Housing questions, honest answers

Because Allston-Brighton’s biggest housing problem is that there aren’t enough homes, and most new homes are built by private builders.

Allston is a neighborhood of renters: about 82 percent of households here rent. When more people want to live in a place than there are homes, renters compete for the homes that exist, and the people with the least money lose that competition. That shows up as rising rents, crowded apartments and neighbors forced to move.

Income-restricted housing is essential, and we support funding more of it. But public money alone can’t close a gap this large. Our research finds that Greater Boston needs about 470,000 new homes over the next ten years, including 110,000 in Boston and 14,500 in Allston-Brighton, to bring rents about 9 percent below where they are headed. Allowing private builders to add homes, under clear rules and at a cost renters can pay, is the only realistic way to reach that scale.

We’re optimists about Allston. Every generation here has built homes for the next one: the triple-deckers, courtyard apartments and homes above shops that we love today were once new construction. We want our generation to do the same.

Sources: AHF, A market-clearing housing strategy (2026); Boston Planning Department, Boston in Context: Neighborhoods (2025).

New homes usually rent at the top of the market because they’re new. Over time they become the mid-priced homes of the future, and in the meantime they take pressure off older apartments.

Nearly every building is most expensive when it’s new. The well-kept brick apartments on Commonwealth Avenue were the new construction of their day, and today they are some of the neighborhood’s most attainable homes. Economists call this process “filtering”: as buildings age, they tend to house people with progressively lower incomes.

The more important question is what happens if the new building isn’t built. The higher-earning households who would have rented it don’t disappear. They rent an older apartment instead, often outbidding a family or longtime tenant for it. New homes at the top of the market give those households somewhere to go other than your building.

Sources: Rosenthal, “Are Private Markets and Filtering a Viable Source of Low-Income Housing?” American Economic Review (2014); Mast, “The Effect of New Market-Rate Housing Construction on the Low-Income Housing Market,” Journal of Urban Economics (2023).

We should fund more income-restricted homes. But each one costs public money, and charging the cost to new buildings means fewer homes get built. Public funding and vouchers do the job better, and work best when there are enough homes.

Building new housing in Boston is expensive. Our research puts the full cost of a new apartment in a typical six-story building, before land, at about $520,000 for an average 820-square-foot home, and about $700,000 when today’s parking requirement applies. At those prices, a $25 million affordable housing fund pays for about 35 to 50 homes.

That’s why we want both: public dollars for families who need deep help, and rules that let privately financed homes be built for everyone else. Every household that finds a home in a new privately built building is one less household competing for the limited supply of subsidized and older homes.

Boston currently tries to get affordable homes by requiring new buildings of seven or more homes to rent 17 to 20 percent of them below market. That sounds free, but it isn’t. The discount has to be paid by the other tenants or by buildings that never get built. In our model, the requirement raises the rent a new building needs by about 11 percent. Studies of inclusionary zoning find it tends to raise prices and, in some places, slow construction. When the building doesn’t get built, neither do the affordable homes inside it.

So our plan exempts new homes in the Allston-Brighton overlay from that requirement and from negotiated side payments, and pays for deep affordability the way we pay for other public goods: from broad public funding and housing vouchers. Even with the City’s existing Chapter 121A tax treatment, each new home would still pay about $5,200 a year in property taxes, about $75 million a year from Allston-Brighton’s new homes.

Sources: AHF, A market-clearing housing strategy (2026); Hamilton, “Inclusionary Zoning and Housing Market Outcomes,” Cityscape (2021); Schuetz, Meltzer & Been, “Silver Bullet or Trojan Horse? The Effects of Inclusionary Zoning on Local Housing Markets in the United States,” Urban Studies (2011).

The best recent research finds the opposite: large new apartment buildings tend to lower rents nearby and reduce the risk that nearby renters are displaced.

It’s a reasonable worry. A shiny new building can feel like a signal that a neighborhood is changing. Economists have studied this carefully in the last few years, using data on rents and moves around thousands of new buildings.

• A study of large new apartment buildings in low-income neighborhoods across 11 U.S. cities found that rents in nearby older buildings fell by about 5 to 7 percent relative to comparable areas, and that more people moved in from low-income neighborhoods.
• Research in San Francisco found that new market-rate construction reduced the risk that nearby renters were displaced or evicted.
• In New York City, new high-rise buildings slightly lowered rents in their immediate surroundings.

What really drives displacement is the competition for too few homes. When there’s nowhere new for higher-earning newcomers to live, they bid for the homes our neighbors already rent.

We also support tenant protections and anti-displacement programs alongside new supply. More homes and stronger protections work best together.

Sources: Asquith, Mast & Reed, “Local Effects of Large New Apartment Buildings in Low-Income Areas,” Review of Economics and Statistics (2023); Pennington, “Does Building New Housing Cause Displacement? The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco” (working paper, 2021); Li, “Do New Housing Units in Your Backyard Raise Your Rents?” Journal of Economic Geography (2022).

