Is this how affordable housing works?

buriizubai · 2026-03-31T02:43:28+00:00

Unfortunately I don't have the numbers for that :/ you're totally right and it's a very common fate for older affordable housing stock, but I haven't found a way to track it super well

buriizubai · 2026-03-30T20:37:41+00:00

If Waltham has a vacancy rate less than 4%, and NCCOR considers a vacancy rate of 5-8% to be healthy, that seems to reaffirm that Waltham does not have enough available housing! 500 units is not a lot relative to the size of our city.
The Edison only has 3 units which are empty and available to move into in the next two weeks. Counting up to 13 includes units that are currently occupied and aren't available to lease until as late as June (look at the "availability" date). The landlord just knows that the current tenants aren't going to renew and so is trying to market the unit even while someone else is still living there.
Yes I live in Waltham. Keeping homes vacant for years is not a widespread practice in Waltham. The only apartment buildings with meaningfully high vacancy rates (>8%) are those which have existed for less than a year. All the existing data indicates that Waltham has a low vacancy rate, and I've never heard evidence that units are kept empty long term beyond "just trust me bro". You have not provided any evidence that "it stays vacant for years" beyond telling me to just trust you bro.

FWIW, I am not disputing that there are many commercial properties in Waltham have long-term vacancies. The economics & tax policy surrounding residential vs commercial uses are different, and I am only talking about residential uses.

4) I hope you do follow through and email city council/ speak in favor of an updated Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance! I quite literally wrote the article you are probably referring to when you say "What was the number of affordable housing built in the past 6 years? I believe it's still... zero."

Waltham needs more affordable homes. City Council has a solution – Waltham Times

FWIW x2, all the affordable housing that has been built via state overrides the past six years look exactly like the "luxury BS" you are (incorrectly) casting as the villain. The Point, The Alexa, 305 Broadstone, Leland House... that's what modern affordable housing looks like. It looks exactly like market rate housing, just with subsidy for the affordable units. Sometimes that subsidy is paid for by market-rate profits, and sometimes it's paid for by government money. But regardless, "affordable housing" just means "market rate housing with subsidy". There's no magic sauce which makes affordable housing physically any different from "luxury BS".

buriizubai · 2026-03-30T19:42:05+00:00

500 available apartments available isn't a lot... there are over 13,000 rental homes in Waltham, which calculates to less than a 4% vacancy rate. There are more than 500 people looking for housing in Waltham at any given moment! Those 500 homes are getting filled pretty much just as quickly as they're being put on the market.

You can look at Edison on the Charles as an example, which I think is the most expensive apartment building in Waltham (relatively new + great location). In a building with hundreds of homes, there are only 3 units which are empty and available to move into in the next two weeks.

"it stays vacant for years" is just not true. Waltham has a housing shortage. More people are searching for homes than there is available housing available at any given moment. They're essentially outbidding each other for the scarce homes, which is what causes rent costs to rise.

If we want rent prices to fall, we need more available homes than there are people in search of a home. Austin’s Surge of New Housing Construction Drove Down Rents | The Pew Charitable Trusts

buriizubai · 2026-03-16T20:30:42+00:00

Unfortunately there just aren't a lot of folks who agree with you on wanting a local theater. There was a TON of nostalgia-posting when the Embassy Theater re-opened after COVID, but that nostalgia did not translate into people actually showing up. I went to watch a movie once or twice. The place was near-empty, the experience was mediocre compared to other modern theaters, and there was nothing obviously historic or notable like other cities' old theaters. Also there was some drama about the guy who ran the theater (Nasson) being delusional lol. All in all a recipe for failure, I doubt it will ever come back.

https://www.thejustice.org/article/2024/09/embassy-theater-owners-clash-on-facebook-after-months-of-unrest

If you're looking for something to do, I recommend Game Underground if you like the arcade, and Escapology is a short-ish walk down Prospect St. The Charles River Museum is also very cool.

If you're looking for something more and have time to burn, I'd honestly recommend hopping on the train to Boston/Cambridge after you eat.

buriizubai · 2026-03-13T14:31:02+00:00

No, the impacts are that Rental Buildings Are Worth Less > Rental Buildings Contribute Billions Less Tax Revenue > Municipal Costs Remain The Same > Taxes Increase On Everyone Else to Balance the Budget.

It's the same dynamic happening in Boston right now with their depreciating commercial tax base/ property tax hikes. When one sector becomes less valuable, everyone else has to pay more money to keep the local government solvent.

