Attorney General Maura Healey speaks at an event on the State House steps on July 11, 2017. Early polls in the 2022 gubernatorial race have identified her as the clear favorite. Photo by Antonio Caban | State House News Service

What in the world is wrong with us here in Massachusetts? 

Yes, we like to think of ourselves as one of the smartest states in the country. But when it comes to tackling our now decades-long housing affordability crisis, we have been far too tolerant of our elected leaders’ ongoing, abysmal failure to enact or even push for effective policies to tackle runaway rents and house and condominium prices.  

Unbelievably, we are now nearing the quarter-century mark since then-Gov. Paul Cellucci launched what would the first of many efforts to tackle the state’s housing affordability mess. 

Every governor since then has had his own pet housing program. Mitt Romney had 40R. Deval Patrick had Compact Communities.  

While these plans vary in one way or another, all were far too modest to put a dent in the cost of housing here in Massachusetts, with hopes of spurring the construction of thousands of homes, condos and apartments when multiples of that were needed. We’ve since become one of the priciest places to live on the planet.

Now, as Gov. Charlie Baker finishes his last year in office, his administration has been touting what his year-old Housing Choice reform might do. The jury’s still out on Baker’s plan, which to the governor’s credit goes well beyond what any of his predecessors have attempted by pushing instead of asking towns to allow the development of hundreds of thousands of new condos and apartments near MBTA stations. 

Baker’s bigger problem is one of scale.

But the signs aren’t good Baker will improve on his predecessors. 

 Ambitious, but Too Modest 

For starters, the penalties are relatively weak. The communities that don’t comply face the loss of a few popular but relatively modest grants, with more than a few suburban elected officials now openly discussing simply taking the hit. Many communities might not even need to feel a hit at all as they don’t receive the grants, while those that do only get a few hundred thousand dollars, or at best maybe a few million. 

“I think we need to weigh [new development] against, in my mind, what is a very small amount of funding at stake,” Newton City Councilor Marc Laredo, in a meeting in January on the new reforms.  

Baker’s bigger problem is one of scale. While more ambitious than those of governors past, his pet reforms still fall short in dealing with our state’s massive construction shortfall. 

Just to raise production back to levels seen in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, we would have to more than double housing production in Massachusetts. 

 Do the Math, Maura 

Even under the rosiest of circumstances, it’s hard if not impossible to see how Baker’s housing plan could yield such a huge increase in residential development. 

Let’s say every single one of those 175 “MBTA communities” fully complies with the new law and rolls out new zoning rules allowing for by-right multifamily development near their train, subway and major bus stops. 

We’ll put aside the fact that this is a near-impossibility given the suburban backlash against the plan so far, or the even more unlikely prospect that developers will swoop in and build every single possible apartment and condo on very single buildable parcel allowed under the plan. 

All that would yield more than 344,000 new housing units. Spread out, say, over 15 years, that would be nearly 23,000 new units a year.  

Combined with the 17,000 or so units being built yearly right now, that could boost total production to 40,000 units per year, or roughly back to where it was at its highest point in the 1980s, when Massachusetts was roughly average nationally in the amount of new housing built each year, not near the bottom as it is now.  

Scott Van Voorhis

But back then, we also had roughly a million fewer people living in the state, meaning that level of building just won’t cut it. 

At the end of the day, we need to do a lot more than just prodding cities and towns to zone for hypothetical multifamily housing around train stations and subway stops. 

Decades of half-efforts by governors and legislative leaders designed to try and encourage new home and apartment construction without pissing off the local NIMBYs have gotten us exactly nowhere. 

Baker, with his Housing Choice plan, has definitely raised the stakes, but it is still not strong or broad enough to meet the current crisis. 

The next governor will be faced with either going bold or going home when it comes to dealing with our state’s chronically messed up housing market. 

Any thoughts, Maura Healey?