A desirable city cannot be "affordable to all"
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Eva Webster
Nov 4, 2018, 2:59:42 PM11/4/18
to Cleveland-Cir...@googlegroups.com, AllstonBrighton2006, Homeowners Union of Allston-Brighton
On 11/3/18, 8:10 AM, "'M Arado' via Cleveland Circle Community" <cleveland-cir...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
I just read this article and thought others would lie interested in reading it was well. The author says there are ways to make a city affordable to all, since many people need to live in a city to use public transportation since their incomes are low.The Author is also speaking at Brookline Booksmith Friday Nov 9th at 7 pm
Thanks for sharing the article — I would like to comment on it, but maybe another time. Right now, I highlighted a short passage in your message in yellow, to draw attention just to that particular issue.
We all want to believe that there are solutions to problems that plague our city, the country, the world. I don’t think I’m being cynical, just clear-headed, I hope — but I no longer believe that most difficult problems are solvable in ways that most people would like to see them solved (assuming they are even solvable at all).
For example, our two-party system clearly doesn’t work well, and some people (myself included) wish we had more than two parties — a parliamentarian democracy would be nice — but there are countries with multiple parties and vibrant parliamentarian democracy, and they also have major problems. There is simply no system that can prevent humans from screwing up (conflicting interests and egos are usually the reason, and you can’t change human nature).
So when you realize that an ideal state of things is not possible/attainable, you become less gullible and more skeptical when someone is telling you that a long-standing problem that no one has ever been able to solve can be solved with some new methods (especially when adopting the new methods happens to benefit one group, while it hurts another).
After living in four different large cities (two in Europe, and two here), I do not believe there is a way to make Boston or any other desirable city "affordable to all” — and it rattles me when I hear someone, especially a politician, say that. To me, it’s a lie — or wishful thinking at best. Unfortunately, this false belief tends to resonates with some people, most of them young folks who simply haven’t lived long enough to see and analyze things from multiple perspectives (and of course, being older doesn’t guarantee that one's beliefs are well thought-through and realistic).
Many players in the real estate industry, and others who directly or indirectly feed off that industry, promote that lie in order to weaken local residents' opposition to overdevelopment, and to gain support from those who are burdened by high housing costs.
As a result, long-term residents in established neighborhoods whose quality of life is on the line when their area is targeted for densification, are expected to sacrifice their interests on the altar of an unrealistic goal (“a city affordable to all”) that the industry players and city planners know very well will never materialize.
I don’t know why so many folks can’t wrap their heads around some basic housing market realities.
Why do we have high housing prices? Obviously, they follow from the high costs of land, materials and labor — all of which skyrocket in boom times (which powers that be happily enable because it creates wealth, which is a good thing — you can tax it and spend the money on public needs, ideally in ways that benefit taxpayers — though that is not always the case).
So it is the booming economy and high demand generated by lots of people who want to live in a city like Boston that drive up home prices and rents. What, if anything, should be done about something that most people — those who benefit from a booming economy — consider to be a positive trend?
Landlords and sellers of market-rate housing are not interested in giving people “discounts” on home prices and rents just because some employers are getting away with underpaying their workers, or because some businesses are not doing well, or because there are too many low-skill workers vying for jobs, which brings their wages down. That is how market capitalism works — there are winners and losers. (The systems that have been trying to eliminate that have been unmitigated disasters, and have led to wide spread poverty, misery, and starvation.)
Increasing the supply of market-rate housing in Boston (or other expensive cities) is touted as the panacea but it is not a solution to help those who are left behind, when the cost of creating new housing, or renovating and maintaining older housing (also labor-intensive and expensive), dictates prices that people whose wages are too low can’t afford to pay.
Tightening the supply of labor (by lowering immigration, increasing vacation times, and lowering retirement age) would raise wages — but I don’t see advocates for low-paid workers asking for that. Why not? They may not realize that wages are also a product of a market mechanism that could be manipulated to the workers' advantage. It seems that the only people who know how to manipulate the labor market to their own advantage are those who run politically connected large corporations and powerful industry groups.
“Inclusionary zoning” policies, mandating that developers set aside a certain percentage of units to be sold or rented below market, are self-limiting and can only go so far. If you push the percentage too high, developers can just walk away, and leave the city for other places where they are not burdened by excessive inclusionary zoning demands.
