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As many as 30 percent of all public housing units are in need of billions of dollars in repairs to make sure they can keep providing a safety net for the poor, the elderly and the disabled. iStock photo illustration
It feels like we are in a bad news competition between the housing crisis and the slow-motion train wreck formerly known as the MBTA.
Last week we learned, courtesy of the Boston Globe, that rails along the brand-new Green Line extension had been installed too close to each other, forcing trains to slow down to a pathetic 3 miles per hour in various stretches totaling over a mile of the new branch.
So much for that $2.3 billion project, which opened to literal applause from riders on the first trains. As much as a mile of track on the new 4.3-mile line connecting Somerville and Medford to Cambridge and the rest of the T is now stuck in slow-zone hell.
Yet equally disturbing in many ways was a joint investigation by WBUR and ProPublica that found more than 2,300 state-owned public housing apartments across the state have sat empty for more than 60 days, including 730 for more than a year.
At a time when rents and prices are at catastrophically high levels and available market-rate apartments are hard to find, the story was a true shocker, prompting the Healey administration to launch a 90-day review of the situation.
Yet as concerning as the revelation is that thousands of apartments at local housing authorities across the state are sitting empty, even as homeless encampments swell, there is arguably an even bigger problem when it comes to public housing in Massachusetts, one that has drawn little media attention.
That’s the huge number of apartments owned by housing authorities across the state that are on the cusp of being uninhabitable, with such a backlog of repairs and deferred maintenance that it would actually be less expensive to tear them down and build anew.
Almost 1 in 3 Units
It’s no small number. In fact, there are literally thousands of units, from housing projects in Boston to Springfield, fall within this category, said David Hedison, past president of the Massachusetts chapter of NAHRO, a group that represents housing authority and local development officials.
In fact, it may be as high as 13,000, said Hedison, citing an estimate put forth by a company hired by state housing officials to examine the problem.
With roughly 43,000 state-owned units across Massachusetts, that’s almost 1 in 3 that are in potentially dire straits.
These are apartments where it would cost anywhere from a few hundred thousand dollars to $600,000 or $700,000 to fix all the issues and bring everything up to code.
Just do the math on a hypothetical public housing building put up in the 1950s with 100 apartments in need of electrical, plumbing, HVAC or structural work – you name it.
Given it now takes about $600,000 to build a new apartment, sinking that kind of money into buildings that are barely functional, if that, makes no sense.
The decrepit condition of our state’s public housing stock doesn’t get as much attention as the ongoing meltdown at the MBTA – the latter is certainly more visible given the prominent role in plays in day-to-day life across Eastern Massachusetts.
But the tens of thousands of public housing units are a crucial piece of the Bay State’s social infrastructure, providing desperately needed safety-net housing for the poor, the elderly and the disabled.
It Doesn’t Compute
The comparison between the T and public housing is more apt than you might think.
The scale of busted parts and deferred maintenance is eerily similar. As it stands now, it would cost $3.7 billion to replace all the busted toilets, drafty windows and outdated electrical systems in public housing units across the commonwealth. Add to that soft costs, such as design and engineering work, and you have a bill that tops $8 billion, according an estimate complied by state housing officials.
By contrast, the latest number for fixing all the issues at the T now tops $10 billion.
There is another similarity as well, and it is that the state legislature and a long line of governors have fallen far short in allocating the kind of money needed to fix what’s broken.
The 240 housing authorities across Massachusetts receive just $55 million to make repairs and do other upgrades each year. It is barely to do light maintenance.
For example, the Woburn Housing Authority has more than $80 million in deferred maintenance and repairs, but gets just $589,000 from the state to pay for it all.
Scott Van Voorhis
Bellingham has a $19 million backlog, but just $145,000 a year to work with. And for Fall River, there is a massive $164 million repair and maintenance backlog, with just $376,000 a year in state money to work with.
As they say, it just doesn’t compute.
No wonder the Boston Housing Authority has turned to private for-profit and nonprofit developers to rebuild its developments, paid for by including additional market-rate units and tax credits. But how many developers would be interested in – or even able, with today’s construction costs and the shortage of low-income housing tax credits – do the same in more outlying towns?
As anybody and their brother knows at this point, there is a housing crisis in Massachusetts. Yet it’s not just the scarcity of market-rate homes and apartments that is the problem, though this issue certainly is a central one, having driven prices and rents to insanely high levels.
We also need functional and decent public housing, now more than ever. And to fix that problem, we are going to need a lot more than the relatively paltry amount of money that we are spending now.
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com
