What would each of the Boston mayoral candidates do about how expensive it is to live in the city? - Boston Herald

Boston is expensive.

It’s not much of a controversial statement. The sky-high rents and housing prices have been well-documented for years, and their rises seem set to continue as the pandemic recedes.

And then there’s also the high day-to-day costs of everything from childcare to transportation to simply the price of a cheeseburger at local restaurants — which all are a source of concern for long-time residents and families.

So what to do about it?

The Herald asked each of the Boston mayoral candidate the open-ended question of how they would look to make the city more affordable for the average resident. Here’s what they focused on, with the candidates listed in alphabetical order.

John Barros

John Barros, the candidate who’s in the unique position of having been in charge of the city’s economic moves for the past seven years, laid out two main areas of focus: housing — particularly affordable housing — and getting residents good jobs.

“Housing continues to make up a disproportionate amount of people’s cost of living,” said Barros, a Dorchester resident who was the city’s former economic development chief under then-Mayor Martin Walsh. “And so if we address housing, we will then allow families to be able to handle other cost burdens.”

He stressed the need to increase the amount of affordable housing produced in Boston, including using city resources and property to do so.

The Walsh administration got some credit and took some flak for the double-edged sword of the growth boom, as jobs flooded in, but costs rose. Barros defended the administration’s approach, saying he is proud of the drops in the unemployment rate, and their move to a focus on building more affordable housing and workforce development, which he said have to continue.

“If we did not make the historic investments in affordable housing and housing production, in general, Boston would have been far more expensive of a city,” Barros said.

Andrea Campbell

Andrea Campbell, the district city councilor from Mattapan, said she’d be able to deliver quick changes as she said she’d look for a higher minimum wage, more workforce development and outside-the-box ways for people on fixed incomes to stay afloat.

“As things become more expensive, the question is: Are folks’ wages and benefits and opportunities to move up in their careers also happening at the same time?” Campbell said to the Herald. “And the short answer for so many residents is ‘no.'”

She talked about how she’s focused on homeowner initiatives like a program to get people in public housing the help to become homeowners, saying she’s “the only candidate in this race that has a specific record of accomplishment” in this area. She said she’d look to join with worker cooperatives and land trusts in an effort to create cheaper housing and she said she wants a minimum wage increase.

On the topic of seniors with fixed incomes, she said she’d look to create the options of “encore careers” in city government for retirees, as well as making the addition of accessory dwelling units easier.

Annissa Essaibi-George

Annissa Essaibi-George said the city needs to build more housing — but also needs to prove to people that staying in the pricey city is worth it.

“It is expensive to live here in the city of Boston,” the at-large city councilor from Dorchester told the Herald. “If we want you to live in the city of Boston, we need to make sure that you are getting bang for your buck.”

That means good job opportunities, educational resources and other services like a well-functioning transit system. For example, she said one tradeoff is that normally in the city you’re not going to have much of a backyard, so the city needs to have top-notch parks.

“It can only be a ‘public good’ if it’s good,” Essaibi-George said.

She said there needs to be more “family-sized” housing, affordable housing and ability for seniors to “downsize” as the city builds more housing across the board.

Kim Janey

Kim Janey, a Roxbury resident who’s the current acting mayor of the city of Boston, responded in a statement from her campaign.

“Mayor Janey isn’t just talking about making Boston more affordable for families — she is already doing it,” said Kirby Chandler, Janey’s campaign manager, in the statement.

The campaign did not mention any upcoming plans, or anything she’d do if she was elected — which would vest her with much more power than she currently has in the interim role. In the statement, they did point to multiple moves Janey has made in her three months as acting mayor, including putting $50 million of federal coronavirus relief aid into rental relief, tripled Boston’s first-time homeowners assistance up to $40,000, and launching a pilot program that gave 1,000 workers free Charlie Cards and Blue Bike passes.

“Mayor Janey is already taking action to make Boston more equitable and affordable for families, and she is just getting started,” Chandler said.

Jon Santiago

Jon Santiago, a state representative from the South End, said the city should bond out millions of dollars in financing and mortgage guarantees and to work with the state for more resources.

“We could do that in the city of Boston right now,” Santiago told the Herald about taking advantages of the city’s great bond rating to borrow significant dough for affordable housing. “We cannot wait.”

He said the city also should attempt to serve as a co-signer to help people get mortgages for houses. He stressed his three years on Beacon Hill as good experience for being able to work with the state to get more resources and create a regional approach to dealing with housing.

Santiago said there has to be a focus on the “intersectionality” on how these issues — housing, the well-documented racial wealth gap between Black and white Bostonians and other areas — relate to each other.

“It’s one defined by structural inequity,” Santiago said. The goal is “to create generational wealth — and housing is a key element of that. You can create wealth, you can empower residents.”

Michelle Wu

Michelle Wu said broad-based issues of affordability are the most frequent concern she hears from residents. She told the Herald that the city has to pull out all the stops, including looking at methods like rent control and putting big bucks toward child care.

“It’s clear that Boston is becoming unaffordable for everyone,” Wu, an at-large city councilor from Roslindale, told the Herald. “Families with children, especially families of color, are getting pushed out.”

She said there’s been too much separate planning for economic and population growth without focusing on how to deal with everything comes with it. She said she’d want to reimplement rent controls and look to make child care and transit cheaper or free through heavy investments from the city.

“You can’t on the one hand, be trying to bring Amazon HQ to Boston, without investing in the infrastructure to support any new jobs, or housing that people will need to live in or the transportation system to accommodate so many more people,” Wu said, referring to the city’s push several years ago to bring the new Amazon base here.

“We have to boost opportunity and access to jobs,” she said.

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