Salvatore’s Still In

Alder Colon is a responsible and intelligent advocate for The Hill and I bow to her experience and thoughtful regard for us who actually live here.

My issues in all of this remain the same. Yale does not need more room. So many good areas of town have been hopelessly ravaged. Medical offices do NOT create good full time jobs with benefits and UNION protection. Therefore, YNHH will once again be allowed to skirt acting as a responsible employer.

If history is any indication, the apartments he has proposed are ridiculously OVERPRICED and do not in any way serve the residents of the Hill. Rather, they will continue to create this residential segregation wherein only the wealthy need apply!!! I live in The Hill and I want to stay in The Hill. $2700.00 for a 2 bedroom apt. is absurd!!!

We are working class people here. Put aside your prejudices; Stop looking at us from the outside and claiming you have our best interest at heart!! We know what our best intersts are!! We know what is best for our families, our children and our community!!!

CT is captive of unions and because of that has the highest construction costs in the US. Nobody (except the government) will build a residential project that doesn't try to capture as much income as the market will yield to make up for extremely high construction costs. If you'd like to ask for something reasonable in return for a varience, ask away. If not, be prepared for a poorly designed, as-of-right project using antiquated zoning.

Adelaide, what is your preferred proposal and who will pay for it?

Points to consider:

-- No one is going to build manufacturing plants with union jobs in the city of New Haven. Anyone who wants to build a manufacturing plant can move it to the union-free southern states (or China), and all urban areas became economically unsupportable for manufacturing by the mid 20th century. Currently, downtowns employment (across the US) is dominated by "Eds and Meds," plus, in some places, tech and finance. You hate Yale and YNHH, which are our Eds and Meds.
-- Neither the state nor federal government is spending any substantial sum on housing for poor folks, so any housing has to earn a profit for the developer.
-- The parking lots on that site currently employ no one, and no poor families live on them. The problem is to find a fundable plan that is better than that.

Absent substantial governmental assistance, neither Salvatore or any other developer is going to be able to produce a project that will produce significant direct benefits for Hill residents. I am aware of no developer in Connecticut who is producing substantial amounts of housing that is affordable to low-income households without using low income housing tax credits, project-based Section 8 certificates, or other forms of public subsidies. I favor increasing these subsidies, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for this to happen. Similarly, employers who choose to locate next to major hospitals and medical schools tend to hire people with bachelor's or graduate degrees. I suspect that this project will have about the same impact on employment in the Hill as Science Park has had in Newhallville.

The city and developers should consult with Hill residents in determining what happens in the neighborhood. But ultimately, the BOA and the city need to make their decisions on what is best for the city as a whole.

Robn, (1) construction costs are higher in CT than most parts of the country, (2) most development in CT is single-family homes or other small-scale projects, and (3) such projects are typically non-union. A stick-built single family house built by non-unionized workers in CT is more expensive than single family houses in most of the country. In contrast, large projects are typically unionized and this contributes to their cost. But other factors such as antiquated and restrictive zoning laws and high land prices also play a role. If you believe the assessor's office, raw land near my house is worth $1 million per acre (I live nowhere near St. Ronan Street). You are not going to be to able to build affordable housing with such land prices, whether your workforce is unionized or not.

BRADLEY,

I'm sure you know this already but the unions are very fond of crowing about how they raise living standards for everyone. So no matter who's constructing what, the people making the most drive up construction costs everywhere locally.

Bradley, good points.

A wild guess about property values in New Haven: they are assessed at a much higher value than they are worth. We have 130,000 people living on 19 square miles and many of the most valuable plots of land can never be taxed. So lets make up the difference by exagerrating the value of land which is taxable and effectively pass the buck from Rich non-profit institutions to everyone else. #gscia

HewNaven, thanks and I largely agree with your point about assaessments. But I recently saw a listing for a vacant lot a couple of blocks from my home that had an asking price of about $1 million per acre. In any case, the assessments, whether or not based on the market, impact the rents that property owners have to charge if they do not want to lose money.

Robn, as I suspect you know, the construction market is segmented. For large projects, the unions largely set wages, whether or not an individual project is unionized. For small projects, notably new single family and most renab work, the unions play a much smaller role. In both cases, the impact of the unions depends on general economic conditions. I believe the unions play a larger role in setting wages now than they did at the bottom of the recession, when there was widespread unemployment in the trades.

Adelaide, I sympathize with your position. I grew up in a union family and my dad worked on a factory floor his entire adult life. Even though he did not graduate from college, he was able to provide a middle-class life for his family. Unfortunately this world is as long gone as the 10-cent sodas I used to buy from vending machines.

BRADLEY,

The link below has a graphic representation of our high home construction costs (from 2014). This is from NAHB data and shows that it's up to 50% more expensive to build a home here than in much of the country. And, for now, that's all I have to say regarding the fact of high labor costs in CT.

http://eyeonhousing.org/2015/09/sale-and-contract-prices-per-square-foot-in-2014/

@Robn: The highest construction costs in the US are in areas with highest barriers to development combined with the most restrictive labor environment. Those areas include California, New York, Massachusetts and Washington D.C. well farther ahead of Connecticut. CT is above average nationally, but not among the 'most'.

Also, the NAHB benchmarks you reference are presented in a $/sf basis. The problem with this is that the homes in the south are generally larger, which increases the denominator and dilutes the benchmark. Moreover it is not an apple to apple in terms of the assemblies that go into making the house either. Northeastern homes require frostwalls and furnaces for example, those may be absent from a southern house. In any event, not sure the NAHB data is an ironclad case against unionized labor.

@Estby, "Neither the state nor federal government is spending any substantial sum on housing for poor folks, so any housing has to earn a profit for the developer." Would argue that the state and federal government are spending substantial sums on housing, and the price / unit deployed is astronomical:
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/farnam_redevelopment_breaks_ground/

RNH,

The NAHB data excludes land cost and charts $/sf, which is a pefectly reasonable way to compare housing cost apples to apples. There is no dilution; its a linear scale.

If you want to make absolutist claims that other locations are profoundly more than here, please back them up with linked data or I can't take you seriously.