BRA approves moving affordable units out of planned JP tower

Didn't that actually happen in NYC - the developer put in a separate entrance for the low-income residents?

Yes, the housing would be built elsewhere.

For those of you who didn't catch that, nowhere in the post does it say there will be a "poor door" ... the income-restricted units would be built off-site, in a separate building, presumably somewhere in the neighborhood (of Mission Hill or Jamaica Plain, TBD).

The way I read the IDP is that a developer who needs zoning relief from the city is required to counteract it by including income-restricted (or, "affordable") units as part of the project. Typically, it's 13 percent of the total units being built, rental or condominium.

The developer can either:

* Include the units onsite; or,
* Pay a certain amount per unit into the city's affordable housing fund.

The amount paid into the fund is a set amount, from what I understand, and can be adjusted. I believe it hasn't been adjusted for years and now stands at something like $250,000 per unit.

Again, the developer has a choice between including those 13 percent of units in the project or contributing money to the fund. Again, this is required because of the city's IDP (Inclusionary Development Policy), which was set up during the Menino administration. It's not an actual law, from what I can tell.

Developers have been including those units in their projects for years now. I'm not aware of any developer sneaking its way around that. I believe that developers have made payments to the BRA and the BRA hasn't used that money to build housing, but that's no fault of the developer.

I'm not aware of any developments in the city where the lower floors are all income-restricted and the higher floors are for the rich, market-rate payers, so if anyone has specifics, please send them my way. If they are set up that way, my guess would be that those buildings were set up like that by the developer based on reasons other than to follow IDP rules. Simply, there aren't enough units required in any building that they could fill the lower floors of a development. That doesn't mean they won't be on the lower floors, but that they'll be mixed in with lower-priced but market-rate units on the lower floors.

Developers have the choice between building onsite or paying into the fund. Some pay into the fund and it's easy to see why: Building a unit of housing in a project in downtown Boston might cost you $350,000 - $450,000 for a one-bedroom (that's the cost, not the sale price). If a developer can pay $250,000 into the city's fund, instead, then of course it would be a foolish decision to build a unit onsite, instead. There's been talk of increasing the amount required per unit to bring it up closer to the level of what it costs to build onsite - those who believe the goal should be mixing of different income groups (like the commenter below) would like that because if the amount to pay the city is close to what it costs to build onsite more developers might be willing to build onsite.

Building the affordable units on a different site altogether doesn't happen too often, as Adam points out, as far as I know. There has to be some "hardship" involved on the part of the developer (not sure what constitutes that). I don't remember the name of the development in the Back Bay, either. I don't think it was the Mandarin but it could have been. There was room for just 50 apartments and 50 condos there, I think, so the math wouldn't work, according to the developer and to the BRA (that's their decision to make). I don't know but it might also end up happening at the Four Seasons under construction because it's such a narrow building (SUCH a narrow building) that it's hard to see how you make it work.

Why would a developer build on another site versus just paying into the city's fund? I don't know; good question.

I'm only aware of one project where the developer built the income-restricted units offsite. That was with Pappas Properties and their Court Square Press / Macallen Building project. They built housing down toward the Conley Terminal. One of the Herald's writers took a look at it and talked to tenants and ended up calling it the Plywood Palace because the buildings were falling apart. Probably a good reason to require developers to include onsite - no developer is going to risk including crummy construction as part of a project.

Two other developments to look into are The Metropolitan and Rollins Square. The Metropolitan had an apartment tower and a condo tower, I believe, and a mix of income-restricted and market rate. I think there are two doors but that's to separate condos from rentals, not rich from poor, unless I'm mistaken.

Rollins Square may have portions of the buildings in the complex for market-rate and subsidized renters but that's not because of any restrictions set by city. The developer was the Catholic Archdiocese and many of the apartments are for low-income tenants.