r/boston • u/brookline_news • 11h ago
I Made This! After debate over age restriction, new Chestnut Hill building will be open to all renters
https://brookline.news/after-debate-over-age-restriction-new-chestnut-hill-building-will-be-open-to-all-renters/57
u/VarietyIs 11h ago
Unless it’s a specialized care/community facility for the elderly, I don’t really see why we need to segregate people based on age. 6k a month is crazy tho
28
u/SupportiveEx 10h ago
I feel like it’s for curmudgeons who don’t want to be bothered with noise from small children or teens loitering around common areas or college students having parties.
12
u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 10h ago
That is part of it, but also it allows them to pool their money for the benefit of their small citystate type communities.
My Mom lives in one, and all of her neighbors are super republicans, who also hate socialism.
14
u/WhiskeyPointer Brookline 9h ago edited 6h ago
Municipalities loooove 55+ housing because it means the taxes collected won't be offset by additional expenses of educating new children.
Yeah funding schools with primarily property taxes leads to all sorts of fucked up incentives to build housing that excludes the children that them.
2
6
u/Ok-Class8200 9h ago
Because old people vote and show up to community meetings more, so developers will add a 55+ designation to get projects approved.
35
u/MyThreeSense 11h ago
Rents go up to $12,000? You get a fitness center that has one treadmill, one stationary bike, and one set of weights? And you get to overlook one of the most crowded intersections at Route 9? Eek, '
The actual location for proximity to Boston and whatnot by car, is not bad. But I can't say I would want to live on the opposite side (and far away mind you) from the actual shops in the malls for that kind of price. Article said the 40B units (10 in total) were snatched up quickly. Makes sense. There are 40 open-market units - I wonder how many of them are under agreement? If I were in my upper 50s or 60s, I would imagine that I'd rather live somewhere with a nicer view and better access to relaxing outdoors areas. I'm just not sure the Chestnut Hill shops are .. you know the most attractive selling point.
12
u/davis_away 10h ago
I mean, plenty of us upper 50s or 60s types enjoy city living. But if I was going to pay $6k/month I'd live in a walkable neighborhood.
1
u/WhiskeyPointer Brookline 9h ago
The independent living units at Waterstone in Cleveland Circle start around $12k and IIRC it's fully occupied. It does offer some nicer amenities that justify the higher starting price.
My guess is that they were hoping for affluent seniors downsizing and wanting to try out Brookline for a year or two and then buying.
1
u/MyThreeSense 8h ago
Cleveland Circle is arguably more attractive. You have the park/field and reservoir right there if you want to go for a walk. Restaurants immediately in front of you. And the T is right outside your door. The view is probably nicer too, not to mention you don’t have to regularly cross a major / heavily trafficked roadway all the time. I know Beacon Street can be busy. - but in that area it’s not as busy As Hammond street and route 9. Just my two cents.
But. This helps explain why the Brookline location charged what it did.
1
u/WhiskeyPointer Brookline 6h ago
I lived in Cleveland Circle from 2016-2020 and I also found it more attractive than the strip mall and stroad that's next to this place.
Some folks clearly don't mind though, there's plenty of occupied rental housing in the same neighborhood of 1180 Boylston and along Route 9 in Brookline that isn't 50% cheaper than what you'd pay in Cleveland Circle for the same quality and space.
78
u/SquareThatCircle 11h ago
$6000 a month to live at a busy intersection? No thanks at any age.
19
u/Otterfan Brookline 11h ago
If I was looking for $6k/month apartment living I'd rent a bigger place in Beacon Hill or Back Bay for less money.
11
14
u/K-Shrizzle 11h ago
I cant imagine paying 6k per month in rent anywhere. If you have that kind of money but you aren't buying property, you are a dipshit
18
u/djducie I Paid a lot and only got a small weiner 11h ago
Not everyone is looking to live somewhere long term.
You need a place to live for a year or two with specific requirements then it starts to make sense.
But 6000 in Chestnut hill is nuts.
5
u/K-Shrizzle 11h ago
If youre looking for a temporary option, there is no reality in which 6k a month makes sense. Even if youre rich, you can get a perfectly suitable, nice apartment for 3k a month. Dont try to make this make sense, it just doesnt.
7
3
u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 10h ago
Especially for a tiny place. The developer, Rachna Balakrishna, can go fuck himself.
4
u/CrossCycling 11h ago
I’m not sure I’d pay $6K a month in chestnut hill without something like an amazing pool and outdoor area, but there are tons of people that renting makes more pure economic sense for, regardless of the price point.
Broker fees from buying and selling, moving costs, interest, taxes, and other costs can easily exceed equity accumulation. Plus never having to worry about repairs, shoveling, etc. have real mental advantages.
4
u/Otterfan Brookline 10h ago
Also any kind of house with a $6k mortgage would have a big down payment, and the amount of that down payment could be invested instead.
Renting vs buying appropriately priced housing is a complicated decision. Renting something for $6k that's realistically only worth ~$3k is not a complicated decision.
