YIMBYs in Newton co-opted by developers?

There's an article in Commonwealth magazine that's worth reading to understand some of the forces at work trying to promote affordable housing. Members of the YIMBY movement (Yes In My Back Yard) among other things are demanding local governments remove restrictions on building apartment buildings and other "dense" housing in areas where it doesn't exist now, such as in certain neighborhoods in Boston as well as Newton and other nearby suburbs of eastern Massachusetts.

The idea is, if a massive amount of new housing hits the market, prices will come down and young people and others will have more housing options close by to where they want to live and work (preferably using public transport and other shared transportation resources). The movement has also taken off in Washington D.C., San Francisco, and other space-constrained areas where a lot of young professionals want to live.

The idea of making more affordable housing is admirable, but there's a big problem. From the Commonwealth article:

A coalition of low-income tenant groups says unbridled growth only promises to worsen the affordable housing crisis in Boston and make for more losers at the bottom of the economic ladder. The YIMBY effort “often finds ways to make it easier for developers to build, and that often leads to housing that people can’t afford,” said Darnell Johnson, coordinator for the Boston chapter of Right to the City, a national alliance advocating for low-income tenants.

He's right. Developers want free reign to maximize profits, and they are leveraging the YIMBY movement, sympathetic politicians, and the local media and business communities to get their way. The figures in that article show that 20% of permitted construction in Boston since 2011 has been set aside for affordable housing, another ~22% for middle income people (up to $125k/household income) which means all of the rest is "market rate"/luxury.

In Newton, the numbers are far worse, and its exacerbated by the relentless teardown phenomenon that removes relatively affordable units from the marketplace -- the types of places that young people, new families, and seniors could live. This has translated to an onslaught of luxury/"market rate" condos and multimillion dollar single family homes where modest houses or apartments once stood. What little affordable housing is being made available is utterly insufficient for the need, and it turns into a convenient negotiation point for other developer giveaways.

YIMBY proponents in the article are sensitive to the criticism that they are "mindless shills" for developers. I can't blame them for wanting to find a solution to the affordable housing problem in the Boston area. I do, however, disagree with the way they are going about doing it, which includes the demand that developers be given free reign to build high-density, market rate/luxury housing and often attacking anyone who questions such plans. Follow the #newtonma Twitter hashtag and you will see this attitude in action.

I am also very disappointed in how the administration of Mayor Ruth Fuller and the previous Warren administration have tried to ram through a "vision" that lets developers maximize profits at the expense of ordinary people in Newton. We are now witnessing the impact--large luxury condo buildings planned along Washington Street, at the Riverside T stop, and elsewhere, while McMansions go up in once-modest neighborhoods in Auburndale, West Newton, Newtonville, Newton Corner, and Nonantum. I've observed that developers in the north side of Newton who are unable to build by right almost always get what they want when they go to the city to ask for a break.

As for Fuller's "Washington Street Corridor" plan, here's one of the proposed building scenarios:

I don't believe the city was serious throwing this out there, and many of the notes express similar skepticism. Rather, this is an attempt to get residents to accept something less outrageous put out by city planners and developers -- say, a five story "market rate" development instead of 12 stories.

I am not the only one who is skeptical of how this is being carried out. The residents of Newtonville have been highly critical of the city's support for the Korff family and other development partners over the past 5 years. Here's an excerpt from one letter to the local paper from 2016:

Like many residents of Newtonville, the looming Korff development makes me very uncomfortable.

The 20 existing affordable residential units would be replaced by 171 units, 85 percent of which, by implication, would be unaffordable. The existing residential tenants would be forced out. A sizeable number of long-term and well-loved local businesses would be forced out, and they will not be able to return either. What good does this do for Newtonville?

A few weeks ago the TAB had a delightful article about the mother and daughter team of Jill and Jackie who run the The Paint Bar on the northeast block of the intersection of Washington and Walnut. I bet Jill and Jackie are counting their lucky stars that they aren’t located on the northwest block, soon to be the Korff block, or they would be spending their time now looking for somewhere affordable to relocate.

