More dorms could ease housing woes

19 October 2001

The salvation of the housing crisis, we're told, is new taxes. But a better approach - one that can yield more housing, more quickly - is to look in a different direction: to the area's colleges and universities.

Boston is now mulling two new tax increases, both intended to raise new money for housing. One, just approved by the City Council, would boost linkage fees paid by developers of large projects. A second, which will appear on the November ballot, would increase property taxes under the provisions of the state's Community Preservation Act (CPA).

Odds are that both will pass. Yet neither will show much of the way in results for a long time. The CPA tax increase, for example, will generate perhaps $28 million a year. That's good for about 300 new housing units. But, as those who have followed Boston's convoluted approval process know well, actually building the housing will take years.

Meanwhile, one of the key causes of the housing crunch has been demand from Boston's large student population. For years, city councilors and neighborhood advocates argued that college and university students were driving up the cost of housing and displacing long-term residents. Their evidence was largely anecdotal. Now a recent report from Boston's Redevelopment Authority backs the claim.

The numbers are staggering: The BRA figures that upwards of 18,000 students, unable to find rooms in a dorm, are looking for housing. Particularly hard-hit are the neighborhoods of Allston, Brighton, Fenway and Mission Hill. Assuming four students end up sharing one unit, that still means 4,500 units are no longer available for residents - a number that dwarfs any potential new housing from the CPA.

The effect on those neighborhoods is huge. Students, often receiving money from home, bid up housing prices beyond the reach of most families. On top of that, the communities deteriorate. Students usually rent only for a year and, sadly, seem to care little about the condition of the homes and the neighborhoods in which they live.

Proof? Walk around Allston someday. It's easy to identify where students live: they're the houses with weed-infested lawns, broken stairs and peeling paint.

The empty kegs on second-floor balconies are also a good tip-off.

The solution is obvious: Push colleges and universities to house their own students. Yet, for years that was resisted. Students were adults, colleges argued, who shouldn't be compelled to live on campus. Or the institutions insisted they didn't have the money.

That attitude has changed. In part responding to political pressure from the city and in part more enlightened than in the past, schools have suddenly discovered that dorms make good sense.

Northeastern University provides an example. Once a commuter college billed as the "largest private institution in the country," Northeastern over the years has grown in reputation, becoming a more residential school drawing students from around the nation. Nevertheless, with 14,000 students, it put a huge burden on the nearby Fenway and Mission Hill neighborhoods. No one was happy with the situation: Students had a hard time finding a good place to live, the residents who remained faced higher rents and Northeastern itself worried constantly about the occasional out-of-control students who could wreck the university's reputation.

Northeastern thus embarked on a building campaign, initiating an array of new dormitory developments. It expanded its west campus, opening in 1999 and 2000 a complex called the West Village which houses over 1,000. This year, two new projects opened: Davenport Commons, with 585 beds, and 780 Columbus Ave., with 114 beds. Next year Northeastern expects to add another 200 beds at the Behrakis Health Sciences Center.

All told, the school has in just a few years added over 2,000 beds. "Northeastern has been phenomenal," says one BRA staffer. Nor is it alone. The BRA figures that over the next five years, Boston's colleges will build 5,000 dormitory beds. Every dormitory bed built directly translates into housing that's available for long-term residents; in Northeastern's case that means about 500 units of affordable housing are now available.

For all that has been done, however, it's not enough. Even after the new beds are built, the demand for student housing will still vastly exceed the supply of dorms by 13,000 beds.

That shortfall represents an opportunity. Building more dorms, argues the BRA, is "the fastest way to add housing for families in Boston." It's a lot easier to develop student housing on campuses than it is to create new residential housing in the city's already densely built neighborhoods. Dorms cost taxpayers less as well; direct city subsidies are rarely required.

All of which leads to the following question: Rather than building more subsidized housing, wouldn't Boston be better off working with colleges and universities to further free up the housing it already has?