Because Boston and the region still build far fewer homes than people need. Cranes in the sky don’t add up to enough homes.

New buildings are visible, so it can feel like a lot is happening. But the numbers tell a different story. Greater Boston permitted about 9,000 homes in 2024, down from about 13,700 in 2015, and the City of Boston about 2,000. Just keeping rents steady takes about 16,000 a year across the region, the Commonwealth’s own estimate. Bringing rents down takes about 47,000 a year for a decade, five times the recent pace.

Places that have allowed much more building show what’s possible. After Auckland, New Zealand, broadly upzoned residential land in 2016, home construction surged. In the U.S., markets that let housing supply respond to demand tend to see much smaller rent increases when their economies grow.

Allston-Brighton can’t solve the region’s shortage alone. That’s why our plan spreads the work across every Boston neighborhood and the whole metro area, including wealthier places that have built little.

Sources: AHF, A market-clearing housing strategy (2026); Greenaway-McGrevy & Phillips, “The Impact of Upzoning on Housing Construction in Auckland,” Journal of Urban Economics (2023); Glaeser & Gyourko, “The Economic Implications of Housing Supply,” Journal of Economic Perspectives (2018).

If Greater Boston builds 470,000 homes over ten years, we estimate rents would end up about 9 percent lower than on today’s path, or about $220 a month at Allston-Brighton’s median rent.

The best recent research finds that each 1 percent increase in a region’s housing stock lowers rents about half a percent. Our target is about 380,000 homes more than today’s pace would produce, about 18 percent of the region’s housing, so rents would end up about 9 percent lower in real terms. Across studies, the range is 5 to 11 percent. For Allston-Brighton’s roughly 29,600 renter households, the central estimate is about $2,600 a year each and $78 million a year in total.

We want to be straight about one limit. Builders keep building only while a new building can charge enough to cover its cost. That doesn’t mean new apartments have to rent for what older ones do. They will keep renting for more, as they do today. And because new supply lowers rents most in older buildings, new-building rents need to fall less than the average.

Today, a new six-story building in Allston-Brighton would need rents about 73 percent above what new apartments get, mostly because of parking requirements, below-market set-asides, wasteful building envelopes and slow approvals. Our zoning reforms, the City’s existing Chapter 121A tax treatment and a single-stair building code let four-story buildings pay at today’s rents, with room for those rents to fall. Once builders save by repeating approved designs, four-story buildings can keep building through a 12 percent fall in new-building rents, and six-story buildings through about 5 percent. That is why our plan is as much about the cost of building as about zoning.

The biggest relief goes to older, cheaper apartments, the kind most Allston-Brighton renters live in.

Sources: AHF, A market-clearing housing strategy (2026); Rodnyansky, Su & Horowitz, New Housing Slows Rent Growth Most for Older, More Affordable Units, Pew Charitable Trusts (2025).

Through “moving chains”: each new home starts a chain of moves that frees up older, cheaper homes, often in lower-income neighborhoods.

When a household moves into a new apartment, it leaves another home behind. Someone moves into that one and leaves a home behind too, and so on. Researchers have traced these chains using address records.

One U.S. study estimated that building 100 new market-rate homes opens up roughly 45 to 70 homes in below-median-income neighborhoods. A study in Helsinki found the same pattern: new market-rate homes quickly set off moves that reached lower-income areas.

In other words, a new building on Western Avenue can help a family on a side street in Brighton, even if that family never sets foot inside it.

Sources: Mast, “The Effect of New Market-Rate Housing Construction on the Low-Income Housing Market,” Journal of Urban Economics (2023); Bratu, Harjunen & Saarimaa, “City-Wide Effects of New Housing Supply: Evidence from Moving Chains,” Journal of Urban Economics (2023).

No. Today’s system rewards whoever can afford years of lawyers and negotiation. Clear rules let small owners and local builders compete, and our plan asks more of big institutions, not less.

Under Boston’s current process, almost any meaningful project needs case-by-case approvals. That favors large, well-financed players who can afford to wait and to negotiate. A small owner hoping to add a few apartments over a store often can’t.

Our model zoning would replace much of that bargaining with rules written in advance: if a building meets the published standards for height, design and use, it can be built, with a decision within 60 to 120 days and no negotiated side payments. Everyone plays by the same rules.

For universities and hospitals, our plan would raise expectations. It would require institutions such as Harvard, Boston University and Boston College to measure how many of their students and staff need housing and commit to plans that reduce pressure on the neighborhood’s rental market.

Sources: AHF, A market-clearing housing strategy (2026); AHF model legislation.

We’re not asking anyone to trust a slogan. We’re asking for fair rules that let more homes be built, plus public support for the neighbors who need it most.

A housing market is simply millions of households and builders making decisions. Boston’s problem isn’t that the market is too free. It’s that rules written decades ago make it very hard to add homes in the places people most want to live. Those rules have quietly protected the value of existing property, and renters have paid the price.

