Housing expert: Downtown Crossing would be ideal for large-scale housing for grad students

BluestoneIf Boston wants to solve issues with students and housing, it really needs to concentrate on an exploding population of graduate students, Barry Bluestone, author of a recent report on housing in the Boston area, told a City Council hearing this afternoon.

Bluestone, director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern, said "multi-university student villages" for grad students would both free up apartments for long-term Boston residents and help attract the young people Boston will need over the coming decades to stay competitive with other cities. He said only 8% of grad students in the area currently live on campus.

Bluestone said Downtown Crossing would be ideal for grad-student high-rise "village" because of its dense transit service leading to many of the area's colleges. His village would feature high rises with stores, restaurants and plenty of seminar and meeting rooms, along with garages outfitted with Zipcars - "something competitive with the North End because of its amenities."

He said Forest Hills might be another good location for such a center.

He said Boston needs to do more to keep grad students living here because national demographics means "a third civil war" is brewing as boomers age out of the workforce. Under his scheme, students would be given the option to stay in their apartments for three to five years after they're done with school, which would further help tie them to Boston.

Linda Kowalcky of the Boston Redevelopment Authority said the issue of grad housing is a new one for the BRA, because it's been concentrating on increasing the number of on-campus dormitories. But she said that it's time for surrounding communities to join Boston in working to increase the ability of colleges to add housing for students - because there are colleges across the area, not just within Boston city limits.

Councilors Mike Ross and Sal LaMattina, both of whom represent districts with heavy student populations - Mission Hill for Ross and the North End for LaMattina - said Bluestone's plans sound good, but that they are faced with a more immediate issue of undergraduates taking up apartments and creating general nuisances. LaMattina pointed specifically to noise and party issues.

John Keith, a South End real-estate broker, however, said the real problem is not students, but the fact that more people live in Boston than ten years ago. He said only 30,000 students actually live off campus, at a time when the Census Bureau says Boston has fewer apartment units than ten years ago.

Richard Orareo, who has lived in the Fenway for 40 years, though, said he has watched universities gobble up East Fenway "building by building by building."

Richard Giordano of Mission Hill said "thousands" of Mission Hill residents have been displaced by students, catered to by investors snapping up triple deckers at $800,000 to $1.2 million per building. And that drives a vicious downward cycle, because that raises the taxes on nearby triple deckers, making it even harder for low and moderate-income residents to remain.