As long as the economy is booming, and there are people who are willing and able to pay high prices for housing, the less affluent individuals are likely to be gradually squeezed out of the desirable areas into less desirable areas — unless the city deliberately makes a decision to protect certain neighborhoods from gentrification-inducing development, and forgo tax revenue that gentrification brings, which could be used to build new, or renovate older public housing (so this is not an easy decision).
We don’t like to hear that people may be getting squeezed out from areas where they would like to stay – but it’s market forces at play. Without market forces, there would be no functioning market economy, and millions of people, in the US and elsewhere, would become completely destitute and die — especially in cities. It has happened before in Europe and Asia, primarily a result of leftist ideologies, but many Americans are not well informed about historical events that have taken place in other parts of the world.
(An aside to John Spritzler: It's easy to dismiss and complain about market capitalism. And I’ve noticed it always comes from people who have not had the experience of living in a communist or socialist utopia — systems that aspire to create “equality”, but end up fostering mediocrity, while they succeed in making nearly everyone equally poor. I had that experience when I lived behind the Iron Curtain. While market capitalism has its downsides — its greed, if left unchecked, can devour the entire planet, I’m afraid — there is simply no better economic system to bring about relative prosperity to large numbers of people — but that overall positive outcome is achieved on the basis of the lack of equality. The only equality that is actually possible, I think, is the kind when you drag everyone down — which of course does not stop the masses from periodically trying to do just that.)
Anyone who says Boston can be "a city affordable to all” is in my opinion disingenuous, likely ignorant, or shilling for developers — or all three. The only way one can ensure affordability to all is by making Boston such a terrible place that people would be leaving in droves, leading to a housing market collapse. Either that, or a huge, long-lasting recession leading to massive job losses and countless vacancies would do the trick. In the absence of any such calamity, Boston cannot and will not be “affordable to all”.
Affordability is not something that can be controlled. We can't make Boston’s land mass bigger to make land cheaper. We can’t tell land owners to sell their land below market. We can’t tell construction materials manufacturers and dealers to keep their prices low — when domestic and world-wide demand for those materials is constantly growing to due to population growth http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ , and because of frequently occurring large natural disasters (hurricanes, floods, wild fires, etc.) which necessitate rebuilding — not to mention the normal, predictable need to replace obsolete housing in aging cities and towns.
If a city, or state, wants to ensure that people who can’t afford to live in desirable areas can stay in those areas nevertheless (and that gift cannot be given to all), it can happen in just two ways:
1) The municipality (or the state or the federal government) must find a way to create public housing, or provide housing subsides (which struggling middle-class taxpayers, who mostly don’t qualify for such benefits, often resent), or
2) Housing units shrink to small sizes that people with lower incomes can afford (and that can have a profound effect on a neighborhood's character, and people’s ability to start families, and have normal lives).
I do hope that Boston is not going to end up like San Francisco:
Dorm Living for Professionals Comes to San Francisco - The New York Times
I think that the only thing that could be, theoretically, controlled for the purpose of lowering housing costs in the US, is demand. Lowering demand could be accomplished by putting brakes on the economy via monetary policies and tight controls on businesses (which neither the ruling elites, nor most Americans, want) — OR simply by lowering yearly immigration levels to what they used to be in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
But the latter is not going to happen in a country where most people, as I can see, believe that we should forever continue to be “a country of immigrants” — to the tune of 1.2 million of legal immigrants, plus estimated 2 million illegal immigrants, every single year.
Population and Immigration Data, Projections and Graphs - United States | immigration resources reference issues
There is no developed country that can absorb so many people every year and have its housing in urban centers remain affordable.
I was reminded of that a few days ago when I was cleaning up my home office, and found two yellowed old newspaper clippings from 2002 — sixteen years ago. They were prophetic. I have scanned them and attached to this posting. The third attachment is a photo of a rally that took place somewhere in downtown Boston this past summer.
Some people may not like the message those clippings convey — but you cannot argue with facts.
John Spritzler
Nov 5, 2018, 12:24:16 PM11/5/18
to allstonbr...@googlegroups.com, Eva Webster, Cleveland-Cir...@googlegroups.com, Homeowners Union of Allston-Brighton
I would like to respond to Eva's specific mention of me by name. Eva wrote:
"(An aside to John Spritzler: It's easy to dismiss and complain about market capitalism. And I’ve noticed it always comes from people who have not had the experience of living in a communist or socialist utopia — systems that aspire to create “equality”, but end up fostering mediocrity, while they succeed in making nearly everyone equally poor. I had that experience when I lived behind the Iron Curtain. While market capitalism has its downsides — its greed, if left unchecked, can devour the entire planet, I’m afraid — there is simply no better economic system to bring about relative prosperity to large numbers of people — but that overall positive outcome is achieved on the basis of the lack of equality. The only equality that is actually possible, I think, is the kind when you drag everyone down — which of course does not stop the masses from periodically trying to do just that.)"
