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2024: The year of nine-month apartment leases

As tourist-oriented as the Boston area is, it might not have enough hotel rooms to handle the crush of spectators, media types and various hangers on who would flood into town for the Olympics. Boston 2024 has an answer:

You know all those students who normally sublet their apartments in the summer? Boston 2024 would try to convince landlords to offer them only nine-month leases for 2023-2024 - which would leave the apartments clear for renting out to Olympics visitors at a premium that summer. But don't worry: The group is proposing some short-term rent control to ensure spectators aren't gouged, well, not too much.

Or as the Boston 2024 proposal puts it:

Due to the large student population in Boston, the city experiences a significant decrease in full-time residents during the summer months. In addition to those students who live in on-campus dormitory units, approximately 100,000 students live offcampus in privately-owned, rental apartments throughout the city. In line with the academic calendar, the majority of Boston apartment leases are one-year in duration with a lease commencement date of September 1. As a result, students who vacate the city during their summer break opt to sublet their room or apartment to other tenants. This scenario presents a tremendous opportunity for spectator accommodations, offering places for visitors to stay in neighborhoods popular for students such as Allston/Brighton and Fenway, which fall within walking distance to the University Cluster [Harvard and MIT venues] and provide convenient access to public transit.

Using a third-party specialist to manage the operation and create a streamlined program for Boston-area landlords, leases signed for September 1 of the year preceding the Games could be executed as 9-month leases, as opposed to typical 12-month leases. Regulations would then be in place to support reasonable rates for spectator accommodation for the duration of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Transportation, Accommodation and Security proposal (16.3M PDF).

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Comments

But "Boston 2024 would try to convince landlords to off them" is a growing fear of mine and should be for everyone who rents in the area

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Heh, thanks - fixed.

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I was widely mocked in the Globe's comment section when I said landlords would take advantage of the games to kick out their tenants. It's not just just students; anyone who lives in a high-renter neighborhood is going to face temporary eviction because the game pose such a profit motive to crappy landlords. Good luck finding temps to work the games when you've kicked them all out of town.

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Oh, now I support the Olympics in Boston. I'm GONNA GET RICH.

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Some of the countries and sports subsidize house rentals for families of athletes and coaches - which means that this event will impact well outside Boston, too.

Any word on where martial arts and swimming will be held?

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Judo and taekwando would be at the South Boston convention center.

Aquatics would be in a new, temporary, facility built at Allston Landing - the old freight yard that Harvard owns. Marathon swimming would be in the Charles River (hope it doesn't rain a lot the week before) off Magazine Beach.

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Formerly known as Brighton Landing, which is the office, sports and hotel complex that New Balance is building in Brighton.

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So its OK for landlords to gouge people who live in Boston, but its not OK for landlords to gouge the rich people who will be flying in to watch the Olympics? Yet another example of the Olympics benefiting the rich and screwing everyone else over.

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hey adam, whats it like to have totally converted your life into anti-Olympics ranting?

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But if it annoys you:

Olympics-free Universal Hub.

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that to be a Rick Roll.

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I'm to lazy to comb through all of the proposals. Thank you for breaking things down into small manageable chunks for us.

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Agreed. It's all great bar fodder for kids who think the olympics is the greatest thing ever and they can't wait for it. It also keeps my blood pressure up.

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Don't forget the Olympics-only Universal Hub!

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Bookmark changed!

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Shirley Leung, is that you?

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My favorite UHub post EVAH!!

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Turns our everyone in the city is going to be pretty heavily affected for the next 2 years (if we're lucky). Everything you thought was important in the city has now been placed on hold so that leaders, citizen groups, and other organizations MUST focus on Olympics issues (pro or con).

Why bother holding meetings about buildings and permits for places that might be torn down to make room for the Olympics? Guess we should slow things down until 2025.

Why bother with master planning exercises when everything will change based on Olympic building? Wait until 2025.

Why bother with police department issues when we need to figure out security and surveillance for a mega-event? Plus. by then we'll have all this shiny new equipment to solve all our problems.

Why fix the pothole on your street when the "promise" of Olympic $ coming in means we can wait to spend that next year? Surely your suspension can hold out another year, or two, or there...

