Juana Matias, Massachusetts’s new secretary of the Office of Housing and Livable Communities, is echoing Gov. Maura Healey’s claim that the state is on track to close a massive housing gap in the next decade. Despite lagging permitting across housing types, Matias said data soon to be released from the housing office will show that “we’re not just on par to hit our housing goals, but we may be a little ahead.”

Matias joined CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith on The Codcast to check in on the secretary’s first few months on the job and lay out the policies that the Healey administration thinks will be most effective in its push to build 222,000 new homes by 2035.

At the same time, a statewide rent control ballot question is bearing down on Beacon Hill, and the shift from President Biden to the Trump administration has left the state trying to plug funding gaps on programs long assumed to be federal priorities.

Housing, Matias said, is “the number one issue for residents across the Commonwealth.” Over half of residents are cost-burdened, she noted, meaning they spend 30 percent or more of their income on housing.

“We have teachers who want to live near where they work,” she said. “We have elderly and older adults that want to age in place. We have working families that want to be able to set up roots … but we haven’t been developing housing at the rate we should have for decades. And this problem that we’re currently facing wasn’t built overnight. We’re also not going to solve it overnight.”

Matias took over the post in April, after Sec. Ed Augustus stepped down on February 27. Augustus, the former city manager of Worcester, served as housing secretary for three years and was the eighth member of Healey’s cabinet to depart.

Matias, a former state representative from Lawrence, most recently served as a regional administrator for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. She also spent three years as chief operating officer of MassINC, the nonprofit civic organization that publishes CommonWealth Beacon, before departing for the Biden administration job.

Beacon Hill continues to point to a sweeping housing bond bill it passed two years ago as the major housing-related accomplishment during this gubernatorial administration. The left-leaning Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center estimated that, by the end of 2025, about 44 percent of the bond bill’s potential authorizations had been budgeted. That’s about $2.28 billion in capital housing investments compared to the $5.16 billion authorized in the bill.

“Are we using it to the full extent? No,” Matias said, though she emphasized that they have doubled capital investment spending. “I think a portion of this is understanding that when we’re doing bonding, that is debt and we need to be thoughtful in making sure that the way we leverage this resource is in the best interest of the state.”

She pointed to funding boosts targeting market rate housing, a mixed-income “momentum fund,” and an initiative aimed at speeding construction on state-owned land across the Commonwealth.

As a former state representative, Matias is also keeping an eye on the last-minute maneuvering from legislators as the two-year term winds down. The administration is pushing for permitting and review changes through the economic development and environmental bond bills.

And even as the administration is indicating interest in keeping a strict statewide rent control law away from the ballot, Matias emphasized that no potential compromise has the governor’s backing yet.

“I think the administration has been very clear that we oppose the ballot as written because the administration has been focused on one thing — lowering costs,” Matias said. “And the way you lower housing costs is by spurring production and spurring production as quickly as possible.”

As proponents and opponents of the measure work to avoid a messy ballot fight through legislative consensus, “the administration has not taken a stand on one compromise over the other,” Matias said. “I think we’re going to wait to see where the Legislature lands.”

On the episode, Matias discusses the response to the MBTA Communities housing law and legalization of accessory dwelling units (11:00), the end-of-session rush on Beacon Hill (19:00), and the loss of federal support for fair housing work (23:00).