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Description: Study by Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's New England Public Policy Center says high housing costs in Boston area not causing out-migration of young professionals
URL: http://news.bostonherald.com/business/real_estate/view.bg?articleid=1072666&srvc ...truncated...
Info/Broken?: http://www.bostonbubble.com/link_info.php?id=1464

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[Brian C]

As a 28 yr old young professional, housing costs is #2 reason why people are moving out of here. #1 is lack of competitive salaries.

While I spend 55% of my salary to rent in Boston, the salaries for young professionals are ridiculous. And I do think most of it comes from baby boomers staying on the job beyond retirement, preventing these smart, young minds to take charge (and make more).

Im still waiting for at least two engineers here kick the bucket, so I can at least make the median salary.

[john p]

Yeah, you wonder how they came up with those figures. You wonder if they are comparing apples to apples with the segments of salaries and the LOCATIONS where those jobs are and the housing available in that area, and if they have considered how much of the take home salary goes to service rising student loans like the lawyer in the article mentioned.

On the one hand, if you get people to desensitize to luxury and work hard to boot, you will get a highly professional indentured servant class. This is great for old timers from the "Me" Generation that want to exploit everyone, but what will be missing from this younger generation is judgment. The judgments that if they can’t find a good deal for themselves, how will they be able to find a good deal for you?

The worst part in all of this is that our State is paying for two absolutely stupid things:

First, our "Economic Secretary" is focusing his entire energy on casinos, so he's totally using his role to serve casino's interests and not ours. Oh, and we find out that his assistant is molesting children. Great cast of characters, you can't swing your arms and not hit a rapist.

Second, Chapt. 40B was meant to provide "Affordable" Housing for Massachusetts. Instead, all we got was abuse and a few token units that most likely would have sold at the price points they sold for. I'm sure politicians gave units to friends like they give out paid Chairmanships to Boards and jobs at Boston Edison and the Turnpike etc. Chapt. 40B focuses on very, very small amounts of new units. What they needed to do was focus on lowering the water level of affordability so the mass amount of housing stock that already is "starter homes" actually becomes affordable. Again, Massachusetts has adequate supply of "starter homes". They were built for the GI's after WWII. The reason why a bone fide starter home was not built within the 128 Belt since the mid 80's is because the demand was met for starter homes and the new construction catered to the growing family. I've said this before, they ought to push for affordable over 55 communities outside the 495 Belt so it would shake loose some affordable starter home supply within 128. You have tons of old families living where young commuter families are. It would be wrong to force or even look down on those that wanted to live out their years in a community they may have help build, but if they encouraged over 55 communities it would surely find 5% of elderly that WANTED to move out of the rat race areas. I mean the elderly LOVE the Pine Hills in Plymouth and I'm sure that development found lots of folks that lived closer to Boston which help loosen up supply for younger families....

In the end, a simple solution like I mentioned won't ever happen because we'll waste our resources babysitting sleazy developers for projects that will yield a nominal amount of units, when if they focused on lowering the affordability water level, they would find that there already is an abundance of starter homes in a commutable distance to where the jobs are, Boston. This solution won't happen because we get ridiculous reports like this one from the FED and other pedophiles from Harvard who think that Casinos are the answer. And good old Deval who say's that it won't be "Business as usual" politically, he was right, he made it worse. You have these bottom feeder state congressmen making deals for casinos; it's sickening. And we're paying good money for this stupidity.