God forbid some development ruin the charm of the beautiful south shore plaza! perish the thought!

also; I cannot handle the fact that they're wanting to charge $2500 for a one bedroom in braintree in the middle of transportation nowhere.

Do people really live near the south shore plaza? There’s like a full mile on Granite st of parking lots supporting dead businesses.

This project would turn some of those parking lots and a couple of single family homes into 495 units of apartments and senior living homes. Here are some of the opponents claims:

"Braintree officials are now set to review the proposal, and Mayor Charles Kokoros has spoken out against the plan.

“It’s an extreme amount of density,” Kokoros said, according to The Patriot Ledger. “We do not see this as favorable to the town.”

Kokoros is concerned that the development would negatively impact Braintree’s roads, water, and sewer systems, the Patriot Ledger reported. 

Resident Justine Huang said that the proposed complex is “not compatible with our neighborhood at all,” according to the Patriot Ledger."

This is the proposed site of the project

The developer wants to charge that because that's what the market value for rentals is. The market's value of rentals is set that way because there are more people looking for housing than there are actual units to rent.

Honestly, unless it’s Dave or Buster complaining, I have a hard time believing anybody complaining can realistically complain about this development going up in “our neighborhood.”

The area is already set up to handle massive volume due to the mall, and there’s enough dead space all around to put physical plant support in place without any resident actually seeing anything except the designed exteriors of the buildings.

It will get built im sure, the declining fortunes of the mall are not good for Braintree’s bottom line, even if the loudest voices in the room are all negative.

The apartments in the industrial park sandwiched between the Braintree Split and Burgin Parkway exits are $2,600 a month.

hard pass

South Shore NIMBYs

You'd be surprised what a NIMBY can come up with if you give them an outlet. In this case, I've mostly seen complaints regarding traffic implications. Not unfounded, since while it is right next to the mall and decently close to the red line, the surrounding area doesn't look all that walkable. But we can't keep accomodating the every whim of car drivers, the cost of housing is just getting too high.

The thing about the traffic is, it’s like 8 lanes all the way to the highway from there. They could build 2000 units of new housing and it wouldn’t overwhelm the roads. The only exception is during the month around Christmas, but then the traffic is already a mess to the point that you’d hardly notice the added volume.

>in the middle of transportation nowhere

A shuttle can jump on the highway and be at Quincy Adams station in a few minutes, even with rush hour traffic.

Would make sense if there was a redline stop near there....but nope

There’s an elementary school right behind where they want to put these. And the school system is already strained (and teachers working without a contract!)

There are multiple busses that go to the plaza and then to the T station (Quincy center and Braintree)

>would negatively impact Braintree’s roads, water, and sewer systems,

Well those are things that can never be changed or improved. DENY! NEXT! /s

Hanover crossing, the Kingston collection, south shore plaza. All three major south shore former mall areas are putting in condo/apt style developments

Man, I wish there was a better way to solve the housing crisis aside from essentially selling all newly zoned residential land to corporate development/management companies.

We're not creating more housing as much as we are selling huge amounts of land to developers who will simply charge above market rate because they have an outsized impact on price setting.

I don’t know why this is so hard for people to grasp.

I swear people think that these developers/landlords just pull numbers out of their asses.

They wouldn’t be able to set prices so high if there weren’t so many people willing to pay that much… precisely because NIMBYs have been preventing adequate housing for decades.

I hate nimbyism

I'm no corporate boot licker but don't get it twisted this absolutely would be creating more housing. Market rate is never going to be logical or fair, it's just a reflection of how abundant supply is in comparison to demand. Unless there is some sort of tennant cooperative movement that can get people organized and accumulate the capital needed to break ground and push through NIMBY resistance, corporate developers are the next best thing. No point in arguing about ownership of something that never gets built in the first place.

Eh, it's not really singularly NIMBYs, as much as that's a convenient Boogeyman. Boston has had an insane growth/interest since the growth of software, biotech industries, and the complete beautification of the city with the completion of the Big Dig in 2008. Software industry didn't really become a thing in Boston until the mid aughts as well.

It's much easier to say "boo NIMBYS", sure but it's a much more complicated mix of factors that are less than 2 decades in the making.

