Sean George loves a good three-decker. In fact, he and his business partner, Darren Maguire, are so enamored of the signature Dorchester housing stock that they have built one on Meetinghouse Hill, with another under construction on Morton Street.

George, who emigrated to Boston from Ireland in 2015, has become a vocal proponent of using the three-decker as one means to address the city’s shortage of affordable housing.

“Three-deckers are great from a builder and construction perspective,” said the Jones Hill resident who spoke to The Reporter outside of the house that he and Maguire are wrapping up on Morton Street. “You can build a solid, attractive three-family for $1 million.”

Starting last year, George took to social media – mainly Twitter/X – to chronicle the journey of the Church Street project on Meetinghouse Hill, which filled a vacant lot that had housed a three-decker before it was “knocked down by the city in the 1990s,” according to George.

“We just tried to recreate what once sat on Church Street,” he said. “During design and presentations, we wanted to build a narrative that we could rebuild a part of Boston’s history – the three-decker. New housing doesn’t have to look like a spaceship from Interstellar.”

George, who grew up in Dublin and earned a degree in business before moving to Boston, likes to use the word “spaceships,” a term he has adopted after hearing Dorchester neighbors describe the boxy, steel-clad residential buildings that have proliferated in city neighborhoods in recent years.

He landed his first construction job while playing Gaelic Football in Moakley Park. It was there that he met Patrick Hayden, owner of Haycon, a contracting company based in the South End. After time spent “sweeping and picking up trash” on company sites, George wanted to get more experience. Soon, he discovered that by mastering Boston’s complicated permitting labyrinth, he could add real value to other developers’ plans.

He became – and still is – a fixture at 1010 Massachusetts Ave., the building that houses the city’s Inspectional Services Department (ISD) and offices where all permitting for building, zoning, and the like is approved. He started his own company, Dunmoe Consulting, to advise builders on their projects – and in so doing he saw that three-deckers could become his forte.

Now that he and Maguire have set out to build as many three-deckers as possible, they naturally started in Dorchester.

The city’s Mayor’s Office of Housing, it seems, agrees with them on the structure’s housing value. The Wu administration launched the ‘Future Decker’ program last year as an effort to adapt three-deckers for future building projects in the city.

“From a construction standpoint, not much can go wrong,” George says. “It’s three stories and so that cuts down on things like sprinklers and there’s no elevator. It’s hard for the construction process to get away from you. It’s all very predictable and you just have to be organized, and you can move fast.”

George’s pitch won over neighbors on Meetinghouse Hill. In addition to the three-decker there and the one in offing on Morton Street, he’s now going through a community vetting process to build another one on Bird Street in Uphams Corner.

“Coming into the neighborhood meeting [on the Hill], we were surprised when we got a good reception because we were doing a three-decker and many of the other projects they reviewed were bigger and described as being like a spaceship,” George said. “They like the three-decker; they want something that fits in.”

Jennifer Johnson, of Meetinghouse Hill Civic, was president of the organization at that time, and is now vice president. She said all the members liked his project.

Above, the three-decker built by Sean George and his partners on Church Street in Dorchester. Seth Daniel photo

“I would say most of us at Meeting House Civic were surprised at the hoops he had to go through to build a three-decker on an empty lot in a neighborhood that is full of three-deckers,” she said. “I think this is one of the things where the zoning codes should be changed in these neighborhoods so three-deckers can be built as-of-right, with certain exceptions for green space related to flooding concerns…We were very happy for once to be able to say, ‘yes’ to a project that we felt really should be as-of-right.”

Johnson noted that permitting difficulties only raise developers’ costs, which they pass on to renters and prospective buyers and contribute to making housing unaffordable. “We have to find a way to get out of this doom loop,” she said.

George, of course, believes he has found it with the three-decker – provided the city can make some common-sense changes. He’s not shy about making his thoughts public on his social media feeds, and many of his followers chime in with similar positions.

“A lot of guys in the smaller space say, ‘I’m only doing 4 units, but I should instead find a site and go 30 units,’” George said. “It’s the same amount of time because of permitting and you get a bigger reward at the end with 10 times the units…From my perspective, if the city really wanted to hurry things up, they could make it easier to get going on a three-family that fits on the street. Make it quick to make it fit.”

Meanwhile, he and his partner are on the lookout for other sites where they can move fast, be honest with neighbors, and build three-deckers.

“I don’t pull the wool over anyone’s eyes,” he said. “I build three-deckers and what I say I’m going to do is what I end up doing…I’m not going in to try to shove 10 pounds of …. into a two-pound bag. I understand the frustration from a neighbor’s perspective. If the numbers don’t work and you went out and paid too much for it, that’s not your neighbor’s fault.”

A three-decker property under construction on Morton Street last month. Seth Daniel photo