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Massachusetts’ four major urban regions east of the Berkshires were short nearly 90,000 homes to meet current residents’ immediate needs right before the pandemic, a new study claims.
Advocacy group Up for Growth released new estimates earlier this week of how many homes were missing from metro areas across the country as of 2019, even before demand for new for-sale homes and rentals exploded during the pandemic. In total, the nation is missing 3.79 million homes, the group said, based on its analysis of Census Bureau data.
It’s the latest attempt to quantify a decade-plus of under-building across the nation that has sent home prices and apartment rents to new highs, with Massachusetts’ median year-to-date single-family sale price alone jumping from $385,000 in May 2019 to $530,000 in May of this year according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.
“As people migrate in search of jobs, education and economic opportunities, the demand for housing in the most populous and economically productive regions of the U.S. has far exceeded the production of new homes,” Up for Growth CEO Mike Kingsella said in a statement. “This is resulting in America’s most urgent economic, environmental and social equity crisis.”
In Greater Boston alone, 77,063 homes were missing as of 2019, or 3.9 percent of the region’s total housing stock. That level of under-production gave it the 14th-biggest shortfall in homes across the country, on par with many of the nation’s other largest cities.
In the Worcester area, the gap between 2019’s current needs and housing inventory was 6,990 houses, or 1.8 percent of all homes.
In the Barnstable metro, the shortfall was 1,429 homes, or 0.9 percent of housing stock.
And in Springfield, 5,407 homes were missing, 1.7 percent of housing stock.
Unlike other estimates, like those reported in some editions of The Boston Foundation’s Greater Boston Housing Report Cards, Up for Growth only calculated the number of homes required to meet a metro area’s needs as of 2019. The calculations do not account for population growth expected from births, domestic moves or international migration. Massachusetts grew 7.4 percent between 2010 and 2020, the Census Bureau reported, or 482,288 people. And as a major hub in America’s economy in particular, Greater Boston continues to draw new residents from across the nation and the world.
