@marionsd As @klaus says, these small landlords only provide stability for as long as they’re here. Once they sell, it’s a crisis for their tenants b/c the new owners will move to recoup their costs & may need to renovate, which requires empty units.

Agree that there's no single solution.

Let’s remember that 3 deckers are energy inefficient, inaccessible to the disabled, and are all ~100 years old.

At some point, each & every one needs to be replaced, purely b/c nothing lasts forever.

@marionsd @klaus @ef4 @StephanieLearns most of them are still uninsulated. They can be retrofitted, but let’s remember that’s a form of upcycling (I.e., making those homes more expensive) and thus can encourage displacement b/c those costs need to recouped by the owner.

Keeping the buildings the same, but making them nicer, tends to displace in favor of higher-income households.

@marionsd @klaus @ef4 @StephanieLearns a new owner may not know about MassSaves (and maybe commercial owners aren’t eligible?)

Even w/ MassSaves though, you’re still talking about having to empty an apartment to do major renovations, which means somebody is gonna lose their home & be displaced to do those upgrades.

We still need more homes to accommodate folks.

Whatever we do, they’re not all going to disappear at once! We’ve many more years of having 3 deckers around.

@marionsd @klaus @ef4 @StephanieLearns to be clear: I’m not saying you did! And definitely, 3 deckers are better than 1 or 2 unit houses in terms of land use.

It starts getting interesting when we think about how Somerville might need to grow to be a home to 2 or 3 times as many people as it is today.

Far future for sure (though maybe not that far!)

@jeffbyrnes @klaus @ef4 @StephanieLearns For perspective, we're at almost 20,000 residents per square mile, among the top 20 most densely populated cities in the U.S. (Boston is ~50th). Doubling our density would put us up with Shanghai, and tripling would make us like Kolkata: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/07/11/the-50-most-densely-populated-cities-in-the-world/39664259/.

I want plentiful affordable housing with efficient use of land so we still have lots of green space and amenities, and room for growth (maybe up to 50%?), but not *quite* 2x or 3x.

@marionsd @klaus @ef4 @StephanieLearns Paris is 55k per sq mi. That tends to be my personal “density done well” guidepost.

Kolkata is 62k / sq mi, interesting it’s similar to Paris!

@klaus @noisecapella @marionsd @eherot @ef4 zoning is what restricts per-building density, so yep, we can change or get rid of that & see what happens!

Marion, our place is palatial (2500 sq ft) and we really do enjoy it, and there’s nothing wrong with that, so you’re plenty noble 😆 but it’d probably be smaller if >2 homes were allowed on our 7500 sq ft parcel 🤦🏻‍♂️

@marionsd @klaus @noisecapella @eherot @ef4 our new zoning making 3-unit buildings effectively impossible is the biggest driver of this shift. It’s why my building isn’t 3+ units, and the demo & new build on the Community Path is 2 huge semi-detached townhouses.

Fully agree with you on this Marion!

@eherot @marionsd @klaus @noisecapella @ef4 and to be sure, nobody in this thread thinks the market is perfect or the end-all-be-all. We still need subsidized homes, and tenants’ rights, and lots of other things to try & help folks out & avoid poor outcomes in the micro sense. But at the macro scale, more homes is essential.

A 1–2% vacancy rate for rentals is a terrible place to be, and we’re there 😔 We’ve got folks bidding up rentals & competing with each other! 😭