For the record, I am an anti-Marxist and hence an anti-Communist, for the reasons I spell out in my article at http://newdemocracyworld.org/revolution/socialism2.html : Marxism (and Communism) are fundamentally anti-democratic.
Also, for the record, the egalitarianism that I advocate was MORE economically productive than the capitalism it replaced in revolutionary (non-Marxist!) Spain 1936-9, as I recount in my article at http://newdemocracyworld.org/revolution/which.html .
I thank Eva for pointing out below the problems that inevitably result from an economy based on the free market: class inequality (some rich and some poor) and things such as gentrification (driving poorer long-time residents out of the neighborhood when the neighborhood becomes more desirable for any reason.)
John Spritzler
On November 4, 2018 at 7:51 AM Eva Webster <evawe...@comcast.net> wrote:
On 11/3/18, 8:10 AM, "'M Arado' via Cleveland Circle Community" < cleveland-cir...@googlegroups.com> wrote:I just read this article and thought others would lie interested in reading it was well. The author says there are ways to make a city affordable to all, since many people need to live in a city to use public transportation since their incomes are low.The Author is also speaking at Brookline Booksmith Friday Nov 9th at 7 pm
Jeff Speck at Brookline Booksmith
Thanks for sharing the article — I would like to comment on it, but maybe another time. Right now, I highlighted a short passage in your message in yellow, to draw attention just to that particular issue.We all want to believe that there are solutions to problems that plague our city, the country, the world. I don’t think I’m being cynical, just clear-headed, I hope — but I no longer believe that most difficult problems are solvable in ways that most people would like to see them solved (assuming they are even solvable at all).For example, our two-party system clearly doesn’t work well, and some people (myself included) wish we had more than two parties — a parliamentarian democracy would be nice — but there are countries with multiple parties and vibrant parliamentarian democracy, and they also have major problems. There is simply no system that can prevent humans from screwing up (conflicting interests and egos are usually the reason, and you can’t change human nature).So when you realize that an ideal state of things is not possible/attainable, you become less gullible and more skeptical when someone is telling you that a long-standing problem that no one has ever been able to solve can be solved with some new methods (especially when adopting the new methods happens to benefit one group, while it hurts another).After living in four different large cities (two in Europe, and two here), I do not believe there is a way to make Boston or any other desirable city "affordable to all” — and it rattles me when I hear someone, especially a politician, say that. To me, it’s a lie — or wishful thinking at best. Unfortunately, this false belief tends to resonates with some people, most of them young folks who simply haven’t lived long enough to see and analyze things from multiple perspectives (and of course, being older doesn’t guarantee that one's beliefs are well thought-through and realistic).
Many players in the real estate industry, and others who directly or indirectly feed off that industry , promote that lie in order to weaken local residents' opposition to overdevelopment, and to gain support from those who are burdened by high housing costs.A s a result, long-term residents in established neighborhoods whose quality of life is on the line when their area is targeted for densification, are expected to sacrifice their interests on the altar of an unrealistic goal (“a city affordable to all”) that the industry players and city planners know very well will never materialize.
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Jean Powers
Nov 5, 2018, 12:49:39 PM11/5/18
to AllstonBrighton2006
My brother lives in a major Australian city and although the city is expensive, the social system (progressive tax structure, high minimum wage, universal healthcare, etc) enable the people who serve him coffee to live in the same neighborhood as he and his wife (two professional incomes, no kids). We don't have to choose between an oppressive communist regime and a capitalist system that creates vast inequality -- many countries have a social safety net and a progressive tax system that enables financial upward mobility and integrated cities and towns. We used to have something like that, until it was eroded by both Republicans AND Democrats -- some of the biggest gaps in income division happened under Clinton.
Here's a long article on the challenges of capitalism and affordable cities:
Christopher Arena
Nov 5, 2018, 12:56:25 PM11/5/18
to allstonbr...@googlegroups.com
HEAR HEAR, JEAN. Very well said.
