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Globe article lets Desilets mislead public on property values

A facility that is too large, like the Wayside facility on Lockland Ave., or too many facilities in one area, such as in Framingham, can negatively affect property values.

In the Boston Globe article "Report tallies sharp growth in agencies hosted by town," reporter Lisa Kocian 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, most of the studies on this topic examine new affordable housing units built in blighted neighborhoods. Most reasonable people would realize that any new residential development in a blighted neighborhood would have a neutral or positive effect on property values there. The results of these studies are not applicable to social service programs moving into existing buildings in neighborhoods that are not blighted.

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 web page Effect of the social service industry on residential property values, 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 most 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.