Gov. Maura Healey, left, and Republican challenger Mike Minogue participate in the final gubernatorial debate at WCVB on Oct. 15, 2026 in Needham. Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran |Globe Staff/Pool via State House News Service

With the state’s cost of living problems squarely on voters minds amid an uptick in inflation, debate moderators at the WCVB studios last night asked Gov. Maura Healey and challenger Mike Minogue for their plans to solve a major piece of that last night: the cost of housing.

In the process, both candidates circled around, but never grappled with, what’s emerged as the major question in Massachusetts housing policy today: Can municipalities still be trusted to plan for enough housing?

In responding to a question from co-moderator WBUR host Tiziana Dearing, Republican nominee Minogue repeated a plan he first aired in an Oct. 8 debate hosted by WBZ: repeal the state’s “stretch” energy code and switch sticks for carrots in trying to get municipalities to welcome more housing.

“We are also last in permitting because of bureaucracy. And if we go to the towns and cities and respect their process but we give them an incentive instead of suing them like Gov. Healey’s administration is going if they won’t build 1,500 condos – give them the opportunity to grow,” he said, referring to Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s moves to compel compliance with the MBTA Communities Act. “Every builder who’s watching tonight knows the stretch codes are terrible, knows it’s very difficult to make everything pencil out.”

Minogue suggested instead offering towns and cities more money if they reduced the time it takes to permit housing units down to 45 days or less.

Neither Dearing nor the other moderators, Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker and WCVB journalists Sharman Sacchetti and Edd Harding pressed Minogue on why the idea would bear more fruit now, even though it was at the heart of the Patrick and Baker administrations’ housing strategies. Healey, the Democratic nominee, let the question pass by, as well.

Healey Focused on Record

The governor has made her administration’s attempts to speed up housing production a major talking-point in her re-election campaign, and did so again at WCVB’s Needham studios Thursday while suggesting that recent corporate relocations were a sign that the state was “finally on a rebound” even though the state is losing population to other states with lower costs of living.

“I did something never before done as governor. I set out a strong housing plan in my first year, and here’s what I did – not Charlie Baker,” she said, referencing a Minogue criticism that the 100,000 homes Healey said entered the pipeline during her term were largely permitted under the former governor.

“Mike, you’ve got an idea to cut permitting times. I already did that. I beat you by 15 days. We cut permitting times from a year down to 30 days,” Healey said, referring to changes that fast-track state environmental permitting for multifamily housing. “We made ADUs something you can build on your property by right. I offered up surplus [state-owned] land so that people could build housing, and I gave tax credits to developers to really incent production. We’ve brought thousands of homes online in Gateway Cities, both affordable and market-rate.”

Healey said she wanted to “double” the figure of 100,000 homes under construction should she win a second term.

“We’ve got to build our way through to lower costs,” she said.

In response, Minogue said Healey hadn’t done enough to stem an “exodus” of young people.

“Massachusetts is a great place to live, if you can afford it,” he said. “We see it, we know it with our families, with our friends’ kids.”

Local Control on November Ballot

Both candidates passed by central issue confronting voters in this election, and state legislators this fall as they negotiate a new package of housing reforms: Can towns and cities still be relied on to act at their own speed to produce more housing?

Question 7 of the November ballot would unlock between 350 and 1,200 new single-family homes a year by slashing municipal minimum lot-size requirements for land served by local water and sewer pipes. Instead of the quarter-acre or larger lots many Boston suburbs have used to curb development, all a builder would need is a 5,000-square-foot parcel. The Massachusetts Municipal Association, the trade group for local governments, opposes the measure for taking away local control.

State senators offered a proposal in similar spirit in their package of housing proposals attached to a key economic development bill now in negotiations: legalize duplexes on all residential-zoned lots in Massachusetts, “subject to reasonable limitations.” State representatives, in their version of the bill, offered a version of the “Yes In God’s Backyard” legislation that would let religious groups build dense, mixed-income housing on properties they own, unlocking developments like church conversions across the state.

That debate over local control is happening right now, said Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of advocacy group Abundant Housing Massachusetts.

“The status quo is what’s preventing all of that from happening. the people who serve our communities – restaurant workers, childcare providers, nurses – can’t afford homes in the communities they serve and want to live in,” said Kanson-Benanav. “That’s been generations in the making since we revised the state Zoning Act in the 1970s and gave so much authority to the 351 cities and towns and allowed them to have so much control over their land use.”

That move in the 1970s created “paper walls” of zoning law around many communities that outlawed multifamily development, pushing the burden of meeting Massachusetts’ housing needs on just a few cities and towns, he said.

Kanson-Benanav said his group is pushing for more statewide reforms on Beacon Hill because it sees them as more effective: The MBTA Communities Act and statewide ADU legalization together created or set in motion around 12,500 new homes in less than four years, compared to only 10,000 created over 17 years under the state’s highest-profile program that pays towns and cities to get more housing built, the Chapter 40R transit-oriented zoning law.

Direct legalization is also popular with voters, he said, citing the group’s polling that found Bay Staters support trading less local control for more housing construction.