In many parts of Beantown, real estate is booming. Despite that, many of Boston’s middle-class residents are finding it harder and harder to seek out affordable places to live, according to a recent Boston Globe article.

“Nobody has figured out how to build housing the middle class can afford,” said Barry Bluestone, a Northeastern University professor and academic studying the region’s housing market, in the Globe‘s article.  “We’ve got to come up with some new answers.”

Fall of the Single-Family Home

In 2005, nearly 20,000 housing units were permitted across Greater Boston, with the core of the city only permitting 5,000. More than 10 years later, the total number of permitted housing has dropped by nearly a third, but housing development within the city is now equal to that outside the city.

That shift has dramatically reduced the number of single-family homes according to Stockton Williams, head of the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center for Housing.

“All the new construction is in one piece of the market; the modestly priced, decent, single-family home has largely disappeared,” Williams said to the Globe.

Going Forward

Part of the change relates to past housing booms. In the 1980s, many suburbs experienced a similar change in the market, and towns such as Franklin and Easton were forced to re-do zoning laws in order to accommodate their large increases in population.

Further zoning changes could prove beneficial in today’s housing market. As the Greater Boston Housing Report Card explained last year, “inclusionary zoning,” or zoning that allows developers to construct more units of housing on a piece of land so long as they set aside affordable units, has been effective at increasing production while also creating affordable housing. Some have argued that by reforming those inclusionary zoning rules, the Boston area will be able to accommodate more affordable housing.