, as
you said.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Absolutely So if somebody is interested in learning more, perhaps
they want to show their support, they have questions for you.
How can people connect?
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yes, our website is legal at www dot legalized charterhomes
dot com. Cont Information for campaign members is on the site.
Follow Our social media links are also on our website
if you want to be more deeply involved. Again, we
have content information in that vein on the site and
(14:46):
we hope to have more updates as we get deeper
into the signature gathering process. But we will need kind
of a new petition form, so the old one from
the first round of signature gathering is no longer.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Okay, And this I feel like I have to mention
this is not just a Boston area thing. This is
like all over the state. If you're listening in Springfield
or Worcester South Coast or Merrimack Valley, this is something
that impacts everybody around the state.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah, I definitely heard it argue that the Cape is
the part of the state with the worst housing crisis,
and I haven't quite done the legwork to quantify that myself,
but you know that's a valid argument.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, I've heard it. Okay, Well, you know, Andrew, this
is a really interesting stuff. Thank you so much for
coming on the show and again legalized starterhomes dot com.
Good luck to you.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Thank you so much, Nicole.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
I hope you have a safe and healthy weekend. Stay warm.
Join us again next week for another edition of the show.
I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.