Early January 2024

Welcome to 2024! We've got a ton of exciting developments over the next few months, and we hope that you'll join us. We're also pleased to announce that members now have access to a

Discord

chat server as well as our

messageboard

, so if you’d like to have more real-time involvement, reply to this message and we can add you to the chat.

Pearl St. Neighborhood Meeting January 3

Join Ward 1 Counclor Matt McLaughlin for a neighborhood meeting about an apartment building proposed for 181 Pearl Street. This project could use your support if you live nearby!

Wednesday, January 3, 6:00 pm (that’s today!), online via Zoom.

Vibrant Davis Working Group and the Davis Square Plan

The city has released the long-awaited Davis Square Commercial Area Plan and will be hosting a community meeting about it at 6:00 pm on Monday, January 29 at the West Branch Library. Overall, the plan is a good start, but we’re disappointed to see that many of its recommendations are for further study, rather than for action. Our Vibrant Davis working group will be writing up some action recommendations to make it better — join us on the messageboard or reply to this message if you've got suggestions!

Somerville Climate Forward Updates

The city is updating the Somerville Climate Forward climate change action plan, and welcomes comments through January 31. Looking over the draft goals, strategies, and actions, we’re disappointed to see that encouraging new construction near transit is not among the strategies for reducing car trips or per capita carbon emissions. Be sure to remind the city that helping people live in new buildings near transit is a great way way to reduce carbon emissions, and that it should be part of the climate plan as well as the housing plan!

Reading and Resources

We’ve updated our resources page to include videos from Abundant Housing Massachusetts, the Sightline Institute, and other groups. Sightline’s “Cruel Game of Musical Chairs,” in particular, is a great way to explain housing policy to friends and family who haven't ever really considered it before.

The Boston Globe has finished out their Spotlight series on housing with a stellar piece examining the high cost of construction, which puts a floor on the price of new homes and makes it so much more expensive to include below-market subsidized homes in new buildings. They even included a calculator to help readers understand what makes up the cost of building, and why it's so hard to make financing work out these days. We’re thrilled to see some great pro-housing voices in the editorial pages as well!

If you’re academic-research-minded, check out the latest economic research from Sweden: Researchers Gabriella Kindström and Che-Yuan Liang have conducted a thorough economic analysis of construction and apartment turnover in Sweden from 1990 to 2017, and concluded that, new housing, even expensive housing, makes the housing market better for every tenant, even the people who aren’t living in the expensive homes.

If you’re not a frequent reader of economic research journals, check out this Axios article with a simple chart comparing the number of homes in America to the total demand for places to live.