Oh no an elementary school! Can't have housing near one of those! Everyone knows putting a new building by an elementary school causes 100% of those kids to start doing hardcore drugs immediately!

Thought they were just rubber stamping EVERYTHING at this point...

They're not charging above market rate, they're charging the market rate. The market rate for a 1bd apartment in Braintree in a new building is $2500 because people in towns like Braintree think a couple new apartment buildings next to a highway and a giant mall would add too much density.

That is what people think lol. There is SOME cause for concern about price fixing on rents, but again, the only way to combat high rent prices is to increase supply

Keep going, emerald square in Attleboro too.

Boston's population growth isn't particularly notable. 8.5% population growth over a decade compared to some southern cities growing 20-30%. We would probably see similar numbers if we actually built enough housing, but we're not even close.

Fuck NIMBYs. We need the density.

So when, in this long line of supplying the wealthy flooding into Boston with housing, will we get around to supplying housing to the low-income who live here? What do we do to help them in the meantime? And how do we prevent the increase in housing simply attracting more wealthy people in a never-ending stream?

EDIT: ITT idiots who think I’m suggesting we don’t build new housing at all

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Increasing the housing supply of any kind brings down prices for everyone.

Did it finally close? I know it's definitely on the chopping block and I hope they turn it into a condo complex.

That's not the concern.

Dense housing in good school districts attract a lot of families that want those schools.

The problem is that apartment complexes like this don't pay in as much as property taxes as other kinds of housing and by the nature of their size they increase the number of students by a significant amount over a short period of time.

Most school districts aren't sitting on a ton of excess capacity.

It is a valid concern that most towns fail to deal with well.

Edit: Also the teachers working without a contract comment is noteable. It's another school district playing hardball with the teachers union because they think the union won't vote to strike. It's a sure sign of a bad school committee that doesn't want to increase school spending.

As someone who moved to the south shore recently, this is a great thing, and we need more of it.

People keep freaking out and rallying against it, yet they all love shopping at Hanover Crossing and going to that Market Basket. Development of apartments means more stores, more restaurants, more choice, and lower taxes.

Not to mention, these are all fairly high prices - you're bringing working, white-collar couples and young families to the area. All of this is a good thing.

>Man, I wish there was a better way to solve the housing crisis aside from essentially selling all newly zoned residential land to corporate development/management companies.

You're not gonna find much land left to build SFH neighborhoods in Eastern MA; and if you do, they certainly won't be cheap (million dollar homes on third acre lots). Local developers don't have deep enough pockets to spend 8-figures for the property alone and then the cost to redevelop it either. The alternative is abandoned property.

Braintree schools are already bursting at the seams with kids. With 500 apartments there will certainly be more kids entering the system. The concern is that Braintree doesn’t currently have the capacity for it.

But also, it is literally within feet of that school. The town closed an access road from the plaza to the school in the early 2000’s because of traffic concerns then. Added people could make it an issue again

I mean there are high rise residential buildings that are condos rather than apartments. It seems like people simply forget that it's possible to have a construction company that isn't also a management company.

There's a way to build density but actually give the occupants actual ownership. That's my problem with all the new developments. How is it going to help someone to buy a living space when they spend about the same, if not more to rent than a mortgage?

Equity from an owned unit is so fundamentally important for wealth building over the decades you live in a space. Sure people have space to live but are essentially kept at a huge financial disadvantage by living in apartments vs condos.

There’s also the cost to build this, which won’t be cheap for the developer.

Everyone is always pissed at the greedy evil 1980s movie villain developer, but the reality is that they’re not necessarily making a killing (at least right away) on a new build $2500/month 1BR.

Don’t get me wrong, plenty of developers are greedy bastards. But that this sub thinks the market will magically produce “affordable” housing on its own is a joke - everyone building this new housing needs to get paid, or it’s not going to get built. That’s going to set some kind of floor on how low the rents / sale prices can realistically be on these new buildings, unless the government steps in to help reduce costs.

Assuming that 1BR is ~900sf, and a sf cost of ~$300, it’s about $270k to build. At $2500/month that’s ~ 9 years for the developer property manager to get their money back on the unit. Over a decade, then, from when they made their initial investment in the property pre-construction. They can reduce that $300/sf cost, of course, to pull those numbers down - my point is simply that this isn’t the magical money printing machine for the developers and property managers that everyone seems to think it is.

