In a new Southie real estate trend and development loop hole, another single family could potentially be torn down to make way for six units. The house is located a 874 East Sixth between P and Farragut Road. A similar real estate situation happened back in April involving a single family located at 202 M Street. After lack of neighborhood support, the developers decided to keep the single family and add an additional single to the 4,467 square foot lot.
The development is scheduled to go before the City of Boston Board of Appeals on Tuesday, September 12th at 9:30am in room 801 at City Hall. Concerned neighbors are are asking for changes to design and size the initial proposal. To show opposition or support for this proposal, you are encouraged to contact the Board of Appeals at 617-635-4475 or email [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].
See rendering below:
Holy moly! I swear it wasn’t more than 5 years ago kids would trick or treat at my door each Halloween. How are they supposed to get to all of these private units now? Kids deserve candy.
The trend these days is to move out of Southie once your kids are of public school age…if you haven’t noticed. That is why the high schools had to merge (literally not enough kids to fill the classrooms). This trend is will continue and become more polarized so long as Southie doesn’t have worthwhile public schools. And since this DeVos appointment…it doesn’t look like good public schools will be coming to Southie any time soon.
It’s all Trumps fault. I forgot how well the Boston Public Schools were performing under Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Carter.
He’s done it in 5 months? I’m pretty sure those high schools merged during the Obama era, as well as the bulk of Southie’s gentrification period.
Same loophole is being used to develop two single family homes on East 8th ST. 438-440 E 8th are attached single family homes that repeatedly got reject by ISD for zoning violations, but the new loopholes are allowing the developer to build 7 units, even though the same plans were denied several times over the last 3 years. Three years of abutters meetings and several ZBA denials mean nothing now that the rules were changed in favor of developers.
That monstrous building rendition couldnt be more out of place!! We’re losing South Boston to greed! Can dwellings be sold with stipulations?
This is what happens when the land is much more valuable than the building(s) upon it. Part of the inevitable market cycle. I don’t bemoan the loss of a random not-great-looking single family.
Why don’t you set up a go fund me page for the necessary upgrades that this single family needs, to be wonderful again.
It’s a nice house. I haven’t been inside but from outside it looks nice. Politicians deflect the heat from themselves and their donating, development pals by blaming the person who sells the house. “Hey, these people sold out.” The rules should be structured so there’s no incentive for the long time families to sell and more importantly no incentive for developers to change the face of the neighborhood.
Sounds like you’re asking for a stop to “Supply & Demand,” that’s a tall order.
In this case they are not changing the face of the neighborhood. This single is out of place in this neighborhood.
Why don’t you set up a go fund me page for the necessary upgrades that this single family needs, to be wonderful again.
Is this house being purchased contingent of city approval for a multi unit replacement? If so, the Southie resident(s) who own the property will be the ones screwed out of additional money by keeping this sale from going through. Also, don’t we want cheaper housing in Southie? We need to add supply to lower rents.
As it is, this house looks like crap and is next to two multi unit dwellings already. It’s not as if it will look completely out of context with the neighboring buildings.
NIMBY’s drive me up a wall…
As I write this, there are dozens of luxury units sitting empty in Boston due to a glut at the top of the market, so I think framing the issue as a problem with supply alone is pretty unhelpful. We’re going to bring rents down for everyone by building a bunch of brand new houses for the super-rich? There’s nothing that raises a red flag about that to you? The NIMBY dynamic certainly plays a role, but there’s no dearth of reasons to oppose this type of development.
If that is true, Matt, then we will see these luxury developers start to lose their shirt. The issue will resolve itself as Boston will be an area where luxury developers cant make money. This is not the super rich btw. In general, these are professional young couples buyings these units on salaries they earn working in the city. They dont want to live in a crap hole like what currently sits at this location, they want nice new developments.
Help me understand why you are so offended by building units that people actually want? Is this going to effect you in some material way?
These units aren’t necessarily what people want, it’s what’s available after these millionaires by traditional houses in the neighborhood, knock them down and build these things that don’t fit. They’re buying in Southie for the location and buying these homes because those are the ones for sale.
They are what people want because it is what they are willing to pay the most money for. I’m not sure, short of you (Tom) controlling what can be built where in Southie, what you are looking for. What makes you the purveyor of fit? What makes you so keenly able to discern what people want and don’t want? If you think people want small single families on big lots, purchase some land and try to make a profit doing so. Developers make their own decisions on what to buy and build based on what they think will earn them the highest returns. This makes sure the land that is purchased is utilized to its maximum value. If every lot in Southie had 1 unit it would be horrible for Southie, making it an unbearably expensive place to live and weirdly non-urban. Land is extremely expensive and in demand in the city, increasingly in Southie. This makes small developments unprofitable. This is a price signal to developers to build more units on the same lots to be able to recoup their investment while earning a profit for their labor.
