Hey, there! Log in / Register
Large numbers of Bostonians not seeing any benefits from boom, study says
By adamg on Tue, 03/15/2016 - 11:39am
A new study by the BRA does little to dispel the idea that Boston is increasingly becoming a place for the very rich and the very poor. Boston's Workforce finds:
The median annual income of Boston residents with earnings in 2014 was $35,273, above the post-recession low, but no different in real terms than in 1990, 2000, or the pre-recession period. For more than a generation, the incomes of Boston residents in the lower half of the income distribution have remained stagnant.
The study finds that at the higher end of the pay scale, jobs in Boston are more likely to be held by surburbanites than Boston residents:
Boston residents are most overrepresented in accommodation and food services, a sector that employs 9.5 percent of residents working in Boston, but pays full-time, full year workers a median annual wage of just $30,000.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
But didn't Boston cops just
But didn't Boston cops just get a 20% raise? I guess that doesn't matter since so many of them don't live in Boston.
Small group
Detectives, and the 20% was cumulative over several years.
Twenty-eight percent over six
Twenty-eight percent over six years. And that number will be used next time by every other union.
Seems like
a good place to drop this.
Suburbanites Hold Higher Paying Jobs!?!
Would it make the BRA and the city coffers happy if we relocated our high paying jobs to suburban office parks in Braintree, Quincy, Waltham, and Burlington?
The price of the development boom and the resulting reluctance to building additional housing in certain areas close to the core (I'm looking at you Beacon Hill, Bay Village, Back Bay) plus a really, really, really, lousy school system, forced me out to greener pastures.
I would love to live in the house I grew up in. I just don't want me or my family to be hit by bullets while walking to the school down the street from us. Oops, I wouldn't have been allowed to send my kids to that school close by anyway because of what happened over 40 years ago. They would have to take a bus to Brighton or Charlestown to accommodate a federal mandate imposed during the Nixon administration.
By mandating sometimes up to 15% of your housing to be always "affordable" (even after you get a $12,000 couch to put in it), by allowing people who live in South End housing projects to have two car parking spots taking up land that could be used for housing, by allowing land that could be used to build housing be used for "community farms" so you can have a few tomatoes in August covered in hobo secretions, to pushing poor people into permanent clusters while the rich make money off government subsidies of those units, you wonder why there is an income dichotomy in the city.
Nice job BRA - Look at your own development guidelines and wonder how the city ended up this way. You fixed the game.
Huhhh??
so you (and the at least 26 people that have thumbed you up) think we should tear down the historic homes in BV, BH and BB to put up more housing? Kinda short sighted, doncha think? You might want to ask the West End how that turned out.
There are literally thousands of units of housing going up downtown, in Back Bay, the West End, South End, Fenway and of course Southie - OK BV and BH are a bit exempt from the building boom - but I can't argue with that (and I don't live there). And anything you build there is going to be Uber hi end no matter how you cut it - and I'm not talking rideshare.
The opportunities for moderate priced housing are in the outer neighborhoods. A/B, JP, WR, Rozzie, Roxbury, and Dorchester top to bottom. Under Menino almost nothing got built there. To Walsh's credit - they are finally building a bit in those neighborhoods. The strongest and most effective opposition to expanded housing is actually there, not downtown.
I played this game with some people online a few years back - name me a single project that was significantly downsized or canceled due to neighborhood opposition. We came up with one - and that was about 15 years ago. They money (and tax revenue) is too big. when someone finds the cash to build downtown the city simply says - can't you make it bigger. Not - sorry Charlie.
The aquarium garage project
The aquarium garage project has stalled for years mainly due to neighborhood opposition. The people in the Harbor Towers are throwing a fit because they think only they are allowed to have a nice view.
Nope
Aquarium Garage is stalled because some moron paid 10 times what a piece of property zoned for 150 feet was worth and wants to put a 10,000 foot tower on it.
He can build 15 stories-ish all day long. If he wants 1000 story monument to his small hands - he'll have to plead his case and change the zoning - like everyone else. I'll be the first to agree that our zoning is outdated - but that has little/nothing to do with "the neighbors don't like it".
There were neighbors that didn't like what is going to replace the Shreve's building on Arlington and Boylston - but the proposal was "as of right" and it was approved - after some architectural changes the city insisted upon. That's a great example of how the system is SUPPOSED to work.
