Эссе на тему: "The problem of high rents in Boston"

The high cost of housing in Massachusetts puts significant financial pressure on residents of the state, and the lack of affordable housing can reduce the competitiveness of the region. Affordability is of particular concern to the state's extremely low-income (ELI) tenant households; in 2016, 79 percent were burdened with rent. Due to the high cost of housing, ELI households often have to forgo spending on healthcare, food, child care or other necessities. A financial shock alone could cause this group to be unable to pay rent, leading to eviction or even homelessness.

A lack of affordable housing can have major repercussions for a local economy. Whether they are renters or homeowners, single adults or families, residents of high-housing-cost areas spend more on monthly rent or mortgage payments and have less available for other necessary expenses. Those who want to move into high-cost areas will find it more difficult to relocate, limiting their access to jobs or other economic resources in those areas. As affordability issues worsen, households may move outside the state, taking with them their human capital. Businesses may also relocate to another state, where they still have access to skilled labor but where they can pay lower wages in the absence of prohibitively high housing costs. A lack of affordable housing can affect households at different levels of the income distribution, but which policies and programs might best address the issue depends on the population they are intended to serve. Most federal and state affordable-housing programs focus on renters making less than the median income of the area in which they live. In particular, extremely low-income (ELI) renter households face significant financial pressure from high housing costs in Massachusetts.

Using detailed location-specific criminal incident-level data, we find that sudden rent decontrol in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1995 caused overall crime to fall by 16 percent—approximately 1,200 crimes annually. We estimate that this annual direct benefit to Cambridge residents was roughly $10 million (in 2008 dollars), accounting for 10 percent of the growth in the Cambridge residential property values attributable to decontrol.

Understanding potential spillovers from the attributes and actions of neighborhood residents onto the value of surrounding properties and neighborhoods is central to both the theory of urban economics and the development of efficient housing policy.

From December 1970 to 1994, all rental property in a building built before 1969 was regulated through expanded rent control, which imposed strict restrictions on rent increases and strictly limited the withdrawal of units from the general stock. The legislative body exercising control over housing ensured the availability of housing, and on the eve of the abolition of housing control in 1994, controlled units were usually rented 25-40% below the prices of uncontrolled real estate, although the content and ownership rights in controlled units were, as a rule,, below nominal (Sims, 2007). The policy change providing for the identification of the variation for Our study is the repeal of the Cambridge Election Control Act, which is being distributed worldwide. In November 1994, the majority of voters in Massachusetts voted to minimize election control by a margin of 51% to 49%, with almost 60% of the district's residents voting to retain election control. The change in the current control came into force in January 1995, only two months after the correction.

In 2016, 28 percent of all renter households in Massachusetts were ELI households. This group tends to be older, with smaller household sizes and higher incidence of rent burden compared with the state’s overall renter population. Affordable rental housing for ELI households is in short supply, and the inventory declined between 2011 and 2016, the two years analyzed in this report. The federal government supplied 76 percent of these affordable units through rental-assistance subsidies in 2016. Massachusetts state government programs played a much smaller but still important role that year, supplying about 6 percent of the affordable units.

The number of affordable units with expiring subsidies will grow in the next 10 to 20 years. Recent legislation in Massachusetts indicates that policymakers view this issue as a priority. How to best allocate preservation dollars depends on whether the goal is to preserve the greatest number of units or to maintain broad geographic access. Several cities and towns with relatively few subsidized units will see all of their housing subsidies that are property specific (that is, not able to move with the tenant) expire by 2025, while major cities will see the greatest number of expiring subsidies overall. Allocating preservation dollars to these smaller communities would help preserve wider access across the state to affordable units, and it would prevent affordable housing from becoming further concentrated in the state’s major cities.

Real estate in Boston has always been expensive. However, the sale prices have been through the roof lately. Currently, there is an incredibly strong seller market in Boston. This means that the demand for homes for sale in Boston is higher than the supply. Some buyers pay much more than the asking price. Others refuse important unforeseen circumstances that are designed to protect the buyer. Many buyers do both. Thus, many potential buyers are being pushed out of the market. They simply cannot afford exorbitant purchase prices. This segment of people rents instead.

It is worth noting that while housing prices rose in 2022, stocks also rose. Higher interest rates are pushing even more buyers out of the market this year. This will create additional demand in the rental market in 2022. We are already seeing historically low availability of apartments in 2022, and the average rental price exceeded its previous historical maximum in early May of this year. As interest rates rise, home price growth is likely to slow, and the Boston real estate market may soften for buyers in 2022.