SANDRA HENRIQUEZ
‘Diminishing resources’
The city of Boston has taken steps to develop more environmentally friendly and sustainable housing, and even the state has recently passed legislation to encourage cities and towns throughout the commonwealth to build smarter.
But a group of architects and housing experts who gathered last week explored whether sustainable design and “green” building is compatible with affordable housing given that it can add significant costs to projects.
The topic was one of several examined during a daylong housing symposium last week at BuildBoston, a convention organized by the Boston Society of Architects. The symposium, which took place at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, featured workshops that gave participants insight on the use of tax credits in developing sustainable affordable housing, new standards for green housing, and the creation of green housing with limited resources.
The issue of affordable housing has been front and center in the Bay State as home prices have risen sharply and housing production has not kept up with demand, according to experts.
In a panel presentation, Barry Bluestone, an economist who is the director of Northeastern University’s Center for Urban and Regional Policy, said high housing costs have helped make Greater Boston the most expensive place to live in the country.
A family of four needs to earn $64,656 just to make ends meet, which is $6,000 more than a similarly sized family would need in New York City and $7,000 more than in San Francisco. Higher health care and child care costs contribute to the high cost of living in Greater Boston. But housing costs also play a key role.
There has been double-digit home price appreciation from 1995 to 2004. According to Bluestone, monthly housing costs in Greater Boston are 63 percent higher that the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina, a region that competes with Boston in the biotechnology industry.
In 1998, 85 percent of the 161 cities and towns in Greater Boston had a median home price of less than $300,000. Today, only 12 percent of the communities in Greater Boston fall into that category, said Bluestone.
‘One Thing Missing’
The surge in home prices has occurred even though the state is trailing the rest of the country in job growth and median household income is slipping. The state still has 160,000 fewer jobs than it did in 2001.
The job losses and high cost of living are pushing many young people to relocate to states like North Carolina, Florida, Arizona and California, said Bluestone. In fact, Massachusetts was the only state to lose population last year and the largest drop in population has been in people aged 20 to 34.
“In the long run, economic weakness, slow job growth and demographic flight could lead to much weaker housing markets in Massachusetts,” Bluestone said.
Yet Bluestone also pointed out that the state has made some progress recently, issuing more building permits this year than in prior years and adopting a smart-growth measure known as Chapter 40R. The legislation provides financial incentives to cities and towns that establish special districts where denser housing – including homes for residents with lower incomes – can be developed near town centers and public transportation.
“But there is one thing missing,” said Bluestone. “The typical resident … in the suburbs believes that affordable dense housing is not attractive.”
Bluestone urged architects to “step up to the plate” and show the public that affordable and sustainable housing development can enhance communities.
Another symposium speaker was Barbara Batshalom, executive director of the Cambridge-based nonprofit organization The Green Roundtable – which promotes sustainable development – who talked about initiatives to support sustainable design.
In Boston, Mayor Thomas M. Menino put together a task force on green building that issued a report with recommendations last year. The mayor wants Boston to be a leader in sustainable development in both the public and private sectors, according to Batshalom.
On a regional level, local and national groups joined this past summer to launch Green Homes Northeast, an initiative designed to provide technical training for building professionals, educational workshops for homeowners and policy assistance for cities over the next two years. Similar programs have been successful in cities like Denver, Chicago, San Francisco and Atlanta.
Boston Housing Authority Chief Administrator Sandra Henriquez, who joined Bluestone and Batshalom in the panel discussion about affordable housing and sustainable design, asked architects how sustainable design could be implemented in public housing given the financial squeeze that public housing agencies face.
According to Henriquez, the BHA needs $2 billion for capital upgrades at 120,000 units of public housing in Boston. The BHA gets an average of $25 million in federal funds each year. A decrease in funding for public housing over the years has meant that many properties have not been modernized or maintained, leading to an incredible deterioration, she said.
“When I talk about sustainability, I think about how I am going to manage properties in the future with diminishing resources,” she said.
The symposium’s keynote speaker was former U.S. Rep. Dick Swett, an architect who also served as the ambassador to Denmark. In his speech, Swett, who authored several bills while in Congress to encourage energy conservation and transportation for livable communities, highlighted several examples of good sustainable and environmentally friendly design in countries like Denmark and Germany, as well as U.S. cities.
“Good design works in harmony with its surroundings,” said Swett.
Swett urged architects to take a more active role in public policymaking.