Too Little Too Late
Steve - We are in a building boom now but the BRA kept things as low density as it could for years.
You spoke about Druker above, but the BRA allows developers like Ron Druker and others to sit on prime sites (Arlington and Boylston) (East Berkeley Street) (Bromfield Street) until they can figure out what they want, rather than forcing construction. Please do remember, it is their property, yes, but without approvals / incentives to go bigger, it isn't worth as much.
As far as Beacon Hill goes, look at the opposition to Suffolk replacing a worn out state office building with dorms.
You are telling me there couldn't be an incentive given to build on the parking lot behind the Park Plaza Castle?
Think about the opposition to the new Copley Place Tower at its "unhealthy shadows".
National Development should have been encouraged / allowed to go up 30 stories on the Herald site.
The BRA has said it wants a livable city. Too bad only the rich and their servants can live there.
The problem with all the neighborhoods you mention
is that they either need to make route 28 into a 6 lane highway or make the T run reliably to serviice the south side of Boston. Neither of which I see happening. There is plenty of space there for sure. 15+ years ago there was plenty of space in Southie too. Try catching a bus there in the morning commute after they crammed triple the population (if not worse) into the same space with zero transportation/infastructure upgrades. They are still building in Southie and the effects of what they have done are just starting to be seen and it will only get worse.
This will also happen in DOT, Mattapan, Roxbury, etc etc as they build there but they are ripping out the trains as fast as they can, or charging the lower income folks 4-5 bux to take a commuter rail train within city limits.
With a city growing as fast as Boston, transportation needs to be the #1 concern. Everything else will flow out from that.
Where in BV, BB and BH would you build housing?
Floating castles? Add a few Shard- or Gherkin-like mega towers and see how well they blend in on Comm. Ave. or Mount Vernon Street? Where are the missed opportunities you're seeing for another West End?
And sheesh--please don't start in again about how community gardens are ruining your life. Most of them were started back when empty lots were a blight on the South End and JP and so on--no one say around saying "hmm--$800k condo or community garden?" And they sure add a lot more value to a neighborhood than another parking lot or DD's.
Maybe wages remain the same
Maybe wages remain the same BECAUSE THE MIDDLE MOVES OUT OF THE CITY. The rich stay and the subsidized poor stay. Everyone else in the ~50k range gets the Hell of of Dodge.
That's just not true though
Drive around Roslindale, WR and Hyde Park. There are plenty of middle class families there. The deep inner urbanization that someone like Leonard Nimoy grew up in, that's gone and not just because the West End was razed. The North End, Fenway, Back Bay - these aren't family neighborhoods any more and won't return to being family neighborhoods for a generation.
I think this is true
A lot of my friends are dedicated urbanites...until Baby makes an appearance. Then somewhere between year 1 (tying the leash of their >25 lb dog to the stroller in the snow) and year 5 (kindergarten lottery wtf?) they all disappear into the suburbs. All the while bemoaning how much they hate the suburbs and how boring they are, but how much easier it is to dump the kid and the dog in the yard to play and be done with it.
House
Are any people open to building more single family homes (outside of WR, HP), Seems all new construction consist of Condo's or apartments (even in WR). Maybe people would be willing to stay in the city if there were more Single/Double or even triple deckers other than the south side of the city. Even JP I starting to look more like the Fens, then a "Family" neighborhood.
I also thought that the councilors brought this point up during the elections. I may be wrong though.
Houses get built
But since it is small potato development, it stays off the radar.
I can leave my house in Roslindale and walk a half mile in one direction passing about 8 new houses. It's 2 more houses in a quarter mile the other way (I'd hit Roslindale Square if I walked more.)
Yup
There were 3-4 single families built near me in the past year along with a few giant duplexes.
All sold for well over $600k however so there are no cheap new single families on the market.
It's simply too expensive to
It's simply too expensive to build affordable single family homes in the city due to labor and land costs. Building costs in the city average around $250 sq ft. making a 1500 sq ft single family out of reach for most low-middle income families.
Rozzie's currently in the
Rozzie's currently in the condo conversion craze - I'm seeing lots of (pretty dilapidated) triple deckers getting stripped down, presumably to be turned into condos. They just built a building of pretty nice townhouses in WR, too. I think townhouse developments are probably going to be the best you'll get going forward, as single families are just way too expensive and getting triple deckers approved in current zoning would be nightmarish - I know my condo's building has at least three or four variances, and that's just by looking at the public records available online.