If it was there would be more multi-family housing being built, zoning and NIMBY problems or not. You find ways through those things if the money is right (look at all the lab space we’ve built).

So when there is a limited supply of housing, who do you think is able to pay more for that rough around the edges Allston apartment?

Some working class person, or a software engineer?

When those “luxury” units get built, affluent people flock to those, vacating less affluent spaces.

And those affluent people who come here from out of town, were coming here regardless.

So your choices are to build more housing, or watch prices continue to soar.

180 of the 495 housing units in this proposed development would be over 55 units. Those people will be adding to the town's tax base without adding children to the school system.

180 of these units would be for people over 55, meaning they wouldn't be adding children to the school system while they would be adding tax revenue to expand school capacity.

Well we have inclusionary policies, so all new market rate housing over 9 units brings affordable housing along with it. We also have good evidence that both market rate and affordable housing construction decreases displacement.

Sure, if you ignore the effects of affluent housing turning the surrounding area more affluent, attracting even more affluence and pushing out low-income folks

I wonder why we have a housing crisis in Greater Boston? Hmmmm

Oh for sure it’s a balance. Although “affordable housing” according to the City of Boston is 70% AMI which is completely asinine and puts a big damper on the “inclusionary” policies

Looking at their enrollment numbers, it appears Braintree schools are down about 500 students from their peak in 2018.

I wonder how the infrastructure use of 500 new permanent residents compares to all-the-people-not-going-to-malls-because-it's-2023 that the infrastructure was originally built for...

I have kids in the district. The total numbers may be lower but that lower number isn’t reflected in the elementary school that this building is zoned in.

Not to mention the other building is all 1/2 bed units. I don't think we'll see many families in these buildings. Of course even if we did expect a lot of families, the project should still be built.

The data actually shows significantly reduced enrollment in the elementary schools.

the filtering effect is real - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048?via%3Dihub

There's also a new study that shows new housing does lead to lower prices in the immediate area:

https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/rest_a_01055/100977/Local-Effects-of-Large-New-Apartment-Buildings-in?redirectedFrom=fulltext

At a rate that's lower than other forms of housing.

Also that leaves 315 units for potential families getting dumped into one school district.

I'm not saying it can't be dealt with, just that it's a concern.

My issue is every single new development is freaking "luxury." That's why that Braintree one bedroom has a ridiculous price.

I don't think very many families would be piling into the studio/1bd apartments in these buildings, which leaves only some 2bds. It's not a genuine concern so much as it's a common way for towns to block new development.

It's not the right kind of housing we should be building. I'm all for high density, but we need condos rather than apartments.

Basically a building practice that died during the 2008 recession and we've all been baited and switched that apartment complexes are the only option.

Just build it. Let them cry.

At some point we have to accept we are not Europe and we can't just instantly undo 70 years of developing car-centric cities and suburbs. We don't have mixed used block housing and sprawling plazas and parks, we have dying malls and over conjested roadways from everyone being forced to drive 20 minutes just to go shopping or visit a restaurant. If we can revive the malls by building dense housing nearby, we can start to look at expanding public transit since there will be a thriving mall worth visiting as well housing that is condusive to car-free lifestyles. Plus if it attracts white-collar workers and young families that means those people aren't being forced to outbid lower income people and gentrify the existing housing market. The only people who benefit from not building housing are the NIMBYs who want to see their property value go up for no reason other than the fact that they like getting money for doing absolutely nothing (except complain about "neighborhood character" and increased property taxes).

I don't live too far from there and I think they should do it. That area is a wasteland of parking lots. They built the apartments on the hill above Quincy Adams Station and they seem to be full. Why wouldn't these be? It's near restaurants and stores. There's roads in and out. They can "gate off" the neighborhood behind there if they want. And, there will be low income housing mixed in. I wish there was more but it's a start. And, how many people are constantly in this group looking for housing options?

That's really the big thing for me.

I didn't really want to leave Boston when my wife and I moved. But I hated paying $2,300 for a 1 bed, 4th floor walkup.

So we moved to Quincy Center, and eventually Wallaston, where it was kind of the best of both world for a while. Quieter than Boston, cheaper than Boston, but with bars, restaurants, and T access to Boston.