We should not be arguing for either system, quite frankly. We need a country that protects those at the bottom, allows for a robust middle class, and prevents those at both ends from taking advantage of the system. A free market is great, but classical liberalism destroys countries. We need to have protections in place and a social safety net, as well as checks and balances on the highest income earners through a progressive tax system.
The Clinton and Bush eras eroded any progress made by the New Deal. It's time to move forward with a new progressive era!
The Clinton and Bush eras eroded any progress made by the New Deal. It's time to move forward with a new progressive era!
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Eva Webster
Nov 5, 2018, 4:16:50 PM11/5/18
to AllstonBrighton2006, cleveland-circle-community, Homeowners Union of Allston-Brighton
"My brother lives in a major Australian city and although the city is expensive, the social system (progressive tax structure, high minimum wage, universal healthcare, etc) enable the people who serve him coffee to live in the same neighborhood as he and his wife (two professional incomes, no kids)."
Jean - no one is arguing that we can’t have people who serve coffee live in Boston (lots of them do) — only that we cannot ensure (and shouldn’t even try) that all people who live on low wages and would like to live in Boston, can do so.
If you tried to ensure that, you would need to allow developers to build enormous amounts of cheap, dense housing for low-wage folks who currently live outside of Boston (in places like Brockton, Lynn, Chelsea, etc.,) and would like to avoid the commute, as well as lots of others who would like to move here from other states and countries, even though they don’t have the skills one needs to become fully self-supporting in our society — and that would be suicidal to Boston neighborhoods, which need to retain some measure of economic balance.
Also, I’m glad you brought up Australia — because that country proves that having a social safety net is both desirable and beneficial, but also that to have that safety net reliably and sustainably in place requires that a country have protected borders (you can’t just waltz in) and a sane immigration system.
Australian Skilled Immigration Points Requirements | Workpermit.com
Australia does not allow migrants from Asia to just show up on its shores – they get intercepted and placed in detention centers on remote islands, from which they can choose to return to their home countries, or wait their turn to receive legal immigration status - and for many people who would clearly become a financial burden on the Australian society that day never comes.
It’s not pretty, I’m sure, but this tough approach is what allows your brother and his wife, and all other middle-class and upper–class Australians, live in comfort and safety — which is what the Australian government has the responsibility to ensure for Australian citizens.
Whether it’s over there in Australia, or here, or in Europe, no one likes seeing people going hungry, sick, homeless, uneducated, and jobless. Socially progressive programs are needed (and I support them in principle) — but those programs only work in the long term when the number of people whose taxes fund the programs (which are extensive and expensive as they are, even here) far exceed the numbers of people who rely on those programs for survival.
Therefore any efforts (primarily via immigration) to increase the numbers of people who need to rely on the social safety net (incl. public education subsidized housing, healthcare) are directly in contradiction to the goal of retaining and improving our existing social safety net — as needed by the people who are already here.
Majority of Americans don't have $500 in savings
I think that the US would have universal healthcare already in place, for a long time, if it was not for the fact that our society is economically out of balance — we simply have too many needy people whose tax-payer funded needs must be met, or they will go without and would rebel in the streets.
It’s simple math. The number of “givers”, those who are forced to forfeit large portions of their income in taxes to fund what it costs to meet other people’s needs (and some of their own too) has to be substantially higher than the number of the beneficiaries of the programs — otherwise the system is doomed to collapse.
Australians seem to understand these matters better than us, I think.
The article you sent looks very interesting – I look forward to reading it.
David Strati
Nov 5, 2018, 4:18:51 PM11/5/18
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I wonder how Eva would define a "sane immigration system".We are all immigrants.
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Eva Webster
Nov 6, 2018, 8:16:33 AM11/6/18
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On 11/5/18, 5:18 PM, "David Strati" <da...@uniformsforamerica.com> wrote:
I wonder how Eva would define a "sane immigration system”. We are all immigrants.
Dave – nice that you feel kinship with immigrants (that includes me), but if you were born in this country, as I assume you were, you’re not an immigrant – you're a son or descendant of immigrants. Although you and I are both American citizens, I was not born here, so I am an immigrant, and you're not.
Also, when I came here, my visa was contingent on a sponsor signing a legally-binding document, which stated that I would not become a public charge (and I haven’t). I don’t think that such a requirement is in place right now.
As for what I think is a sane immigration system – Australia has one, which I pointed out in the previous posting (you can look up that link).
