New policy ideas in housing
Most political candidates spend time seeking endorsements from different organizations. These aren't as important or time-consuming as one might think — most of the utility of these endorsements is exactly what the voter sees: a logo on either campaign literature or the website. It's a nice shorthand for voters, and it helps to show quickly what the candidate stands for, but at the end of the day, the bulk of the campaign is always voter contact and fundraising.
One endorsement I'm seeking is that of the Greater Boston Labor Council. I was at one of their events the other day, which was attended by a number of municipal candidates from the area also seeking the GBLC endorsement. This event was, more than anything else, an informal get-together. Several tables were set up so that candidates could discuss a number of issues with union reps, including affordable housing, the environment, municipal bargaining, and health and safety.
An interesting table was the affordable housing table. One candidate there was Ari Taylor, a candidate for Malden Ward 3. Taylor had lost her previous election for that seat against an incumbent by about a hundred votes. The seat was now open, so she was likely to win the upcoming election. Another candidate present at the table was Calvin Brown, a 20-year incumbent of Chelsea City Council.
Ari spent a few minutes talking as she gave her story and a general campaign pitch. What caught my attention was one very specific policy idea she brought up.
"Wait," I chimed in. "If a big landlord rents out a house, you want to charge them commercial tax rates instead of residential?"
"Yes," she replied.
"Is that...is that a thing you can do?"
Malden's residential tax rate, per $1000, is $12.19, while its commercial is $18.68. Medford's residential tax rate is $8.65; its commercial is $16.56. Flipping those rates, if legally sound, could do a lot to incentivize home ownership by people who wanted to live in their homes and disincentivize large landlords from relying on real estate as passive income. While canvassing, many of the most common complaints I heard from residents could be traced to absentee landlords, those who owned property but didn't bother maintaining it. I was attentive to any policy that could help with this issue.
Brown chimed in. He seemed to doubt the legality and logistics of the policy, at least initially. I didn't know enough to form an intelligent opinion on the nitty gritty. I just knew that I'd never heard of something like that before.
As a first-year PhD student, back in 2016, I thought of so many things I wanted to do for research projects, new directions, new experiments to try out. It turned out that 95% of my ideas either had been done before or were completely infeasible (though the remaining 5% formed my thesis). I learned to mistrust my own initial ideas and try to figure out why they wouldn't work out. There were so many possible directions.
In science, new ideas are a dime a dozen. This skepticism, as well as the ability to at least try to generate new ideas, has become habitual to my thinking. But in the municipal policy space, only a handful of ideas are ever seriously talked about. To prevent housing speculation in Greater Boston, for instance, real estate transfer fees are the most frequent topic of discussion; these fees would put a percentage of revenues from real estate sales by corporate landlords into an affordable housing trust. Rent control is another oft-discussed policy, though it's highly unlikely that that would be given the green light on Beacon Hill before a transfer fee. Either way, neither can be done on the municipal level without the permission of the state legislature, which is heavily influenced by the real estate lobby. Two organizations I've worked with are pushing these policies: the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization is putting a lot of pressure on the state for the real-estate transfer fee, and City Life Viva Urbana has been advocating for rent control for years.
Besides these, there are many, many other local policies that could help, potentially, to stabilize the local housing market. They're just rarely ever discussed. In Canada, for instance, Vancouver instituted a residential vacancy tax (the housing market there is worse than Greater Boston's because they're surrounded by water and can't build out). A vacancy tax never seems to be on the table in Medford; I started pushing for a commercial vacancy tax in my own platform, which I discussed in another blog post, because Medford has so many empty storefronts. Two frequent commenters in Medford's affordable housing groups often push for land value taxes and community land trusts.
This isn't to say that a vacancy tax, community land trusts, or land value taxes are or are not necessarily what Medford needs — they're examples, and my main point is that these policies rarely ever seem to be brought up or seriously discussed in City Hall. Municipal legislators are usually risk-averse. If a policy turned out to be illegal, they would risk getting the city sued, and if a policy weren't tried and tested by surrounding municipalities, it might be a disaster. I can understand that. Because of this, it would also be more difficult to convince colleagues to pass something totally original.
That being said, the lack of truly new policy ideas on the table — the artificial limiting of the toolbox — has been a topic of thought for me lately. Medford's in a rut, and its main problem is complacency — a lack of ambition, new ideas, and willingness to vote on them. Hearing something new in the municipal policy space from another city council candidate was a breath of fresh air. In my view, it's better to try five things and fail at four of them than to try nothing at all.