A few months back we finally bought a single family home further down the south shore. Car needed to get anywhere. And when you get there, you need it to go to the next place. It's rare that 2 things we need are close by.

So I welcome these mixed use places.

More young people, which helps drown out the older and more conservative crowd? Love it.

More housing close by, which is also good to have in case we ever fall on tough times and need to downsize? Great.

More things to do on weekends, places to eat, room for local stores? Perfect.

If we can just add more commuter rail stops/more frequent trains, id would really be perfect. But even without that, these projects are a great thing.

Unfortunately, NIMBYs are scared of EVERYTHING.

My town just got a community electric program. We will be paying .06 less per KWH than with Eversource alone (.16 vs .22). The local facebook group is littered with:

"I don't trust this program"

"I'm opting out - why are they forcing this on us?"

"This seems fishy to me."

Meanwhile, the pamphlet we got has all of the answers to their questions right there, and you can opt out at any time.

People are so afraid of change, it kills me.

Luxury housing isn't luxury because it's nice, it's just luxury because it's new. Places that currently are not considered luxury were considered luxury when they were new. Someday this new luxury housing will be considered old and cheap,but only if we keep building more.

No one is going to invest money into building housing and market it as 'subpar housing' or 'eh it's okay housing'.

The cost of those units has more to do with the lack of other housing in the area rather than any relation to the quality of the housing.

I mean, that's what happens to the market rate when nothing gets built...

Sounds good let's do it

The fact that affordable housing is 70% of the Area's Median Income is likely due to survivor bias. If the market doesn't have enough housing supply then the prices will go up until they consume larger and larger portions of people's income. Eventually the people on the lower end of the income spectrum are forced out because the housing system is market based and the winners and losers are chosen according to who can afford rent. Inclusionary polices cannot solve a supply problem, and the market but its very design will leave low income (often synonymous with underprivileged and marginalized) people holding the bag.

This is letting perfect be the enemy of good. We need more of all kinds of (high density) housing

You can just lower the required AMI percentage though. I mean, that’s literally what urban planners are advocating for. This isn’t a “well the market is God and we can’t do anything about it” situation.

EDIT: I think you might be confused. The cities official requirement to meet the “affordable housing” baseline is 70% AMI. That’s the rule. I’m not talking about a market result.

Yeah that's true and it would reduce the cost of living for those who do make it into the program, but the affordable housing program is already overloaded as it is and the winners and losers are chosen by a lottery system. Even if the AMI requirement is lowered it would just put more stress on the affordable housing program without actually creating any additional housing, and as it stands the program is already being forced to turn people away. Unless more housing is built the program will further solidify itself as a poverty trap since increasing your income would drop you off a welfare cliff, and the market prices will only keep rising until more units are built.

The private sector has no reason to build low income housing. If you factor in the cost of land, labor, and materials then there would be little ability to charge below market rates. Low income housing can really only be built by the state or city unless there is some magical developer who is willing to lower their profits.

The addition of newer units to the market should eventually lower the price of older ones. It may not be a perfect solution but it will still help.

Finally, to address how do we stop the “never-ending stream of wealthy people” moving here- we don’t. These people will continue to come here regardless of how much housing there is but if there aren’t enough newer/higher end units then they will opt for the older ones like they do now.

Well yeah, again I’m not saying we shouldn’t build more housing at all

Except there are already requirements for public developers to include affordable housing. The required percentage of AMI just needs to be lowered

Back in 2013 or 14, NIMBYs rejected a proposal for an EMC office along Maple Street. Once rejected, they replaced the plans with ones for a warehouse. We could've had much better schools and funding, but no.

Edit: forgot a very important detail. It was in Bellingham

Fuck NIMBYs! All my homies hate NIMBYs.

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FUCK NIMBYS ALL MY HOMIES HATE NIMBYS

^^^this ^^^has ^^^been ^^^an ^^^accessibility ^^^service ^^^from ^^^your ^^^friendly ^^^neighborhood ^^^bot

Lol. Yeah...don't want to ruin the beauty of the South Shore Plaza area.

Many people still can’t comprehend that. If they did they probably be more outraged at the NIMBYs and local zoning laws

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Eventually it will start to go down because the population is contracting.