In a nutshell, a sane system is one in which the government protects its citizens and environment from negative impacts of immigration. As such, the government should ascertain that the numbers and demographic makeup of arriving immigrants are in line with what the country's needs — and that the influx does not overburden the existing safety net, or overwhelm communities with demands (for housing, transportation infrastructure, schools, police, hospitals, elderly care, jobs, etc.) — demands that municipalities cannot easily meet without forcing its citizens, against their will, to give up their own resources and make personal sacrifices.
You may have noticed that the voting public (be it in Boston, in Massachusetts, or the country as a whole) has no say whatsoever in how many newcomers (immigrants or not) can be absorbed into their respective communities.
Is anyone asking us if we want Boston to become like Manhattan, and the towns around Boston to be like the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens? Shouldn’t we, as taxpayers, voters and property owners have some say in how much growth we are comfortable with, and what features of our communities we would like to retain?
I have a feeling that this often repeated notion that "we are all immigrants" is perpetuated for the purpose of making the American public acquiesce to continuing and increasing large-scale immigration. How could you be possibly disloyal to the memory of your parents or grandparents right? And since everyone is so preoccupied with their lives, family, jobs, it looks like hardly anyone tries to figure out what continuing, and increasing high levels of immigration mean to our future.
Just in our lifetime (since 1950) global population has increased from 2.5 billion to 7.2 billion now — what a huge jump! — with devastating environmental & ecological consequences to the planet.
The US population was 151 million in 1950, and in just two years, in 2020, according to the US Census, it will be 341 million.
It is mind-boggling to me that since I came to this country 34 years ago, when the US population was 236 million, the number has increased by over 100 million! Just so you can picture it — it’s an equivalent of ONE HUNDRED cities of one million people each. Just imagine the volume of what all these people need in their lives (including construction and transit, both personal and commercial), and what it takes to manufacture and dispose of all things they use, so they can have the kind of lifestyle that people in this country have.
The 100 million person increase divided by 34 years — just for easy counting — is on average almost a 3 million person increase a year (although those yearly increases have been higher in the last 20 years when the immigration has sharply accelerated).
It looks like my rough calculations are on track — I found the following confirmation on line (https://www.susps.org/overview/birthrates.html):
Each year there are approximately 4 million births in the U.S. and 2.4 million deaths. The growth due to natural increase (total births minus deaths) is therefore 1.6 million per year. Yet according to the Census Bureau's decennial census, U.S. population is growing by approximately 3.3 million per year.
This means that more than half of the US population growth is due to immigration.
Now, divide that 3.3 million average yearly population increase by 50 states — again, just for easy counting — and you end up, on average, with about 66,000 new people in each state (and possibly more than that in Massachusetts) who need housing every year!
Add to that the job losses in small-town American (due to NAFTA and China taking over much of our manufacturing), which forced many people to move to larger cities — and now we have a clear picture of why we have housing shortages and home prices going through the roof. Everyone seems to know that this is the case — but most people don't bother or dare to dig deeper, to get to the cause of the problem.
We tend to think that what we’re seeing now is just a temporary construction boom that will likely subside. But what if it does not? What if our immigration and population growth further accelerate?
If the unabated population growth continues, exacerbated by large-scale immigration — and if it is commonly assumed that this growth needs to be accommodated in our urban centers at any cost — then I would like the people who seem to support these developments (incl. BACC and ACA leadership, as far as I can tell) to tell me how much more density should Allston-Brighton, or the rest of Boston, sustain? What is fair? Should Boston & vicinity become overcrowded like LA or New York City? Is this what we want?
Some people may think “I don’t care what happens when I’m dead” — but they don’t realize that if the demand for new development keeps growing thanks to high immigration (at the levels of the last 20 years or so, or higher), and the BPDA continues to green-light large/dense projects — your home may not be here, or not stand on a nice quiet street, way before you kick the bucket, and the Allston-Brighton you love will be unrecognizable to you, with all the neighborhood features that you love gone.
At this point, I think it’s time to realize that being an American citizen, like you and I, Dave, should compel people to think in terms of what is best for the future of our environment (our neighborhood, city, state, country) — not to be sentimentally focusing on what was good for people's immigrant parents/ancestors when they came here years ago (many when the country’s population was over 200 million less than what it is now).
Keep in mind that all our big cities and towns are not self-sustaining. We draw on the natural environment for food and every single object and item we use and consume in our lives. The environment is getting hurt badly and we are destroying habitats for animals that also have a right to live on this Earth.
Eva
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