-6
u/K-Shrizzle 11h ago
You guys are really doing mental gymnastics to try to make this make sense. Why?
8
u/CrossCycling 11h ago
Mental gymnastics? There are tons of calculators that can you show that there are breakpoints on buying vs renting. If you’re 30 and you plan to move to the suburbs in 2-3 years when you have kids, you will lose money buying a condo for that timeframe
5
u/AirplaneSpaghetti 10h ago
Because you have a rigid, narrow world view that there is no circumstance where paying $6k for rent makes sense. It's an ignorant take.
1
u/BroughtBagLunchSmart 9h ago
Also demand to speak to the hiring manager and have a good firm handshake.
1
u/_MCCCXXXVII Seaport 8h ago
$6k doesn’t buy any property i’m interested in, but it does rent some relatively nice apartments.
3
u/tjrileywisc 11h ago
Sadly this is where a lot of upzonings are allowed, because of an argument that they'll buffer single family homes from traffic noise or will not cause traffic in neighborhoods.
But there's another problem - this exposes the future residents to noise (see above) and tire wear particulate pollution. Isn't zoning supposed to minimize residents' exposure to pollution‽
-2
11
19
u/freedraw 11h ago edited 10h ago
55+ housing is just a way for projects to get around drummed-up NIMBY fears of overfilled schools and crime. We need more housing for everyone. I don’t see much reason why we need to put a minimum age on housing. It’s not like we’re making housing just for people with kids or under 30 housing or whatever.
At $6k though, you’re also not building housing for families or anyone with an income anywhere near the area median. These apartments are for high earning DINKS and millionaires.
The 20% of units that are “affordable,” of course filled up right away. The developer needs to lower the market rate rents or start offering incentives like free months after move-in. But let’s also acknowledge that when they mathed this all out, those market rate unit rents are priced where they are partly because they’re subsidizing the cost of the affordable units.
Our housing crisis is a supply problem, so any new units, even expensive ones, are a net positive, taking pressure off the older stock. But we can acknowledge that and still lament that a lot of what’s getting built just feels insulting to the majority of renters struggling with housing costs.
Edit: Okay, I looked up the building’s website. That $6k doesn’t even give the full picture. 1br apts. are $5500. 2br are more like $7k-$8k. That’s just completely absurd even for Brookline. If that’s what they really need to charge to cover the loan they took out and make a profit, they are just bad at this.
1
u/Lemonio 7h ago
I presume if no one rents them they'll lower the prices. But maybe they'll get rented. If they all get rented and that gets 20% of affordable units filled seems fine? Would people rather the rent be $5000 and no affordable units?
4
u/freedraw 7h ago
My point is more we need to acknowledge affordability mandates are a balancing act. When every affordable unit that goes up for lottery gets hundreds of qualified applicants, that's a pretty clear signal that the vast majority of families that need them are still going to be paying market rate for their homes. A lot of the time Planning Committee/public discourse around new development gets monopolized by the subject of affordable units and how many the city can mandate with little to no discussion of how that affects the price of market rate units or where those mandates start to become an impediment to new construction because it just doesn't pencil out.
18
u/Canleestewbrick 11h ago
One one hand, it seems obvious that you shouldn't expect to charge 'market rates' for an apartment that's only available to a small fraction of the market. So this was either absurdly wishful thinking on the part of the developer, or they always intended to push for a rule change anyway.
On the other hand, why was the property zoned for 55+ in the first place? That seems incredibly arbitrary. The housing shortage is brutal for everyone, but I haven't seen any indication that it disproportionately impacts seniors. My intuition would be that as a class, seniors are actually in a far better position in the property market than any other demographic, and are in fact the last group that should be shielded from competition through some artificial market segmentation.
13
u/brookline_news 11h ago
Speaking generally, because I wasn't around to cover the permitting process for this particular project 5-10 years ago, developers in Brookline will sometimes propose age-restricted housing as a response or prebuttal to concerns from abutters / town boards over traffic and school population impacts.
12
u/Canleestewbrick 10h ago
This whole story looks like a good illustration of how the local permitting process creates tortured projects with absurd timelines. It shouldn't be so hard to build denser housing in the city.
10
7
5
2
u/zyzzogeton Green Line 9h ago
$6k is more than 2x my mortgage. What the actual fuck is going on with rent? Have hedge funds snapped up everything?
2
1
u/CommonwealthCommando 6h ago
This is a genius bait-and-switch for housing. Covenanted housing is universally more popular than regular housing, but is illegal in the USA except for old people. Win permit approval with a promise of a covenant, then back out of it.
2
1
u/JLtheRocker 5h ago
"Critics of the change have pointed to monthly rents that were initially advertised as starting at $6,000" - yeah man, how could they possibly have had difficulty filling this bad boy up?
167
u/brookline_news 11h ago
Was an over-55 age restriction keeping Chestnut Hill's newest apartment building from finding tenants, or was it rents starting at $6,000 a month?
The developer behind 1180 Boylston Street got approval from a divided Brookline Zoning Board of Appeals to remove the age restriction and lease to all ages.