We all know there’s a housing crunch in Boston as prices continue to soar, for both buyers and renters. What’s also in short supply are solutions for a very difficult problem.
Come November, voters will get a chance to say whether they want the city to participate in the Community Preservation Act. Signed into law in 2000, it helps communities increase the supply of affordable housing, as well as preserve open space and save historic buildings.
Joe Kriesberg, chairman of “Yes for a Better Boston” coalition, believes the city’s need for affordable housing is now a crisis. “28,000 families in Boston are paying over 50 percent of their income in rent.”
The CPA is funded through a one percent surcharge on property taxes. Kriesberg knows there can be a knee jerk reaction to increasing taxes, but believes this is a good deal. “It’s only about $2 per month, $24 per year for average homeowner, someone with a $500,000 home, and most people will pay much less.”
So far, about 161 cities and towns across the state have voted to participate in the CPA.
Kriesberg said the state provides a good incentive to get municipalities to adopt it. “They provide matching funds so if we joined the program we can get $4-5 million of new state money, in addition to the additional tax revenue. That’s how we generate the $20 million to invest in our neighborhoods.”
In Hingham, the CPA has meant a place to live for veterans. In Nantucket, the town has been able to build affordable housing for teachers. Farm land has been preserved in the town of Mendon.
In Boston, the first objective will be to funnel money towards creating homes that people can afford.
Lifelong Boston resident and business owner Jumaada Smith hopes the CPA gets adopted and puts a dent in a trend she finds troubling: “This thing called gentrification.”
This is an opportunity to preserve extended families within the neighborhoods they have called home for years, according to Smith. “I am seeing that opportunity of that grandmother or that grandfather not being part of the family because the child, the young adult, a couple, two young people with children, they’re having to move out of Boston in order to get a house.”
Mayor Walsh and many city councilors are supporting the CPA.
Kriesberg is hoping taxpayers will be sold on how these funds are earmarked in a very specific way. “Taxpayers know their money is going to just these three purposes and nothing else. It also means these purposes aren’t competing with education, police, fire and other important municipal services. So the taxpayer knows where their money is going.”
For Smith, this vote is about the future of Boston, the one she envisions for her great-granddaughter. “What I’d like to see is when I when I show Izzy the house that I lived in, and I want her to come to Boston and go to college here, and have her raise her family here.”
Boston voters rejected the CPA in 2001. Advocates are hoping big voter turnout in an election year will play to their favor. Also, they believe the severity of the housing crunch could be factor.
Other communities will also be voting on the CPA: Chelsea, Danvers, Holyoke, Hull, Norwood, and Rockland.
