HOUSING
Massachusetts is facing an historic housing crunch. Explore its root causes and implications for shelter systems, economic development planning, and the state’s competitiveness pitch with CommonWealth Beacon reporting.
Local complexity stymies ADU push
The report argues the permitting gap doesn’t reflect a lack of homeowner interest, but rather a regulatory system that was never designed to handle an influx of development of the small housing units across 351 cities and towns with their own set of permitting rules.
One year in, backers of Massachusetts’s eviction sealing law say there is promise — and an awareness problem
The idea behind the law is to let tenants wipe the slate clean from certain evictions and not have those cases present obstacles to renting an apartment, securing a mortgage to buy a home, or finding employment.
For Mass. residents, housing is where affordability hits hardest
New poll finds housing prices eating household budgets, and homeownership feels out of reach.
Most low-income tenants have no lawyer in eviction cases. A state initiative is trying to change that.
“If you’re evicted from public housing, for all intents and purposes, a family will never have a chance to get back to it because the wait lists will be so long,” said Daniel Daley, a senior housing attorney at MetroWest Legal Services. The “double whammy,” he said – losing both housing and subsidy simultaneously – is what makes these cases so dire.
Worcester’s ‘A Better Life’ housing program helps break generational poverty by promoting self-sufficiency
Last month, Trump administration officials announced a long-awaited proposed rule that encourages, but does not require, all public housing authorities and private property owners who rent to people using a Section 8 housing voucher to implement a work requirement and time limits for non-disabled, non-elderly adults in federally-funded housing.
Climate reckoning: Mass. communities stare down the prospect — and complications — of a retreat from rising waters
Massachusetts is right now engaging in the most robust dialogue in state history around the concept of relocating people, homes, and communities away from places prone to flooding.
‘Blunt optimist’: Mass. insurance commissioner Michael Caljouw tries to manage sea change in the industry
Caljouw sat down to discuss how his office is navigating a changing landscape.
Dueling housing ballot measures collide with frustrated lawmakers
While rent control proponents acknowledged the need for more housing production, they argued that the state cannot build its way out of the crisis and that supply-oriented solutions like the starter home proposal are not sufficient on their own. Rezoning proponents, meanwhile, warned that if lawmakers did not enact the lot size change, voters may opt for price controls on rents they say would stifle the housing production market.
Competitiveness fears weave through budget hearings
“There is almost perfect correlation between expensive states and outmigration, and we are a very expensive state,” testified Eric Paley, Gov. Maura Healey’s secretary of economic development, at a budget hearing in in Barnstable.
Were MBTA Communities costs unfair, or a self-imposed expense?
The ongoing fight over the transit-centered housing law has played out in the middle of a serious housing crunch. The state has said 222,000 new homes need to be built by 2035 to meet pent up demand.
‘You want to put me back on the street?’: Advocates brace for deep cuts to ‘Housing First’ programs
“This program and dozens of others around the state may have to shrink or close — and some are already declining to accept new clients — because of a looming change from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that up-ends a two-decade-old approach to housing policy.”
Ed Augustus becomes eighth member of Healey’s Cabinet to depart
Housing Secretary Ed Augustus will step down next week to take over a Central Massachusetts bank, and the governor picked former HUD official — and onetime MassINC chief operating officer — Juana Matias to succeed him.
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