At the end of this week’s article on the Orr block plan, Mr. Korff’s attorney Steve Buchbinder was quoted as saying that while “not everyone’s going to be happy” about this project, ”...others see this as something, frankly, that’s exciting.” I wonder who those people are? Korff and his team, looking forward to the profit on investment that they hope will be coming their way? Tax assessors at City Hall? The residents of Newtonville? I don’t think a lot of them are looking forward to this project with excitement.

Of course, the developer knew a 15% affordable, six-story building wouldn't fly. In the "negotiations" that followed, most members of the Newton City Council gave the developer just what he wanted: A giant building with 75% market rate/luxury, and 25% reserved for everyone else. 

If big developments are built in Newton, those numbers should be flipped if there is to be any hope for low-income, young families, young professionals, seniors, and people with fixed incomes to move to Newton. It's the right thing to do, and I think it's something that most people in Newton --YIMBY and otherwise -- would agree with.

For this to happen, the developer land-grab for luxury/market rate housing needs to stop. Things will only get worse unless the people of Newton and their local representatives stand up to developers and find a way to make more affordable housing without turning Newton into a sea of McMansions and condos for the rich.

Rules for photography in public: The ACLU view

The ACLU has a great page that explains what's allowed and what's not when it comes to taking photos and video in public places. It's an issue that's very important to anyone living in a free and open society, but is especially important now, considering nearly every mobile phone sold today has a digital camera buit in, and most of them can also take video (even my low-tech Nokia handset that came for free with my AT&T prepaid plan can shoot video, albeit at 128x96). The result is anyone with such a phone can photography anything or video any event that they happen to witness, whether it's mundane or extraordinary. Not everyone appreciates being photographed/videoed, however, and there is always a worry about getting in some sort of trouble for taking photographs. What are our rights?

The ACLU page lays it out very clearly. In terms of photography:

• When in public spaces where you are lawfully present you have the right to photograph anything that is in plain view. That includes pictures of federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police. Such photography is a form of public oversight over the government and is important in a free society.

• When you are on private property, the property owner may set rules about the taking of photographs. If you disobey the property owner's rules, they can order you off their property (and have you arrested for trespassing if you do not comply).

• Police officers may not generally confiscate or demand to view your photographs or video without a warrant. If you are arrested, the contents of your phone may be scrutinized by the police, although their constitutional power to do so remains unsettled. In addition, it is possible that courts may approve the seizure of a camera in some circumstances if police have a reasonable, good-faith belief that it contains evidence of a crime by someone other than the police themselves (it is unsettled whether they still need a warrant to view them).

• Police may not delete your photographs or video under any circumstances.

And:

If you are stopped or detained for taking photographs:

• Always remain polite and never physically resist a police officer.

• If stopped for photography, the right question to ask is, "am I free to go?"
If the officer says no, then you are being detained, something that under the law an officer cannot do without reasonable suspicion that you have or are about to commit a crime or are in the process of doing so. Until you ask to leave, your being stopped is considered voluntary under the law and is legal.

• If you are detained, politely ask what crime you are suspected of committing, and remind the officer that taking photographs is your right under the First Amendment and does not constitute reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.

The underlined emphasis is mine. I was not aware of these issues until I read this page, and the phrase "Am I free to go?" is one worth remembering. Note also that not all officials (including police) understand the law when it comes to taking pictures in public places.

It's also worth remembering that public spaces include streets, parks, and many other exterior spaces. Further, these rights don't only apply to photographing police, but also anyone who happens to be in them. While someone may demand that you "put that camera down" or "stop taking pictures of me" and you are in a public space, you are legally within your rights to keep shooting -- although the polite thing to do may be different.