They buy it because that is what is being allowed to be built. “I love this neighborhood so much that I can’t wait to move there and change it.” I know we were all just a bunch of low class people who lived in three deckers, 2 families, and an occasional single, but don’t forget it was us who made this neighborhood desireable for people like you. Unfortunately, our forefathers created an eventual success for people who hated everything about them.
@Tom
The reason you build “luxury” condos vs. median income ones is the relative cost increase to build luxury gets a much higher return.
Think…the land costs the same, the dry wall costs the same, the concrete costs the same, the labor costs the same…the only difference is the finishes which is a small part of the cost of construction.
Thank god Typical Millenial tells it how it is.
Not everything has to sell pre-completed…it’s on the developer to lower the asking price…otherwise everyday it sits empty they lose money. Eventually they lower their ask and it gets purchased. Overall Southie has a 97%+ occupancy rate. It’s really not a big deal if a few overpriced condos sit empty until the developer finally wakes up and lowers the ask.
Couldn’t agree more, it’s too bad the people who share these views won’t show up to town meeting…even if their life depended on it.
That building was built in 1958, well before the other two buildings to the left of it. To say it doesn’t fit in with the neighborhood doesn’t make much sense as that building IS the neighborhood that these new buildings moved into. That’s like putting a police car in the firehouse and saying “These fire trucks don’t look right in here.”. Enough with these speculators. When will the
Politicians look out for us instead of them?
Take a walk down the West side. I would argue any building built before 1980 looks “out of place.” This whole complex of “out of place” is completely relative to how long you’ve lived in Southie. Change happens, look at the Seaport…your logic says that every single building in the Seaport is “out of place” because they’re not a parking lot.
The building to the left didn’t fit in with the neighborhood but was approved. Now this guy doesn’t like the building next to him so he wants to build a cruise ship there. This is about more than one house on a street. The entire process, that currently favors only the developers, needs to be revamped. The BRA actually took it a step further when they, in collusion with our politicians, raised the height limits, reduced the setback and clear-space requirements, and turned an already flawed development process totally against the residents they’re supposed to speak up for. Why is this? If you take a look at the Massachusetts OCPF website, you can see what the developer, David Winnick, and his attorney, Patrick Mahoney have donated to our local politicians. He’s not the only developer doing this, they all are doing it. I don’t think they’re doing it because our politicians are doing such a great job for the neighborhood or in the spirit of good government. They do it so they can call in favors when they need to violate the zoning and building codes and ordinances to suit their needs and line their pockets. They are buying influence and these politicians are guilty of influence peddling. Please see for yourself. Go to the OCPF website and check it out. For what other reason would some guy, who isn’t from Boston, give so much money to these politicians? The entire process needs to be revamped to benefit the residents. We have had it with having to watch our neighborhood become a generic spot for people to pass through on their way to wherever they want to end up. It’s time that our elected official put us first and stop taking dirty money from these unscrupulous speculators.
https://www.ocpf.us/Reports/SearchItems
Type in the names—WOW Southie has been bought and paid for by these two guys.
What two guys?
$500 donation = bought and paid for? The total donations are a few thousand dollars over a decade, doesn’t seem like a needle mover.
What happened to the affordable units that are supposed to accompany these new condo buildings? I’ll tell you. The rules simply say, in layman’s terms, that affordable units must be created by the developers when the project they build goes over a certain number of units. To comply with the rule, developers buy property in other and sometimes less desirable areas of the city. They keep all the units in the new, high-priced condo building and sell them for high prices. They meet the requirement for the affordable units by building the affordable units in those other sections of the city, essentially chasing out the people who want to stay in the neighborhood but are priced out. For example, a developer builds 16 units on a property on H Street in Southie. The BRA decrees he assign two or three units as affordable. This developer then rehabs an old three decker in Mattapan and offers that as the three affordable units. He sells all the luxury condo units on H Street for as a high a price as he can get. People who grew up in Southie and want to stay here won’t apply for the affordable Mattapan units, but the developer is covered because, according to the rules, he has created the affordable housing required by the BRA. The result? The longtime Southie family ends up having to take his family to Weymouth or Abington because his own people, whom he donated to and worked for on Election Day screwed him by allowing these developers to chase him out of the neighborhood.
This is what happens when our local politicians and the developers and realtors conspire to write the rules concerning neighborhood development. We have all been played for fools, yet we all keep sending donations to these same people who screwed us. WAKE UP! This neighborhood isn’t being wrecked by the developers, as unscrupulous as they may be. It’s being wrecked by our own who swore an oath to protect us. Is this how they were brought up? I don’t think so. Somehow they allowed themselves to be corrupted along the way. It’s time to wake up and speak up.
One of the rules that needs to be implemented is that affordable units need to be included and part of the project being built. What they do now is basically redlining. The FBI needs to step in and start following the money.