Left Center Left

Since I’m not a homeowner and since Boston seems to have rejected their property tax increase already, I haven’t been following the Community Preservation Act issue at all. But sco brings it up in the context of Watertown, noting,

The state gave over $30 million to 61 cities and towns in 2004. That amounts to around $4.85 for every man, woman and child in the Commonwealth. By my crude calculations, Watertown’s share of that is nearly $160,000. That’s money we’re spending to subsidize places like Cambridge, Nantucket and Cohasset and getting zilch in return.

sco’s complaint is less against the CPA, which is state law at this point, and more against the short-sightedness of a town not taking matching state funds. Indeed, if the town feels like it can raise its property taxes, it’s silly not to, which is why the wealthier towns have been the first to adopt CPA measures.

Call me Johnny-come-lately, but the legislation seems poorly conceived in the extreme. If you’re trying to increase affordable housing, you need to coerce, persuade or induce municipalities to open up housing restrictions. The CPA, however, requires only 10 percent expenditure on housing; the rest can go to open space, historical preservation and recreational areas. If on the other hand, these latter areas are important and you really don’t care that Hingham is spending very little on housing, why institute this odd property tax matching funding scheme? I’m reminded of the silly transportation tax credit that allows pre-tax expenditures for public transportation and for parking. (Presumably to discourage people from living in walking distance to work?) It’s policy at cross purposes, where competing players in a political conflict are able to bargain a stake in the legislation, thus canceling out any effective measures.

Commonwealth Magazine counters that such fears are unfounded:

From the start, the act had a built-in conflict. The law provides state matching funds to cities and towns that approve a property tax surcharge of up to 3 percent dedicated to spending in three areas: open space, affordable housing, and historic preservation. But, by definition, preserving open space removes land from the market, potentially making it harder to build housing. And it was no surprise that many towns jumped on the CPA bandwagon specifically to buy land and head off development. With communities that adopt the CPA mandated to spend at least 10 percent of the money in each of the three categories, the first round of funding saw towns approve millions of dollars to acquire and preserve open space, while setting aside just the bare minimum for affordable housing.

But data released in June by the Community Preservation Coalition, a statewide organization supported by advocacy groups for each of the law’s three funding areas, show that overall spending on housing is now almost equal to that spent on open space.

Of the $170 million appropriated since the act was approved, 38 percent has gone to open space acquisitions, while 35 percent has been earmarked for affordable housing. Historic preservation projects have received 19 percent of the funding. (The remaining 7 percent has gone to recreation projects, a category designed to allow spending on park improvements in communities where there is little remaining open space to buy.)

And that’s true. But I ran the numbers. A handful of communities do have a high commitment to affordable housing. On my chart, they’re the ones in olive or mint green; the lighter shades show moderate to middling commitment, and over half of the communities have negligible CPA investment in housing (though I should note that this represents budgeted projects only, and others will presumably follow). Take a look at the numbers and you see that Cambridge alone accounts for 58 percent of all state CPA moneys that were spent on affordable housing. Wealthy suburbs still are setting aside the bare minimum on housing, only the averages are working out higher because of a minority of communities.

What’s more, the figures count any investment in affordable housing, yet Commonwealth’s article points out that towns like Stow and Randolph are underwriting costs of existing housing stock rather than building or allowing building of additional housing. Which is great for those dwellers lucky enough to get a price break, but does absolutely nothing to solve a housing shortage that spans much of the eastern part of the State.