When it comes to shooting video, however, wiretapping laws have clouded the picture, and have been abused by police in Massachusetts and other states. Stories of people videoing an arrest on the street or even from their own property only to be arrested themselves have become disturbingly commonplace, and has a chilling effect on public behavior. There are signs the courts are coming around, but in the meantime reading the ACLU's take is helpful for understanding what's at stake:

With regards to videotaping, there is an important legal distinction between a visual photographic record (fully protected) and the audio portion of a videotape, which some states have tried to regulate under state wiretapping laws.

• Such laws are generally intended to accomplish the important privacy-protecting goal of prohibiting audio "bugging" of private conversations. However, in nearly all cases audio recording the police is legal.

• In states that allow recording with the consent of just one party to the conversation, you can tape your own interactions with officers without violating wiretap statutes (since you are one of the parties).

• In situations where you are an observer but not a part of the conversation, or in states where all parties to a conversation must consent to taping, the legality of taping will depend on whether the state's prohibition on taping applies only when there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. But that is the case in nearly all states, and no state court has held that police officers performing their job in public have a reasonable expectation. The state of Illinois makes the recording illegal regardless of whether there is an expectation of privacy, but the ACLU of Illinois is challenging that statute in court as a violation of the First Amendment.

As for the question of whether it's OK to photograph or video the TSA, the answer is yes you can, as long as you are not interfering with the screening process or taking photos of their baggage scanner screens. Read the ACLU page for more information.

You may also be interested in some other blogging I've done, including:

• iPod touch video recording: A lesson for broadcast news
• Another reason China should fear the 'Net: A million people with camera phones
• Watershed event: Amateur riot video circulates in China
• The coming Video 2.0 storm
• Meeting the Second Wave: How Technology, Demographics, and Usage Trends Will Drive the Next Generation of Media Evolution

Image: Protests in San Francisco, August 2011. Photo by flickr user tedeytan, posting here under the terms of the creative commons license used: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0). 

Music muffled in MMO games

Wired notes that in the virtual world of the online Star Wars games, you can do lots of activities possible in the real world except making your own music. The reason? Lawyers fear musicians who attempt to make music in the game's virtual cantina will play copyrighted tunes and open the way for music companies to file suit for violating publishing rights or demand a cut of the gaming revenue.

Spy Kids 3D and illegal P2P

Hollywood movie executives view illegal peer-to-peer networks as a grave threat to the film industry. The Motion Picture Association of America claims between 400,000 and 600,000 movies are illegally traded over p2p networks every day, and between one and four Internet users has downloaded a movie.

These are alarming statistics, but only indicate the extent of the problem, and its potential impact — they tell us nothing about how films are actually captured and placed on p2p networks. Occasionally, the press will mention furtive movie theater taping sessions with hand-held video recorders, but according to a January 2005 story in Wired Magazine, most film pirates are far more sophisticated in their methods and organization.

The Wired reporter, Jeff Howe, describes a subculture of tech-savvy gangs which strive to be the first to get pre-release copies of films on "topsites" — special high-level nodes on p2p networks — "where nearly all of the unlicensed music, movies, and videogames available on the Internet originate."

The gangs use a variety of methods to capture new films and prepare them for uploading to a topsite, says the Wired article. The key is digitizing analog film reels, as most films aren't pressed onto DVDs until months after the official release dates. Wired describes a pecking order of potential sources, the lowest being the pimply teen sneaking dad's camcorder into a test screening. The gangs prefer to make contacts with film workers and people with high-quality film-to-video equipment, or projectionists who have access to newly distributed film reels. Using a top-of-the line video camera and a direct audio patch from the projector, a film can be ripped to tape, and then turned into a compressed digital version ready for uploading to topsites. Wired cites the case of a projectionist in Maryland who proved himself to one gang by getting a copy of Spy Kids 3D: Game Over the day after it opened in theaters.

The codecs used for compression are important: an ideal movie will be small enough to be downloaded relatively quickly using a broadband connection, and can be burned to a CD-ROM, yet have enough quality to be enjoyed on a computer screen.

For participants, money is not the motivating factor, but rather a desire to be "first" in ripping a film and introducing it to a p2p network, as well as an interest in getting copies of other films over the network.