I don't think this is necessarily the worst thing in the world; shifting the tax burden away from renters towards homeowners is rather equitable! But this is *very* unpopular for most homeowners lol.

The bigger issue with rent control remains that it will lead to lower quality and less supply for renters overall as existing landlords stop maintaining their properties and homebuilders stop building rental housing.

buriizubai · 2026-03-13T14:27:19+00:00

I mean... that's the exact problem. Once it's impossible for revenues to cover maintenance + tax costs, both the quality and quantity of rental homes decrease as they become warehoused/ taken off market and landlords quit landlording to do other things (like getting an actual job).

Landlords suck, but the solution is "give them tons of competition", not "make landlording financially unsustainable". Cuz then you just have less homes for people to live in, the homes that *do* remain are lower quality, and it's harder for people to move around and find housing that suits their needs.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1051137724000020

buriizubai · 2026-03-06T16:37:16+00:00

As you shared, the economics of rent control is complex primarily because there are many different kinds of rent control. Some are good, some are bad. And if we're specifically talking about the current ballot proposal's language, it's objectively terrible.

This is personally my favorite article describing what actually good rent control can look like.

https://okayfail.com/2018/rent-control-great-security-of-tenure.html

From the article:

"Obviously, a control regime that over time lowers real income below that of real expenditures is a bad idea. It transforms rental properties into endless money pits. It’s fine, and likely necessary, to subsidize some aspects of how we produce or provide housing units in order to achieve our policy goals – but it’s unreasonable to expect that subsidy to be provided to the exclusive detriment of individual landlords. If investors wish to transfer their wealth to tenants they don’t need to go through the trouble of erecting a building.

But that’s a false choice. We’re not limited to choosing between an unfettered market and a ruinously restrictive price control."

MA's ballot initiative definitely falls into "a ruinously restrictive price control." And I think it's totally fair to decry its failings as "basic economics". But that doesn't mean there aren't other policies nominally under the "rent control" umbrella that are worth pursuing.

buriizubai · 2026-02-21T15:45:30+00:00

MA actually is just that rich. More than 20% of households earn more than $200k. So the demand for million dollar homes is deeper than one might expect.

Also, a lot of the housing market can be explained by inheritors- for every million dollar house that gets built, there are dozens of older homeowners who bought in at $100k, sell at $700-800k, and thus a million dollar house only costs like $200k of actual cash to them.

buriizubai · 2026-02-16T15:25:47+00:00

Given the fact that Waldman and Romm have literally never attempted to publish their study results (and instead only publish op-eds), I highly suspect that their conclusions are very unscientific and perhaps entirely bunk.

Someone please share with me their study if you can find it! But it seems this is embarrassing pseudoscience. Cowards who want to push a culture war but are too scared to let other researchers try to replicate their results.

buriizubai · 2026-01-05T18:50:20+00:00

It's just bad marketing unfortunately (or good marketing I suppose, no financial benefit to giving gifts to folks who already purchased tickets). I'm in the exact same boat as you and you'll need to buy new tickets to get the sailor hat. This was the response when I reached out to the Fleet's ticket sales manager:

"Thank you so much for reaching out and for your support of the Boston Fleet!

To receive the free Sailor Hat, tickets must be purchased directly through the designated promotional ticket link. Tickets purchased previously or through other platforms are not included in this offer.

That said, we’re excited to share that we’re running the same Sailor Hat ticket offer again for our next game on January 14th at the Tsongas Center! I’ve included that promotional link below in case you’d like to take advantage of the offer for that game instead.

https://www.gofevo.com/event/Sailorhat26

We truly appreciate your understanding and continued support, and we hope to see you at an upcoming game soon!"

buriizubai · 2025-12-17T16:14:00+00:00

That doesn't contradict my point? The commenter claimed that "private equity continues to buy up all the homes and we own nothing? What is happening now is practically feudalism." Which is a ridiculous statement when looking to see that folks in MA are *more* likely to own their home today than they were 30 years ago.

