One man's idea for fixing the Boston housing shortage: Triple deckers times two

Literally hundreds of 4,5 &6 floor walk ups in Boston. The North End is filled with them. As is the South End.

When I was a kid the triple decker was a version of affordable housing just like this... one member of the family would buy one and would rent to other family members. Now many triple deckers have been sucked up by investors and others cut into condos. There aren't many people willing to buy a triple decker for 1.2 million or more and then living in it and renting it out to family for low rents. Too many people have swallowed up the triples to finance their own lifestyles in the suburbs. So not only do they have to pay that high mortgage back but they need to make money off of it and pay for their own mortgage. All this on top of maintaining these aging structures.

My parents were very working class but bought a two family on the same street as other family members that owned triple deckers. In my house my grandfather lived in my parents second unit for a subsidized (heavily) and child/animal care assistance, I don't remember ever having a non family babysitter in my life. It was always family and normally my grandfather. Then down the street my great uncle owned two triple deckers he formed into a little complex with a shared yard where my mother grew up with all her cousins. So as kids we would always visit the complex during the summer to go swimming and hang out with family. My other great uncle on the other side of the family owned a triple decker next door so my grandfather would often walk us to the complex with the pool on his way to visiting his brother. When I moved out I avoided living there but ended up renting down there for a few years and it was mostly family until about ten years ago. But for the most part everyone was working class and were able to live social vibrant lives because one family member managed to cobble together enough to buy the property and live on site. They just needed to subsidize their own unit, they didn't need to prop up a huge house in Newton or Swampscott.

One thing I'd say we need to do more of is finding ways to get owner occupied control over triple deckers and two families in high rental areas. Landlords are very different when they live on site, even if they don't rent to family. I actually prefer this to the triple decker condo because I just think that's too small of an association to really function well and the update costs are hard to cut up, imo condos are better suited in larger structures. As is investment, I live in an apartment complex now under one ownership and that makes sense. There are a lot of capital costs and they seem capable of figuring it out without raising rents too much.

Lots of relevant historical background on this here ("Three-deckers of Dorchester : an architectural historical survey" published by the BRA in 1977): https://archive.org/details/threedeckersofdo00krim

Really interesting historical read if you're into that sort of thing.