In an otherwise excellent article on the growth of social services in Framingham, Lisa Kocian gave free rein to SMOC's Jerry Desilets to opine on how the massive growth of social services has had no effect on property values using flawed studies and rhetorical tricks. Our response (below) was ignored.
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By Lisa Kocian
The Boston Globe
January 15, 2006
The number of properties owned by social service agencies in Framingham has risen nearly tenfold, from 26 in 1990 to about 240 today, a draft report from a town committee has found.
''If those numbers are accurate, that certainly is major growth," said Bob Berman, chairman of the Payment in Lieu of Taxes Study Committee, which is looking into the impact of the agencies in town. ''And I think it speaks to why my committee was formed in the first place and why we need to take a look at the effect."
His committee accepted the report from a subcommittee that collected the data, but the full committee has not evaluated the numbers yet.
Even if the numbers aren't exact, Berman said, there is no question there has been major growth in service agencies in town.
The committee was formed last year after the growing number of social service programs -- whose clients include substance abusers, homeless people, and battered women -- sparked controversy.
A downtown shelter for the homeless -- a ''wet shelter" that will offer a bed even to those abusing drugs or alcohol -- has been criticized because its clients included sex offenders. Another battle broke out last year over a proposed residential program for recovering addicts and their families on Winter Street.
Critics argue that the town is providing more than its fair share of services compared with surrounding communities and that because some properties owned by the agencies are tax-exempt, Framingham taxpayers are essentially subsidizing the programs. The critics say they are worried that the programs could be bad for public safety and property values.
One of the issues the study committee is looking into is whether the agencies should be asked to make voluntary payments in lieu of taxes, which some other tax-exempt institutions, such as universities, make across the state.
Much of the subcommittee's report focuses on whether the programs have affected homeowners' property values. The group looked at changes in the assessed values of properties near such programs.
In some cases, such properties saw below-average increases in values in recent years, the report said.
Janet Del Prete, a lifelong Framingham resident, lives just outside downtown in one of the homes that the subcommittee found had grown in value at a rate below the town's average.
She said she attributes her home's below-average growth to its location, not necessarily to her proximity to a program.
''We're in the downtown area," she said. ''The south side has always been known as the down side, the down-scale" area of town.
Until recently, she said, the nearby house where a program is located hasn't been a problem, but now the exterior is deteriorating while the agency has been doing work on the interior.
''It's starting to look shabby," said Del Prete. ''It's going to make me look like I live in a slum."
Del Prete said she is also concerned about her overall tax bill, which she thinks is too high because of tax breaks given to the programs.
''I think it's time other towns start to take their fair share," she said. ''I think Framingham has supported the underdog for quite a few years."
The South Middlesex Opportunity Council, the largest social-service agency in town, owns 10 of the 36 social-service program sites studied in the report.
''Over the last dozen years or so, there have been a number of credible studies that show . . . that the siting of social-service programs have not had a negative impact on property values," said Jerry Desilets, director of planning for the regional council.
He referred a reporter to several studies that show that affordable housing and various types of group homes, including those for the mentally ill or people with developmental disabilities, do not hurt property values.
In Framingham, he said, most social-service programs blend in easily with their neighborhood and would be difficult to distinguish from any other home.
Berman, the committee chairman, said it's too soon to interpret what the numbers in the report mean.
''It certainly looks like there potentially might be some trends, but I haven't had an opportunity to dig deep into it yet."
In your article "Report tallies sharp growth in agencies hosted by town," you touched on the effect social service agencies can have on property values, then quoted SMOC's Jerry Desilets as saying "[o]ver the last dozen years or so, there have been a number of credible studies that show . . . that the siting of social-service programs have not had a negative impact on property values," and said he "referred a reporter to several studies that show that affordable housing and various types of group homes, including those for the mentally ill or people with developmental disabilities, do not hurt property values."
There are three problems with this assertion.
First is the easy way Mr. Desilets slides from saying "social-service programs have not had a negative impact" to discussing reports showing that AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND GROUP HOMES do not have an effect, hoping no one will notice. In fact, there are many types of social service programs other than group homes and affordable housing, and group homes and affordable housing are not necessarily social service programs.
Second, many of the studies we have seen on this topic examine new affordable housing units built in blighted neighborhoods. Most reasonable people would realize that any new development in a blighted neighborhood would have a neutral or positive effect on property values there.
Third, and most important, most studies we have seen on this topic are flawed. As an example, the CEO of a large social service agency sent us a study he said rebutted our assertion at a Board of Selectmen's meeting that these facilities could, in fact, have a negative impact on property values. The study, discussed in more detail on our Property Values web page, in fact showed the opposite! It was only through the author's interpretation that such a claim could have been made: the raw data showed a net negative impact on property values.
Worse, these studies do not, in general, consider concentration when examining property values. This is particularly important to a town like Framingham, which has several times more social service facilities per capita than other towns in the area. Another study we examine in the above web page, by George Galster, does take this into account. In his study, he found that communities could absorb a certain number of developments with neutral or even positive effects, but once the number of facilities passed a critical threshold, negative effects were seen.
He concluded that "assisted housing of various types had positive or insignificant effects on residential property values nearby in higher-value, less vulnerable neighborhoods, unless it exceeded thresholds of spatial concentration or facility scale [and] evinced more modest prospects for positive property value impacts in lower value, more vulnerable neighborhoods, and strength of frequently negative impacts was directly related to the concentration of sites and scale of the facilities."
In other words, a facility that is too large, like the Wayside facility on Lockland Ave., or too many facilities in one area, such as in Framingham, which has 7.2 state licensed residential facilities per 10,000 residents -- more than Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, or Lawrence -- can indeed negatively affect property values.
Again, this is just as you would expect. Communities are like ecosystems: they can take a certain amount of stress and adapt, sometimes even thriving. But often a stressed ecosystem can appear stable, yet be unable to take more stress. A small change in a stressed ecosystem can cause total collapse.
Here is the address where you can download a PDF:
http://www.culma.wayne.edu/pubs/galster/NAR_report.pdf
I hope you can use this information in a future article clarifying the subject.
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