TBF Housing Resource Library  Special Reports Chapter 40R School Cost Analysis and Proposed Smart Growth School Cost Insurance Supplement.  Click the cover to download a pdf copy of this report containing recommendations from the Commonwealth Housing Task Force. "Building Our Heritage: A Housing Strategy for Smart Growth and Economic Development," Nov. 2003.  Click the cover to learn more about the report or download a copy. Report Cards The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2002 The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2003 The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2004 The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2005 - 2006 The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2006 - 2007 The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2008 Slide Presentations The 2002 Housing Report Card The 2003 Housing Report Card The 2004 Housing Report Card The 2005 - 2006 Housing Report Card The 2006 - 2007 Housing Report Card The 2008 Housing Report Card

 

The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2002

Holding a Mirror to the Housing Crisis

Download a pdf version of the 2002 Housing Report Card

Tom Hollister, President of Citizens Bank of Massachusetts (right) moderated a panel discussion that included (from left) Patrick Lee, Executive Vice President of Trinity Financial, and Charlotte Golar Richie, Director of the City of Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development.  Other panelists were Jeanne Pinado, Executive Director of Madison Park Development Corporation and Robert Kuehn, President of Keen Development Corporation.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has dreamed of buying a house in Greater Boston – or yearned for a decent apartment with an affordable rent – that the housing crisis is only getting worse. On October 1, TBF released The GreaterBoston Housing Report Card 2002 to a packed room of 150 housing advocates, developers and policymakers. “Homeless and very low-income families are facing an unprecedented housing crisis in Massachusetts,” said TBF President Paul Grogan, opening the proceedings. “This report holds a mirror to the crisis. Our hope is that, with these facts in hand, all the stakeholders will work together to find solutions.”

Northeastern University's Barry Bluestone listens to a panel discussion after presenting the findings of the Greater Boston Housing report Card 2002 at TBF on October 1, 2002.

The report, which covers 161 Massachusetts cities and towns, is the result of a collaboration between TBF’s Boston Indicators Project, the Center for Urban and Regional Policy (CURP) at Northeastern University, and Citizens Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA). It was designed, in part, to measure progress against a series of benchmarks that had been set in a 1999 report called A New Paradigm for Housing in Greater Boston.

“Despite our best intentions to build more affordable housing,” said Barry Bluestone, Director of CURP, who presented the findings, “we didn’t accomplish that goal. As a result, housing prices appear to be rising more rapidly in lower-income communities, and rents remain well above what tenants earning the median renter income can reasonably pay without compromising their other, non-housing needs.”

The report found that over the last two years the number of households in Greater Boston (129,265), increased faster than the production of new housing (only 91,567), resulting in a sharp decline in both rental and owner-occupied housing vacancies. In response, rents rose sharply – with the median rent last year for a 2-bedroom apartment being $1,700 – and the median sales price of a single-family home increased by a whopping 50.3%, from $198,500 in 1998 to $298,350 by 2001.

“People and businesses will leave Boston if we don’t address this problem,” said Tom Hollister, Chairman of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and President of Citizens Bank of Massachusetts, who moderated the event’s panel discussion.  “We simply must deal with this issue if Boston is going to remain the appealing and powerful city that it is.”

“The good news is that so many inner-city neighborhoods are suddenly desirable again,” said Paul Grogan, closing the day with a call for action. “We have built a remarkable affordable housing industry in this area with indigenous, home-grown Community Development Corporations,” he said, “and we have to do more of the same. We must build a consensus coalition to deal with this housing crisis in Greater Boston.”