Gov. Maura Healey speaks with reporters at the Westin Copley Place hotel following her speech to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce on Feb. 26, 2025. Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff
Gov. Maura Healey took time out of her speech to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Wednesday to tout her administration’s recent housing wins.
The governor’s biggest legislative accomplishment on housing to date – the $5.1 billion Affordable Homes Act housing finance-and-policy bill – is still too new to show up in the pipeline of new housing projects.
But, Healey said, a tax package passed by the Legislature in 2023 that included a one-time $57 million pulse of money for the Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP) tax credit for market-rate development in the state’s working-class Gateway Cities was already driving growth.
The money, which was paired with an ongoing $10 million bump in the annual $20 million HDIP allotment, has grown the development pipeline of market-rate units in Gateway Cities by 600 percent, Healey said.
A report by the MassINC Policy Center last year predicted the 26 Gateway Cities from Barnstable to Lawrence to Pittsfield is 36,000 units short to meet current demand, and will need 83,000 new units built over the next 10 years to meet these communities’ needs.
Market-rate developments have trouble penciling out in Gateway Cities due to lower rents and construction costs that are comparable with those in higher-rent communities like Boston.
Healey also touted her administration’s ability to bring the 177 communities covered by the MBTA Communities zoning reform law into compliance.
“Contrary to how it’s sometimes covered, 119 towns have said ‘yes’ to new housing, and with good reason! The economic growth and potential of our state depends on new housing,” she said.
The town of Holden, one of the first alongside the town of Milton, to thumb its nose at the zoning law’s requirement to establish as-of-right multifamily zoning districts, agreed Tuesday to pass compliant zoning by July 14.
And in January, the state’s highest court ruled that the law was constitutional and Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office had the power to sue towns to force compliance.
But other communities are still looking to resist the law, and a number have also rejected compliant zoning plans. State Auditor Diana DiZoglio Friday threw new fuel on this fire by officially labeling the law an “unfunded mandate” for municipalities – a charge Campbell’s office and housing advocates vigorously rejected, citing the technical assistance and grant help the state and quasi-public housing finance agencies have offered towns trying to draw new zoning districts.
Healey, too, pushed back on the allegation in her speech to the Greater Boston Chamber, albeit obliquely.
But her main message was one of necessity.
“To those who continue to resist: You’re missing the moment, and your residents and businesses are missing the moment and are going to suffer” because of higher housing costs and a lack of new business, she said. “These are the homes we need for our seniors, families, recent graduates — the workforce we need to keep growing Massachusetts.”
The governor also touted her recently-released statewide housing plan, which calls for 222,000 new units to be built statewide over 10 years.
At a Tuesday event organized by developer trade group NAIOP-MA, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and state Housing Secretary Ed Augustus indicated the administration plans to make additional housing reforms based on ideas included in a Friday report from the administration’s Unlocking Housing Production Commission, but did not commit to particular ideas or timelines for introducing the reforms.
Healey broadly echoed that message in her Chamber speech, telling the audience at the Westin Copley Place hotel in Boston, “now we’ve got a whole menu of things we can do that’s not one size fits all to bring more housing online.”
