AFTER HEDGING on setting out long-term housing production goals during a press briefing earlier this week, the Wu administration offered stakeholders a first look at shorter-term housing targets days later.  

According to a draft strategy presented to housing partners on Thursday, the city will pull a number of levers, including accelerating affordable housing approvals through executive order and a still-in-process tax abatement plan, to produce about 13,000 new units over the course of Wu’s first term. 

The presentation, which marked the first time many stakeholders saw Wu-era housing projections, kicked off a process of soliciting feedback to inform and shape the final strategy, a housing spokesman said. A final strategy is expected to be released in late January or early February.

Wu’s predecessors regularly touted long-term housing projections, stretching well beyond their expected time in office. Mayor Tom Menino’s 2013 Housing Boston blueprint called for 30,000 units of new housing by 2020. Later, Marty Walsh’s citywide Imagine Boston 2030 plan proposed 53,000 new units of housing by 2030, a figure that was raised to 69,000 in 2018. Boston also remains part of a coalition of mayors committed to producing 185,000 units of housing by 2030.

Wu said on Monday that she is more focused on the process of overhauling city zoning and changing the way Boston does development than tying her administration to a number 10 or 15 years down the line. 

Between 2021 and 2025, the Wu administration projects that 8,300 new market-rate units will be permitted and 4,700 new income-restricted homes will be created through market activity and city resources. For comparison, between 2015 and 2019, Boston permitted over 20,000 units, including about 4,100 income restricted units.  

The preliminary strategy document lays out a grim vacancy rate in Boston, median rents of $2,800, and a median home sales price of $765,000. Half of all 1,000 executed evictions this year landed in Boston’s communities of color, the city reported.

Annual evictions will drop 20 percent over the window, the presentation says. Greening the affordable housing stock has been a front-and-center priority for Wu. By 2025, the preliminary plan is for 3,000 units of affordable housing to undergo major energy retrofits, 1,500 public housing units to be weatherized, insulated, and provided with heat pumps, and five public housing sites to be outfitted with solar panels. 

The presentation mostly did not distinguish between work to come and construction or upgrades already permitted or completed. About 1,000 units of income-restricted housing were built last year, according to the slide deck, and more than a 1,000 more are projected to be completed by the end of 2023. 

“It’s a good goal, and it’s good that they’ve set a goal,” said Marc Draisen, executive director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, who attended the presentation on Thursday. He said there’s clearer accountability for achieving the short-term goals the administration is proposing, though there is also value in the longer-term targets they are steering clear of. 

“I would say that there’s a utility to short goals because you really have to do it,” said Draisen. “You can’t have two or three bad years because that’s it. You’re holding your own feet to the fire more with a shorter goal. But the value of long-term goals is you get to plan over a long period of time, and you get to put policies in place you hope will endure.”

The Wu administration highlighted moves like updating its linkage policy to extract higher fees from commercial development and recently hiring an ombudsman for the Boston Planning and Development Agency, along with forthcoming projects like its new main streets-focused zoning update to boost production around village centers and proposed accessory dwelling unit zoning changes. The accessory unit proposal comes at the same time as Gov. Maura Healey pushes a new $4.1 billion bond bill that includes expansive as-of-right accessory dwelling unit zoning changes.

A big move on the housing incentive front may emerge next month in Wu’s 2024 State of the City speech, an event where mayors often look to roll out marquee initiatives. 

At a gathering of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce in September, the mayor said her administration was “strongly considering a time-limited tax incentive program for housing creation to sustain the momentum we need to see in our housing pipeline.” 

Boston is exploring a multi-year tax deal or abatement for certain new residential buildings, which was discussed at the Thursday briefing, to spur growth across market-rate and affordable housing sectors.

When asked about the tax abatement plan earlier in the week, planning chief Arthur Jemison demurred on further details, saying only that they are “working hard on that,” and “it’s a very high priority.”

Wu’s zoning and tax moves come at a precarious time for the city, which pulls in 72 percent of its revenue from property taxes. Fiscal watchdogs have sounded warnings about the impact of pandemic-driven office vacancies and the potential effect of Wu’s rent control proposal. 

“Over the past decade, new development, both business and residential, has been key to Boston’s fiscal health,” the business-funded Boston Municipal Research Bureau wrote in March. “Yet, the current increase in office vacancy rates, additional regulations on new development, and the prospect of rent stabilization could impact Boston’s primary revenue source – the property tax.”

New housing permits and starts have slowed significantly this year. The administration estimates that more than 20,000 units of housing are approved but stalled due to the painful economic environment.

Despite blowback from several fronts on Wu-backed policies to stabilize rents and raise the affordable housing requirements under its inclusionary development policy, Draisen said the steep housing slowdown is mostly the result of forces beyond mayoral policy. Interest rates have been murder on housing production, he noted, but a turn may be coming. 

The Federal Reserve decided to keep holding its key interest rate steady this week, and it is contemplating multiple cuts next year. 

“It looks like we’re maybe at the top and might start coming down,” Draisen said of the rates. “Production numbers go up when interest rates start going down, and a 1 percent change in interest rates has a bigger impact on housing production than any federal, state, or local policies could ever have.”

At the start of 2023, Wu delivered her first State of the City address, announcing her quest to reform Boston’s process for reviewing large development projects. “Weʼll simplify and accelerate timelines so that good projects get shovels in the ground faster,” she promised. 

She’ll take the stage again on January 9, with a year of zoning reform announcements at her back, a refined tax abatement plan in her pocket, and a creaking development ecosystem to navigate in the new year.