The wages remain the same
The wages remain the same because the 1% ships jobs overseas, takes all the profit for themselves and stashes it off shore instead of paying taxes on it or investing it in our economy. The game is rigged for the rich. This is true for the entire country.
Fantastic use of campaign rhetoric
Now what do you do to stop it? Raise minimum wage?
Not entirely true
Don't forget about higher taxes(US has highest corp tax rate), out of control immigration(gasp!) regulations, the latter of which have been coming at Americans fast and furious from the Obama Administration...
-Since 2008 the Obama cabal has added over 18,000 pages to the Code of Federal Regulations. It is estimated that complying with federal regulations costs the economy nearly $2 Trillion per year and is, along with taxes and innumerable mandates, one of the principle reasons for the lack of new business start-ups and loss of jobs to other countries. 3,000 more are slated for 2016.
-Another factor impacting on the economic health of the American people is immigration. In 1988 there were 16 million immigrants (including less than a million illegal aliens) living in the United States. Today that number has skyrocketed to 42.4 million (including an estimated 12 million illegal aliens). This enormous increase (165%) in the immigrant population has not only put pressure on a stagnant job market but it has also been a major factor in the decline of median income in the country.
Jesus, you people
Oh, that insidious cabal, and its pesky regulations! If only we were free to live in an unfettered libertarian paradise, like those lucky sumbitches in Somalia.
If you had bothered to pay attention to the article, or any of the discussion in here, you would know that the jobs in question are the high-paying sort, which don't go to undocumented immigrants. If anything, a higher number of immigrants working at lower-wage jobs in Boston would drive the median wages down, as kinopio is pointing out. Also, of the 28 years contained in your completely unsourced "since 1988" bullshit, 8 of them were under Obama. If you're going to parrot talking points, try to make sure adjacent ones don't contradict each other.
In conclusion, your arguments are bad and you should feel bad. I hope you're at least on payroll at Breitbart, while you're writing this drivel.
"Facts are stubborn things;
Well aware of the discussion hence why I replied to another commentators post. So it was kinda relevant. Stagnant or lack of economic activity must also be discussed on a macro level.
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
It's only get worse
when the BRA approves Dot Ave condos from Dorchester to Southie, replacing a ton of blue collar jobs and businesses with luxury units.
Those condos will sell at
Those condos will sell at prices the market will bear. Lack of supply will always drive prices up. So if you want affordable housing, increase supply or decrease demand.
Right now the housing prices are being driven by increased demand, low interest rates and a severe lack of supply. No one wants higher rates, so failure to fix the supply issues will make housing out of reach for most. This is pure supply and demand economics.
When condos are getting 3-5 offers at the first open house there is clearly more demand than supply and that is driving prices. Back in 2012, there was much lower demand and more supply, and guess what, lower prices. On this date in 2012 in Dorchester there were 78 condos on the market, today there are 33 and Boston City Hall is courting and attracting big businesses with big, highly-paid, young workforces that want to live in the city in apartments and condos.
Also, what "ton" of blue collar jobs and businesses exist at the vacant lots, nearly vacant storefronts from failed businesses and warehouses in Dorchester that comprise Dot Block, the largest redevelopment on Dorchester Ave that actually increases usable and desirable storefront space? Oh you must mean the meth lab.
"No duh,"
say Boston residents.
A Lot of Statistical Noise
To piggy back on what others have said, there's some serious noise in their numbers.
Their population includes all participants in the workforce, including:
• 4.2% of the group who had no earnings at all last year
• 25.6% who worked part time (less than 35 hours per week)
• 10.3% who worked full time but not for the entire year (less than 50 weeks)
Additionally, this group started at age 16 and included full time students with side jobs.
So obviously, their $35,000 income level is dragged down significantly by all of these groups which have very understandable reasons for lower income. This report seems to conflate level of employment (which can be voluntary or market dictated) and level of income (which is primarily market dictated).
When adjusting for these groups, the number becomes 25% of full-time, full-year workers earn less than $35,000. This is stated in the conclusion of the report itself, but of course doesn't make for as jarring of a headline.