Why build a complete street when you're going to have to claw back lanes to shuttle the IOC around? Let's just restripe as it was, and worry about pedestrians, bikes, and transit in 2025.

To your point, the Olympic distraction and destruction has already begun. UHub is just the beginning.

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Turns our everyone in the city is going to be pretty heavily affected for the next 2 years (if we're lucky). Everything you thought was important in the city has now been placed on hold so that leaders, citizen groups, and other organizations MUST focus on Olympics issues (pro or con).

This is one of my other complaints. Seems like everything has gone out the window because of Olympic planning. And we're 9 years away. Imagine what it will be like once we DO get the bid in 2017.

Our priorities are going to shift for the next 9 years toward the Olympics while we have other pressing needs that need our attention. Again, our priorities are messed up with this.

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My company leases for 7-10 years at a time and we will probably move again before too long. This will certainly impact where we are likely to end up if we want to be able to be open and get most of our people in during all the pre-games disruptions.

So this is already starting to effect planning. I wouldn't be surprised if the specter of the Olympics depresses office lease prices in high disruption zones.

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What's it like to read a thread that you can just as easily not read? Your complaint is bogus and smells like stale fish (pun intended).

Adam is providing detailed information about how Olympic Inc wants to occupy our city during the periodic bowel movement of global cash. The Olympic Inc folks would inundate the public with information knowing that overwhelming people with information is a good tactic for 1) pretending to provide information while 2) assuring the information will be seen as a flood and so will not be closely examined.

A site such as Universal Hub is helping to parse the information into its components and details. As the saying goes, "The devil is in the details." Olympic Inc does not want the host (which is also the term identifying the object of a parasite's affection) to see those details and so dump so much information that the details are seen as overwhelming.

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"students who vacate the city during their summer break opt to sublet their room or apartment to other tenants."

Setting aside the issue of students who _do_ stay all year and, like, work, or something, what about these "other tenants" who will now be displaced? They just conveniently disappear?

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How many of these Olympic plans depend on [commuters/homeless people/residents/traffic/problems] "conveniently disappearing" in time for the party?

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where those Iraq War planners have gone...

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So... in their statement they don't say that thousands of rental units sit empty every summer. They admit that they are rented out to subletters. So they are indeed inhabited. Not available for Olympics use.

And anyone who actually works on a college campus will tell you that most dorms are either occupied with summer students, conference attendees (another zero-sum "gain" of the Olympics, and another example of existing economic activity that will be supplanted, not added to, by the Olympics), or are being rehabbed for the actual students' return in September.

The fairy tale world that the Boston2024 group lives in must be an amazing place.

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Summer orientation that year is going to be a clusterfuck. And yep, you're right. I know BU hosts a bunch of various summer programs (with housing), Northeastern doesn't shut down for the summer due to co-op, and I'm sure Harvard/MIT have researchers and students staying over the summer too. It obviously does usually get quieter in the summer but it's not like this city becomes a ghost town.

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Rent controls.

"Regulations would then be in place to support reasonable rates for spectator accommodation for the duration of the Olympic and Paralympic Games."

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There's nothing saying they will enforce this. Nothing. If regulations worked, we wouldn't have 12 college kids living in a 2 bedroom dump. ISD will far too busy with other stuff to worry about enforcing this crap.

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Boston defines "reasonable" as 1800 a month for a shitty one bedroom.

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... as the price to which a willing, uncoerced buyer and a willing, uncoerced seller would agree in an arms-length transaction.

How would you define it?

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A race to the top in prices simultaneous with a race to the bottom in quality and quantity is typically called gouging. Real estate in Boston is on par with the way shady people sell bottled water at $12 a gallon after a natural disaster. What are you going to do? Not drink?

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Considering we're talking about the area around "Brighton Yards" - we're talking about more than Boston -- Cambridge, Watertown, Newton and Brookline all have college rentals to varying degrees. I think rent control is one of those things that has to go through the State legislature not city halls -- at least they had to in order to get rid of it, so presumably it also works in reverse.

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the people who do need to be here year-round? And what are they going to do about furniture in all of these apartments?