The goal is practical: homes that can actually get built and pay for themselves, so public money can go further for families who need deep help. We also support tenant protections, fair-housing enforcement and funding for income-restricted homes. Those aren’t in tension with building more. They work better when there’s enough housing to go around.

Sources: Glaeser & Gyourko, “The Economic Implications of Housing Supply,” Journal of Economic Perspectives (2018); AHF, What traditional design costs (2026).

Because it has the transit, the jobs nearby and the large underused sites. But our plan asks every Boston neighborhood, and the whole region, to do its part.

Allston-Brighton is home to large parcels such as Western Avenue, Beacon Park Yard and Allston Yards, plus main streets lined with one-story buildings and parking lots. Building homes there keeps most new growth off quiet residential side streets.

Our plan allocates a ten-year target of 110,000 new homes across all of Boston, including about 6,600 downtown and in Back Bay and Beacon Hill, 16,000 in Dorchester and 11,000 in South Boston and the Seaport. It also sets targets for the suburbs. Allston-Brighton’s share is 14,500.

Sources: AHF, A market-clearing housing strategy (2026)

Students crowd into two- and three-family houses largely because there aren’t enough apartments and dorms built for them. More homes, and more university housing, take that pressure off family housing.

Many longtime residents have watched triple-deckers become student rentals, sometimes poorly maintained by absentee landlords. That’s a real loss. It happens because when apartments are scarce, groups of students sharing rent can outbid a family for the same unit.

New apartment buildings near transit give students and young workers somewhere else to live. Our plan also asks universities to plan for and build housing for their own students, graduate students and staff, so the neighborhood’s family housing can go back to families.

Sources: AHF, A market-clearing housing strategy (2026)

Allston’s character was built by new construction, and much of it was dense, middle-class housing. We want new buildings that look like they belong, and our research shows that’s affordable.

The courtyard apartments, commercial blocks and triple-deckers that define Allston were the new, dense housing of their era. They were built quickly and efficiently for working families, and they’re beautiful.

Many neighbors dislike recent buildings, and we understand why. Our architecture program studies what makes the old buildings work, and we propose writing those features into clear, measurable design rules: brick or brick-like facing, deep-set windows, a clear base and a finished top, and front doors on the street. Our cost research finds the required features add about $2 to $7 per square foot to a six-story building, under 2 percent of construction cost, or roughly $20 to $70 a month on an average new apartment. The rules govern appearance only. They never reduce height or the number of homes, so good design becomes the default without costing the neighborhood housing.

Sources: AHF, A design standard for Allston (2026); AHF, What traditional design costs (2026); AHF, Allston’s urban heritage.

Ending parking requirements doesn’t ban parking. It lets builders decide, so renters who don’t drive aren’t forced to pay for spaces they don’t use.

A structured parking space in Boston costs about $34,000 to $59,000 to build above ground and $106,000 to $152,000 below. Allston-Brighton’s zoning requires two spaces for every home in buildings of ten or more. In our model of a typical six-story building, that requirement raises the rent the building needs by about $1,200 a month per apartment, whether or not the tenant owns a car. In practice it means almost nothing gets built without special relief.

Our plan would remove minimum parking requirements in Allston-Brighton’s housing overlay. Builders can still provide parking where residents and lenders want it, and must screen it from the street. Homes near the Green Line, bus routes and jobs let more households live well with one car or none, which means less traffic than if those same people lived farther out and drove in.

Sources: AHF, A market-clearing housing strategy (2026) (citing Cumming Group, Q4 2025).

Shops get squeezed when commercial space is scarce. New mixed-use buildings add storefronts and bring more customers within walking distance.

Allston’s local shops and restaurants are part of what makes it special. When a neighborhood adds no new commercial space, existing storefronts become more valuable, and longtime tenants can face steep rent increases when buildings change hands, as several Harvard Avenue businesses did this year.

Our plan allows homes above ground-floor shops on main streets. That adds new commercial space, and the people living upstairs become customers for the businesses below.

Sources: Boston.com, “3 longtime tenants to close or move after Alpha Management buys prominent Allston commercial building” (July 2026).

We’re an independent research group founded by Nick Pellow, a Boston lawyer trained in law, economics and public policy.

You can read more about our founder on our About page. Our work reflects our authors’ own views, not those of their employers.

We publish our assumptions, our sources and our caveats so anyone can check our work. If you think we’ve got something wrong, please tell us at npellow@allstonheritagefoundation.com.

Read the research, talk to your neighbors, and make your voice heard as the City rewrites Allston-Brighton’s zoning.

The City of Boston is preparing the Allston-Brighton Community Plan, the neighborhood’s first comprehensive rezoning in more than 30 years. Public comment matters. Attend meetings, submit comments and tell your city councilor what kind of neighborhood you want.

Share our FAQ and street concepts with neighbors, and get in touch if you’d like to help with research or outreach.

Sources: Boston Planning Department, Allston-Brighton Community Plan.