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Vassukhanni t1_ixjuk0c wrote

It's kinda hilarious how Boston is like perfectly positioned to be an incredibly fast growing city, but is just saying "no, let's get that deindustrialization thing going again"

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velkoz007 t1_ixkh0f1 wrote

Down in the South Shore, many towns water treatment plants can’t support existing housing let alone MORE housing. Until the infrastructure is upgraded our housing crisis won’t be addressable.

And people who already live here don’t want more people, our traffic already sucks…So why would selectmen rebuild 75 yr old water treatment plants when no one wants it?

It’s a chicken and egg scenario. We need more housing but don’t have enough sewer/water. See recent Summer droughts.

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Jish1202 t1_ixlsa6k wrote

Most of the south shore doesn't have sewer in the first place

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Distinct-Ad5751 t1_ixm61js wrote

My sister is a waste treatment operator on the South Shore and the Cape. The entire region needs upgrading.

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AllGrey_2000 t1_ixn9q3b wrote

It’s lack of vision and good leadership as a region. We need public transit improvements and increased infrastructure BEFORE we increase housing.

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Doctrina_Stabilitas t1_ixly5nj wrote

And we don’t really have the money to upgrade stuff, when the star is forced to send back tax surpluses because it rises faster than some predetermined maximum amount based on an expected increase in tax revenue we’ll wee out of luck

Nice for those of us who won the housing and work lottery I guess

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Master_Dogs t1_ixop77o wrote

In addition we can only raise property taxes by so much due to laws from the 80's like Prop 2.5 which limit residential property tax growth. So even if tomorrow a city like Somerville said "yeah so we're going to jack taxes up to fund major infrastructure investments"... They literally couldn't do that. It's definitely a contributing factor to how we're piece mealing infrastructure improvements like only doing 1 street per year, at a rate so slow by the time we've addressed every street in a given City we'll have to start over again.

Oh and even if say Somerville or Cambridge decided to fix things, that doesn't matter if towns like Lexington, Concord, etc are allowed to continue denying any new dense housing buildings. We need every City and Town within MA to step up it's game, otherwise things will continue to get worse. No one town can fix things.

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