Maybe the mayor can sign an agreement that says any renter who signs one of these leases forfeits to the IOC all rights to any furnishings and home electronics in the unit from the week before until the week after the Olympics.

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most apartments were rented as "furnished" to spectators. Furnished means more $$$$$.

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... and less hassle. Put your valuables in a storage locker, rent the place out, and spend August in New Hampshire, or Maine. I expect every family camp in New England to be at capacity.

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A lease. The whole point is the units would be empty. Are the landlords providing furnishings in every unit?

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...but my family can't afford to just not work for a month.

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Folks, HOW LONG have been I saying this would happen... and it appears it is starting.

Outside of the tax payers paying for this boondoggle, this has been my biggest, and largest complaint about this whole thing. And there's little the USOC, IOC, and Mahty can do about it since it's all private entities.

Boston 2024 - A homeless problem like you haven't seen before... I feel sorry for students or anyone trying to relocation to Boston between Spring and Fall 2024.

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Using a third-party specialist to manage the operation and create a streamlined program for Boston-area landlords, leases signed for September 1 of the year preceding the Games could be executed as 9-month leases, as opposed to typical 12-month leases.

"Third Party Specialist" = "Craigslist"

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More like:

"Third Party Specialist" = "AirBNB"

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I have been arguing that we need a new version of rent control for the people who live permanently in the city. So glad that summer tourists will finally get it :/

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The city will create a new online landlord registration system for summergame sublets. It will only work in Internet Explorer 5, or Netscape.

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Is each of these units going to be furnished with rented furniture? If they really are talking about 9 month leases, and not organized subletting, then it seems that they would have a lot of empty apartments for 3 months that would need beds, sheets, toiletries, etc. This kind of operation seems unrealistic, which is in line with other aspects of the bid.

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How heavily do the Olympics rely on volunteers? I know that they are integral to the other really big sporting events we have here, like the Head of the Charles and the Marathon. If there is nowhere for college students to live, then they are going to be very shorthanded. (As will many restaurants, bars and retail businesses that rely on that seasonal labor.)

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I don't know exactly what it'd have to do to create workable regulations, but if the city was so inclined it shouldn't be too hard to let landlords issue nine-month leases to students without screwing over real people. Something like a regulation guaranteeing anyone renewing a lease in 2023 or 2024 has the first option to sign for a year with some anti-gouging measures included. That way any apartment that would be turning over anyway could be signed for nine-months. Everyone else can get a year by right and maybe even cash in with a two week sublet.

I'm sure there'd be complications, but it's feasible. Everyone's worst nightmares are far from inevitable.

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Grad students work 12 months a year, and many students work their coop jobs or just their summer jobs while staying in the city.

No reason to selectively screw over some people versus others on the basis of occupation.

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I know how the summer gig works.

Point taken, but my choice of phrase doesn't change my conclusion. It's possible to institute a system that would offer protections where protections are needed.

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I can't speak for all of them but I know Northeastern does not leave all its dorms open during the summer, and could probably handle the additional students living off campus. From my relatively recent experience most students living off campus during the summer do so specifically because they have the 12-month lease anyway, not because there's a space issue on campus. And if Northeastern can handle it the other schools should be able to as well since a smaller portion of their student bodies generally stay for the summer.

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Except haven't the Olympics people already given those dorm beds away to be used by the media?

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while that might work for undergrad or even some graduate students, a PhD student and his/her significant other/spouse and their pets/children might be quite inconvenienced by vacating their apartment, putting most of their belongings in storage, temporarily rehoming pets, and moving into a dorm room with side-by-side twin beds for three months where they have to share a bathroom with 20 other people.

Even if they put the couples/families in small suites/apartments as best as possible, it would still be a ridiculous life disruption.

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It's ten years away. Most of you will live wherever you came from by then.

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Even if that were true, which is doubtful, there will still be people renting, and those people still have rights.

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Here's reality: students can decide not to move out when the lease is up. The landlord would have to pay to evict them and it would take six months.

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U-Hauls from Michigan to the Carolinas will be sold out for the mother of all Moving Days.

Seriously, this is an insane idea.

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