{"id":11298,"date":"2024-05-28T09:31:06","date_gmt":"2024-05-28T13:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/?p=11298"},"modified":"2024-05-28T09:31:29","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T13:31:29","slug":"11298","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/2024\/05\/28\/11298\/","title":{"rendered":"CISS Affiliate’s Class Tackles Massachusetts Housing Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article, by <\/span>Rich Barlow<\/a>, originally appeared in BU Today on May 22, 2024.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A BU Class Tackles the Massachusetts Housing Crisis<\/h1>\n

As Milton and other towns fight rezoning, Terriers study how to overcome opposition to building affordable multiunit housing<\/h4>\n

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Not-so-fun fact: if you plan to stay in Boston after BU, it could take you\u00a0<\/span>nine years<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>to save enough to buy a starter home. That\u2019s if you\u2019re coupled. Stay single, and you can quadruple that wait.<\/p>\n

The depressing numbers, from a study by real estate news and research site\u00a0<\/span>Point2<\/a>, testifies to Massachusetts\u2019 affordable housing crisis\u2014one of the topics of this spring\u2019s College of Arts & Sciences political science class\u00a0<\/span>Urban Politics and Policy<\/a>. Several students taking the course, taught by\u00a0<\/span>Katherine Levine Einstein<\/a>, CISS Affiliate and CAS associate professor of political science, focused their final project on ground zero in the state\u2019s housing wars, Milton….<\/p>\n

The course, which Einstein has taught since coming to BU in 2012, covers concerns beyond shelter\u2014schools, transportation, environmental protection. But \u201cwhen you ask Massachusetts residents what\u2019s worrying them the most, housing costs will rise to the top,\u201d she says. Solving other problems\u2014failing schools, say\u2014hinges on cracking the housing nut.<\/p>\n

Einstein says her class may give students hope that the housing crisis is fixable. For all the moaning in some communities, her students watched others get in line with the transit law; one, Arlington, \u201cwent way above the state minimums\u201d for permitting housing. She also gives shoutouts to larger, diverse cities, such as Boston and\u00a0<\/span>Cambridge<\/a>, for having embraced more publicly subsidized housing.<\/p>\n

The course takeaway is that all politics\u2014or at least, important, unappreciated politics\u2014is local. \u201cSo much of the actual policy action is happening at the local level,\u201d Einstein says. \u201cOur local governments\u2014where turnout in elections is abysmal, where people are not really participating or even aware of what\u2019s going on\u2014are actually where really important policies related to housing, education, policing, and transportation are all unfolding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article, by Rich Barlow, originally appeared in BU Today on May 22, 2024.\u00a0\u00a0 A BU Class Tackles the Massachusetts Housing Crisis As Milton and other towns fight rezoning, Terriers study how to overcome opposition to building affordable multiunit housing   Not-so-fun fact: if you plan to stay in Boston after BU, it could take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22310,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22310"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11298"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11301,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11298\/revisions\/11301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}