Healey puts her housing bill front and center
Despite its name, the housing bond bill that Governor Maura Healey sent the Legislature last fall is about more than just money. Yes, it devotes about $4 billion for housing efforts — and that’s vitally important as Massachusetts seeks to address its chronic housing shortage, which has emerged as a serious economic problem for residents and employers.
But just as importantly, the legislation would make a host of legal changes that, if enacted, would help Massachusetts create housing long after those billions are spent.
Healey is making a fresh push for the legislation, which she plugged in her State of the Commonwealth speech on Wednesday and again in a Beacon Hill hearing on Thursday. Housing, she said in the speech, is “the biggest challenge we face” as a state, and the package is her top priority. “Let’s pass this bill and get going,” she implored lawmakers.
The bill would support a long list of programs, many of them designed to spur production of subsidized housing that would be restricted to low-income families. Those efforts are vital. But they’re also only one piece of a solution. Massachusetts also needs more unsubsidized housing if it wants to slow the rise of home prices. When Healey talked in her speech about young couples “typing onto Zillow their price range and watching all the homes for sale disappear off the map,” she’s talking about the skyrocketing prices of unsubsidized, market-rate housing.
The Massachusetts housing shortage, as Healey pointed out, has been “decades in the making,” caused by communities using their zoning codes to restrict housing production. That’s all the more reason for the Legislature to move quickly on the proposal, before the deficit gets any worse.
One of the key non-spending provisions of the bill would require communities to allow accessory dwelling units, which are generally small living spaces homeowners carved out of existing single-family properties. The units have their own entrances, kitchens, and bathrooms. Many homeowners use them to house aging family members or for rental income. Some towns don’t allow them, though, and others impose onerous restrictions; the bill would make units of up 900 square feet legal across the Commonwealth, which the administration estimates would lead to 8,000 new housing units.
Other policy changes in the bill would make it easier to use state-owned land for “housing purposes” and enable communities to more easily pass inclusionary zoning ordinances. Those are regulations that generally require larger developments to include some income-restricted housing.
Healey is right to keep the bill on Beacon Hill’s front burner. All told, the administration estimates it would create 40,000 new homes.
Passing the bill would also build on one of the Legislature’s biggest recent accomplishments, the MBTA Communities Act of 2021, which has forced towns in Greater Boston to allow more housing density. That legislation is already bearing fruit, as suburbs like Brookline and Newton have re-written their zoning codes to permit more housing construction. The bond bill and its policy components would also complement last year’s investment in HDIP, a program that supports market-rate housing construction in Gateway Cities.
There is some resistance from municipalities, which are loath to give up any more zoning authority. Meanwhile, at Thursday’s hearing, some housing advocates pressed the Legislature to add more controversial policies, like rent control.
The Legislature should certainly give the governor’s proposal due diligence. But it should also move with the speed and urgency that the state’s biggest challenge deserves. Massachusetts has started to make some progress on housing, and it’s been heartening to see how cooperative most towns have been in complying with the MBTA Communities Act. Lawmakers should take their cue from the governor and keep taking aim at the state’s counterproductive barriers to housing production.