The council voted unanimously to pass the second reading of a Gateway Neighborhood Overlay District (GNOD) along stretches of Commerce Way and Portsmouth Boulevard for parcels that are now zoned office-research, according to city Planning Manager Peter Stith.
I made a comment that residents “don’t want” new high-density housing on Facebook, and others immediately chimed in to say that they DO want it. Rather than get into it on Facebook I thought I’d take a moment to explain why I think the way I do.
My wife and I have 5 boys between us, two of which would probably LOVE to purchase a house in Portsmouth. Obviously, we would love that too. But they can’t afford it, and that sucks. We share the common WISH that prices in the area were lower. Although I share the goal, my problem is that I don’t think it can be achieved, and efforts to achieve it will only have negative consequences for our city. Here are a couple of thoughts:
Most young people I know want to purchase a single-family house in a neighborhood with a yard, NOT a unit in a high-density building. One of my sons lives in a condo in Colorado; he and his wife can’t wait to own their own home. That kind of living is a compromise, not a dream come true. High density housing is simply not comparable to being able to mow your own lawn. Building more of these units in Portsmouth won’t make dreams come true, unfortunately. All it will do is set up more people to watch the single-family market with envy. And that raises prices, not lowers them. Condos are only preferred by retired folks, generally.
The demand for Portsmouth is so great, no amount of new housing will bring prices down… it will only increase the demand in the same way that the massive tunnel project under Boston didn’t reduce traffic backups as it promised to do– it only achieved the capacity for twice as many cars to be backed up as compared with before.
The demand for Portsmouth is probably insatiable.
Portsmouth recently voted to protect the “100-acre woods” behind Elwyn Park. Such a vote makes people feel good, but doesn’t help the housing situation any. Elwyn Park is in many ways the American dream as far as neighborhoods go. I feel grateful beyond words to live there.
Even if the entire 100-acre woods were developed in the style of Elwyn Park 2 you might be able to add 600- 700 new houses. Frankly, such a development would probably be awesome and 600 new families might have their dreams come true. But I can almost guarantee you that the price of homes in the original Elwyn Park and the rest of the city would not budge downward as a result. More likely such a development would cause surrounding prices to go up.
Reading MA: A Cautionary Tale
If you want to see what will happen if development is encouraged, simply go visit Reading MA. When I lived there 30 years ago, the whole town was EXACTLY like Elwyn Park. Cute little houses, flags on the doors, kids running around, the works. But then Reading became “hot” and demand went up. “Reading is becoming unaffordable” screeched the concerned. Zoning laws were changed and over the years, single family homes have been purchased by developers and knocked over, replaced by duplexes and tris. We see that same trend here. The downtown was redeveloped with high density housing. Projects went up everywhere. What is the result today? Prices are still not affordable, they are as much as double as compared with our crazy market, and the town is now an overcrowded, traffic-laden, chaotic mess. I would not want to live there. You cannot get from one side of town to another in less than 20 minutes, where it might have taken 5 minutes previously. It seems every square inch was developed, in the name of affordability. The grocery stores are crowded, the streets are crowded, parking lots are crowded, the commuter rail is crowded. The high school had to be rebuilt because it was too small, and then they built a skating rink, then a new Y, etc, etc. You can guess what happened to property taxes. I would hate to see the same thing happen to Portsmouth.
Portsmouth is AWESOME the way it is. I would hate to see it follow the path of Reading MA, and become overdeveloped and frustrating. If you truly want to see prices in Portsmouth go down, the ONLY way to achieve it is to help make the surrounding regions more attractive, and encourage development elsewhere. York County is enormous, and much of undeveloped, for example.
The Portsmouth City Council cannot solve the problem of affordable housing, and trying to do so will only hurt the city in the long run.
