Baker looks forward to housing boom
The governor announced new housing support at a Quincy event.
One of the things Gov. Charlie Baker wants to see as Massachusetts eventually emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic is “a lot of shovels in the ground” to build sorely needed new housing across the state, he said Wednesday during a trip to Quincy.
“Housing is expensive in Massachusetts,” Baker said. “We all know that, but one of the reasons it’s expensive is because we don’t make enough of it, of any kind — senior housing, supportive housing, rental housing, workforce housing, affordable housing. The simple truth is, for the past 30 years or so we’ve been building about half the housing supply we need to actually serve our population.”
Baker said a new law that enables municipal zoning changes aimed at spurring housing production to be adopted by a simple-majority vote “creates a statutory framework” and a $1.8 billion housing bond bill signed in 2018 “gives us a ton of dry powder. “I really do hope coming out of the pandemic one of the things we’re able to do is put a lot of shovels in the ground all over the commonwealth to create a lot of the housing capacity that we so desperately need here in Massachusetts,” he said.
Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Housing and Economic Development Secretary Mike Kennealy joined Quincy lawmakers for a visit to a shelter run by Father Bill’s and MainSpring, a charity working to end homelessness.
They announced the state would distribute $13.7 million in capital funding and vouchers toward the production and preservation of 67 units of supportive housing and 100 shelter beds, via projects in Boston, Worcester, Amherst, Salem and Quincy. Another $5 million in capital grants will go to 28 communities through the Housing Choices initiative.
Supportive housing, Polito said, “is like one big hug,” connecting people with social and health services and “all the other things that they need in order to be well and to be loved and to be literally supported.”
Father Bill’s and MainSpring is receiving $4 million in subsidy funds to build a new housing resource center across the street from the Quincy shelter, with 100 beds, onsite support services, a respite care area, food preparation and dining facilities, a clinic and administrative offices, according to state housing officials.
House Speaker Ronald Mariano, a Quincy Democrat, said the project was “extremely important” to the city and its residents.
Baker also said the latest round of federal funding included about $475 million in rental assistance money that the state will “be baking into our existing eviction diversion programming, which should mean that we’ll continue to be able to help people stay home, despite the fact that we’re still going to have to work our way through the end of this pandemic and out of it and into a recovery.”
The Baker administration rolled out a $171 million eviction diversion initiative after allowing a state-level eviction and foreclosure moratorium to lapse in October. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently extended a federal moratorium through June 30.
Massachusetts Trial Court data show 9,922 new eviction cases for failure to pay rent were filed since the end of the state moratorium, including 242 the week of March 21.
As families and individuals cope with the economic strain of the COVID-19 crisis, the pandemic has also brought new challenges for shelter operators.
Polito said the team at Father Bill’s had to reduce capacity by 50% to comply with COVID-19 restrictions and keep their facility safe for residents, while still meeting the community’s shelter needs.