Written By Mike Kriesberg
Earlier this month, Abundant Housing Massachusetts and the Offices of Boston City Councilors Henry Santana, Enrique Pepen, and Sharon Durkan hosted a delegation of Austin City Councilors and their staff for a two day learning exchange. The visit centered around a Boston City Council Hearing to discuss some recent zoning reforms enacted by the City of Austin and to highlight how Austin has been one of the few American cities to see rents actually decrease over the past year.
The visit also included meetings with city staff, the Cambridge City Council, and two walking tours – one of Boston and the other of Somerville. It’s in Boston though that I would like to start.
I grew up here, first in Roslindale and then West Roxbury. After graduating from high school, I moved to Albany, New York for college and from there to New York City in 2019. Even as I grew to love New York, I always planned to move back to Boston so that I could be closer to my family and the friends I grew up with. While I was able to do so this past June, my story runs counter to the trends we see statewide.
According to an analysis conducted by Boston Indicators, from 2021-2022 when Massachusetts saw its population decrease, no age group saw a bigger net migration out of Massachusetts than those aged 25-44. There are several factors that contribute to young people leaving, but at its core it is the cost of living. A study published by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation places Massachusetts 47th in the nation in terms of cost of living, with that ranking largely driven by housing costs.
Even more concerning, the problem appears to be getting worse. Record home prices and high interest rates have pushed homeownership rates for young adults (25-34 years old) in Greater Boston to their lowest level since at least 1960 and rates of housing cost-burden are historically high among renters.
One result of our inability to meaningfully address this core challenge of housing affordability is that our capacity to imagine a different, more affordable future has been stifled. We have become seemingly resigned to the idea that most of us will need to spend ever increasing portions of our paychecks towards our rent or mortgage. This resignation breeds inertia and saps us of our strength to mobilize for a better future.
It is for this reason that our time with the Austin delegation was so meaningful. Yes, it was great to learn about the specifics of their University Neighborhood Overlay district, which has made it easier to build thousands of new homes in the West Campus neighborhood since it was first created in 2004. And as a policy and advocacy professional, I thoroughly enjoyed diving into the mechanics and coalition building strategies of their most recent efforts to allow up to three homes on all lots citywide and to remove parking mandates for new residential developments. These are all great policies and we should look to replicate them not only in Boston, but across Massachusetts.
But more importantly, our time spent with them was deeply empowering. It showed me how an activated body politic and engaged City Council can use their agency to shape the type of City they want to live in.
Our tour of Boston started at The Pryde in Hyde Park and took us to the end of the Greenway at Haymarket, with a stop in between at the Lyrik.
At the Pryde, a 74-unit apartment building for LGBTQ+ seniors, we marveled at how the residences and community spaces were incorporated seamlessly into the shell of the old Barton Rogers Middle School.
During our tour of The Lyrik – Boston’s first air-rights project in 40 years built right on top of the Massachusetts Turnpike – we drank in the penthouse views of Boston and shook our heads in admiration when told about construction crews installing support beams in a 12 foot wide space sandwiched between an active highway and train tracks.
And while the legacy of the Big Dig is complicated, it remains an engineering marvel. The Greenway meanwhile, only continues to improve and I believe will eventually rival the Public Gardens and Boston Common as a beloved and iconic landmark of downtown Boston.
Though different in form and purpose, all three of our stops should serve as physical reminders of what can be accomplished when we meet complex, seemingly intractable problems with dedication, ingenuity, and of course financial commitment.
As we prepare to enter the new year, Greater Boston and the Commonwealth are not wanting in problems. Our housing crisis, decades in the making, is not going away anytime soon. The impacts of climate change continue to unfold and rebuilding our neglected public transportation systems will also take decades. But while we must remain clear-eyed about the problems we face, we must also take strength in our own history, as well as the example set by those in Austin and place renewed faith in our ability to build a City and Commonwealth we want to live in.