Boston falling behind rest of state when it comes to housing, Boston Policy Institute says
Once again, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has filed a bill asking the state legislature for permission to temporarily raise the commercial property tax rate beyond legal limits in order to deal with projected revenue losses tied to the sharp decline of commercial real estate values.
Wu's tax bill based on Menino bill
We're now entering year two of debate over this problem, which was initially made widely public by a report commissioned by the Boston Policy Institute, a new non-profit dedicated to analysis of city issues.
Institute Director Greg Maynard tells WBZ-TV that "The bill that Mayor Wu is supporting in the state Senate is actually based on something that was passed 20 years ago under Mayor Menino, and that was enabling legislation that let cities and towns all across Massachusetts choose to do the same thing that Boston is trying to do now. Mayor Menino got support from a whole bunch of mayors all over the state, as well as from Governor Romney, and so he was able to put together a coalition and really, really get that done, make the case that it was important. Mayor Wu, although she's using the same legislation that Mayor Menino did 20 years ago, didn't put anything close to that coalition together, and she didn't get anything close to the coalition in terms of business leaders."
The Mayor's previous effort stalled in the Senate and a compromise with business leaders fell apart when it turned out potential tax hikes on residential property owners weren't as severe as the city had forecast. But the relationship between the mayor and many elements of the business community has been rocky for some time, and we asked Maynard why. "I think an important part of it is, you can see the reaction from the Wu administration to BPI's report last year. Our report came out, the mayor and members of her administration called it misinformation and said that it wasn't true. And then shortly after that, offered this piece of legislation we're talking about now, which is designed to solve the problem that BPI's report identified."
But Maynard notes: "I think that Mayor Wu's tax bill actually brings up some really important questions about how Prop. 2 ½ [the state law limiting local property tax growth and establishing the two-tiered tax system for commercial and residential property] actually operates, and whether a split tax rate…[is] actually legal or constitutional."
Housing enters mayoral race
Meanwhile, the 2025 Boston mayoral race is underway, with challenger Josh Kraft and Wu already engaging on issues like housing development.
On housing, Maynard says "the debate we've seen over the last two weeks in Boston shows how far the housing debate in the city has come. It's really focused on supply, and so Boston is finally starting to move into a debate around how to build more housing, which is something the rest of the state has been engaged in for a long time. But Boston's politics, for whatever reason, has been really resistant to talking about the core of the issue…the MBTA Communities Act [requiring communities served by the T to reform their zoning to allow for more multi-family housing] brings up a really important issue that I think is going to be addressed in this mayor's race, which is that because of the MBTA Communities Act, there are communities around Boston that now have denser by-right development just on the other side of the line from Boston."
"So it's tougher to build in Boston now than it is in the communities that surround it and some of the suburban communities…so towns like Everett and Revere have built way more housing as a percentage of their total stock than Boston," continued Maynard. "The state has legalized ADUs [accessory dwelling units], the city has not done that. They haven't followed Cambridge's lead, either with the parking minimum abolition or with this massive upzoning. And so Boston is really falling behind the rest of the state in terms of making it easier to build. The city's made it more expensive to build with stuff like increasing inclusionary zoning and increasing environmental requirements, but they haven't done anything to loosen restrictions like we're seeing in communities here in Massachusetts and all across the country."
Maynard also discussed recent developments in the city's push to install bike lanes. You can watch the entire conversation here, and please join us every Sunday morning at 8:30 for extensive discussion of the key issues in the mayoral race and elsewhere across the region on the weekend edition of "Keller At Large."