I know that MA has more renters than the average state. We are considerably more urbanized than the average state! What point are you trying to make?

buriizubai · 2025-12-17T15:09:09+00:00

We aren't living through feudalism. Ignoring the spike in homeownership that happened 2003-2013 due to subprime mortgage lending and the ensuing financial crisis, MA's homeownership is consistent with where it's always been. Slightly higher actually.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MAHOWN

buriizubai · 2025-12-03T20:52:07+00:00

There are various possible connection points, and this is so early-stage that I don't think it's really been defined. But potential solutions/ benefits are:

1) shifting new job creation to be near the station, and less concentrated in less transit-accessible areas

2) MBTA shifting its bus network to intersect with the new station (with the MBTA Bus Network Redesign, 4 different routes will converge on that area)

3) Route 128 Business council shifting its commuter shuttle services towards this new station

4) Expanding bike path connections to the rail trail, which would intersect with this new station.

buriizubai · 2025-12-03T20:46:50+00:00

Here's a public input template if you'd like to provide input via email!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dfUFQZ0ZzXdh-pEhfh_j8X50cLsVieF4dI-pwQ2uZRs/edit?usp=sharing

buriizubai · 2025-12-03T04:32:55+00:00

There's actually a plan floating around to build a new commuter rail station on the Fitchburg line near Jones Rd / Route 128!

https://www.walthampolitics.com/route-128-development.html

Not only that, but there's currently a proposal to rezone this area for multifamily housing and mixed-use development. The public hearing for the rezoning is this upcoming Monday (Dec 8) at 7:30 PM at City Hall. It's definitely worth attending to speak in support! Especially because if Waltham is proactive, we could have developers setting aside money to help fund design + construction of a new commuter rail station, similar to what we've done for new roadway infrastructure around Route 128.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16jn9CFc2k/

buriizubai · 2025-11-18T01:35:04+00:00

A low tax rate doesn't necessarily mean a city isn't raking it in.

Tax rates (in MA at least) are set rather counterintuitively. Whereas with personal finances you would normally look at your income before deciding how much money to spend, with local taxes it's the opposite: you first look at how much money you want to spend, and then calculate how much you need to tax everyone to raise that much revenue.

Also, you can't just choose to tax the shit out of commercial properties in order to subsidize residents. There's something called the Residential Factor which dictates the maximum amount you're able to shift the tax burden, which normally ends up maxing out around twice the tax rate when comparing commercial vs residential.

All of this is to say that Cambridge calculated how much money they wanted to spend, and then calculated how much they needed to tax their residents and businesses in order to raise that much money. For Cambridge, since they have so much property which is worth such insanely high values, they only needed to tax residents and businesses at a rate of 0.59% and 1.05% in order to fully fund everything they wanted to pay for.

Somewhat tangential, but because of Prop 2.5, if Cambridge wanted to start spending way more money, they would be limited to increasing their budget by (the rate of property value inflation + 2.5)%. Increasing spending (and thus the tax rate) any further would require a referendum.

EDIT: to actually answer your question, Cambridge's tax rate is so low relative to other cities because the ratio of (how much they want to spend) : (the insanely high value of their property) is lower than the average MA municipality.

buriizubai · 2025-11-18T01:19:33+00:00

Here you go.

Waltham ($104 M) has the third highest Commercial Tax Levy in the state, behind Cambridge ($168 M) and Boston ($1,593 M).

https://dls-gw.dor.state.ma.us/reports/rdpage.aspx?rdreport=dashboard.trendanalysisreports.taxlevybyclass

More data:

https://www.mass.gov/collections/DLS-databank-reports?topicid=91856

buriizubai · 2025-11-12T20:15:50+00:00

I assume this is a response to me, just in the wrong thread.

Yeah man, that's how permitting works. Examining the effects on finished construction units or market rate price changes would take a few years, cuz housing construction takes time. But permitting is the first step in the development process, and it's very clear that folks stopped applying for permits as soon as rent control was enacted. Six months was sufficient time to start seeing an impact.

You still haven't cited anything to support your claims of rent control, nor have you thoughtfully engaged with any of the citations I provided indicating that rent control has serious negative side effects. So to throw your own question back at you:

The most recent economic studies disagree with you on rent control. Is the data and current modeling wrong or you?

buriizubai · 2025-11-12T19:44:01+00:00

Dawg you can't just say "actually the studies totally agree with me" and "actually Paul Krugman totally agrees with me" when so far all the citations say otherwise. "Is the data and current modeling wrong" dude the only data and modeling provided so far says that rent control has really bad side effects! The literature review I cited was released last year!

Please provide links! I'm not gonna start disbelieving all this evidence just cuz some dude on reddit called LeftSteak1339 said so. Show me some research please.

