Copley Place tower stalls in dispute over affordable housing

Once a unit is deemed (deeded actually) it is affordable for decades, in many cases for ever. The point is made very well below. By only building affordable units and rich people units, people who want to live closer to the urban core cannot because the market is skewed towards upper and lower brackets. The interior finishes of a unit may be different, but the land, concrete, steel, wiring, doors, locks, HVAC, and windows all stay the same price, therefore the developer has to build more expensive units to cover the cost of the affordable units.

The politicians who know they have votes in those pockets of affordable housing, I'm looking at you Byron Rushing, and will do anything they can to preserve that mix.

You want to know why housing prices went up in South Boston, Dorchester, JP, and Somerville over the past few years? The natural flow of urban redevelopment has been altered. Redevelopment from the urban core outward has these pimples of non-market forces housing, namely the large housing projects of the South End on Super Blocks or worse tomatoes growing on sites along East Berkeley Street which could be used for more housing, thereby lowering the overall price for everyone. Does everyone realize that between Worcester Square and Dudley, especially between Washington and Columbus are massive amounts of housing which will never change (rebuilt mind you) but the income brackets will never change.

You know the Chevron, the building that got built along Tremont next to the Eagle? The unit prices were $3.15M, $3.2M, and $3.25M for the non-penthouse units. Meanwhile someone next door is growing tomatoes which can be had at Foodie's or Shaw's for $3.50 to $5 per pound. This is an insane way to run a housing market. I'm all for someone being allowed to have an urban garden, but let's put it on the roof so the Pine Street Inn guys can't steal them and that you can have a nice four story building extending a whole block which people can live in, therefore increasing supply and lowering costs for all.

I know someone who owns an 'affordable housing' condo in the Mandarin.

And its on a separate floor with a separate entrance. They also do not have any of the same amenities than the rest of the building (i.e door man, conceige services). The only thing that is similar is the unit layout. But the kitchens and bathrooms are 'cheaper'.. meaning instead of Italian stone counter tops, you have Formica. Or instead of cherry cabinetry, you have the 99 buck home depot press board special. Or instead of Thermador appliances, you have Maytag ones. Stuff like that.

Remember much of the cost of these expensive condos isn't so much the location (although it's a big part of it), its the interior finishes. And cheapening out on the finishes is what makes it "affordable".

It's not like the builder just randomly picked units and said "these are affordable" and had the same finishes as the expensive ones. No, these units were built as 'affordable units' with less-costly finishes.

The city actually has a large amount of "affordable" housing. Just not downtown. What we are doing is saying that thanks to the luck of the draw, some people who otherwise couldn't afford it get to live downtown. If they didn't have these units they would be living in outer neighborhoods west of Mass Ave and near the airport.

However, a huge part of the problem is actually the distortions of affordable housing. If you eliminated it, thousands of units would open up downtown and downtown would become affordable to someone making say $100k instead of $150k. But that would likely open up places in Brighton and JP and Charlestown for people making say $75k.

Also - affordable housing requirements don't just apply to downtown. They apply everywhere. So if you build 150 units at $1 million a piece - you have a lot of room to build and still offer 20-25 units of affordable housing. If you build 150 units in Dorchester and sell them for $500k, the developer loses incentive to build at all - because the market doesn't support market rate housing AND another 15% affordable.

These laws don't exist to make the city affordable. They exist to make certain parts of the city affordable, but it grossly distorts the market in general. Eliminate the affordable housing requirements (as you say - nothing to do with subsidized housing) and all you do is shift the mix and probably lower cost as you reintroduce incentive to develop in many parts of the city at more modest prices. The people living in the Mandarin (well next people - because you'd grandfather existing tenants) would simply have to take the green line instead of walk to work.

People might be forced out of some neighborhoods - but not the city as a whole.

Let's break it down, pros and cons:

Cons:

• 15% affordable could be highers
• Will create shadows
• Will alter wind patterns
• Despite location next to a major transit hub, will likely incur some increased vehicular traffic
• Contextually out of place, sorta...but the good old days of beautiful Copley Square with Trinity at it's head are long gone thanks to the Hancock and Westin

Pros:

• Will regenerate that awful mid-century modern Copley Place interaction with the street
• Will add housing, however luxuriously expensive to an area with extremely high latent demand
• Will add density to corridor with excellent transit connections and neighborhood services
• Regeneration of Copley Place and the SWC will offer both a better urban environment and one more able to capture business from a heavily trafficked street, but one without enough retail at the street level
• Success will hopefully catalyze the Boston Properties redevelopment of the Back Station air rights site and hopefully make more use of the space the garage sits on
• Reconnects the South End and the Back Bay via Dartmouth St, which people now scuttle through as quickly as possible because there isn't much there on the street itself in comparison to Columbus and Boylston

I could care less about the luxury housing - that trend is here to stay. I don't like parts of it, particularly "dead' apartments owned by investors who are rarely in them and hold them as if they were swanky safe deposit boxes, but that's a) not as big a problem as we make it seem and b) the lay of the land right now. What matters to me with this project, above everything else, is make the street better, more interesting, more useful, making it a destination in its own right and not just a egress from BBY station to the South End or Back Bay - if it takes a tower to do that, so be it. Doing nothing here isn't a victory, it's a defeat.