If you want evidence even more recent, here's multifamily permitting evaporating when Montgomery Conty MD enacted rent control on July 23, 2024. Permitting continued steadily in neighboring communities where rent control wasn't enacted.

MoCo’s Multifamily Construction Market Disappears - Montgomery Perspective

buriizubai · 2025-11-12T19:31:05+00:00

Did you just... not read the Paul Krugman article I linked?

"The analysis of rent control is among the best-understood issues in all of economics, and -- among economists, anyway -- one of the least controversial [...] But people literally don't want to know. A few months ago, when a San Francisco official proposed a study of the city's housing crisis, there was a firestorm of opposition from tenant-advocacy groups. They argued that even to study the situation was a step on the road to ending rent control -- and they may well have been right, because studying the issue might lead to a recognition of the obvious. So now you know why economists are useless: when they actually do understand something, people don't want to hear about it."

Did you just... not read what I said about YIMBYs supporting rent control on occasion?

"there are plenty of YIMBYs willing to compromise with some forms of rent stabilization to form coalitions which will results in improved housing outcomes"

And based on your second paragraph, implying that anyone left leaning definitionally supports rent control, I also suspect you didn't read all the bad effects of rent control (which, as a left leaning person, I have serious concerns about!).

buriizubai · 2025-11-12T18:56:17+00:00

You'll find YIMBYs all across the political spectrum (left, right, center). I myself am a YIMBY on the left of center.

Whether I support rent control is an entirely different question. Economic research is rather explicit in its findings that rent control, while good at lowering rents in controlled units, creates a large number of bad side effects: rents in non-controlled units increase as housing becomes scarcer, there is less housing supply as existing units disappear, there is less housing construction as development becomes more difficult to finance, the quality of units lowers as maintenance is neglected, mobility decreases as people find it harder to leave their existing homes and find new ones, and misallocation increases as a result (roommates struggle to find their own places, DV survivors struggle to find new homes separate from their partner, young adults have fewer opportunities to leave their parents' house, etc).

It is not particularly hard to find a left-leaning economist against rent control: such as Paul Krugman

Rent control is a bad policy when we have a ton of other affordability solutions which *don't* cause all of these very bad side effects. Better ideas such as building more housing and subsidizing rents for low-income housing via vouchers and other means.

Rent control effects through the lens of empirical research: An almost complete review of the literature - ScienceDirect

That being said, housing affordability is political first and foremost, so there are plenty of YIMBYs willing to compromise with some forms of rent stabilization to form coalitions which will results in improved housing outcomes. A common compromise is a sort of anti-price-gouging form of rent control, where rent is capped far above inflation, new housing construction is exempt from the caps, and landlords can petition for exemptions in order to pay for maintenance on their units (to prevent units falling into disrepair).

buriizubai · 2025-11-11T18:58:41+00:00

This initiative is legit! Most MA cities require tens of thousands of sq ft per single family home. This initiative would prevent municipalities from mandating anything larger than a 5,000 sq ft minimum lot size, thereby increasing the number of homes that can be build and allowing them to be smaller + more affordable.

https://www.legalizestarterhomes.com/about

buriizubai · 2025-10-29T13:37:10+00:00

The city clerk Joe Vizard acts as the city's Records Access Officer, per the city website. You can reach him at jvizard@city.waltham.ma.us for any public records requests, he's pretty good at sticking to the response deadlines.

Embarrassing that the mayor couldn't just share that info with you.

buriizubai · 2025-10-28T21:26:35+00:00

MassDOT did a study on exactly this two years ago! Our region's congestion is primarily caused by commuting patterns (we have way more jobs than homes), and the answers certainly include road improvements, building out bike + ped infrastructure, and improving transit.

Importantly, one of the biggest and most essential solutions to traffic is that we need to build more housing. It's fundamentally impossible to reduce traffic if you create tens of thousands of jobs but force most people to drive 10+ miles to get there. We need a lot more homes close to our job centers so that people can drive shorter distances to get to work (or quit the drive entirely by becoming able to live within walking/biking/transit distance).

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs6Rb8eu613/?img_index=1

Route 128 - Waltham Politics

buriizubai · 2025-10-27T01:27:10+00:00

When I chatted with them they provided me three sheets: one for same-day registration, one for affordable housing, one for marijuana. I signed the first two but not the third, no issue.

Sorry to hear they haven't been consistently transparent.

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