Instead of focusing on reforms that will boost our economy, the Healey-Driscoll administration is pursuing a policy that will further damage the state’s competitiveness: a new tax on home and building sales.
A few key reforms can help overcome the real obstacle to growing the number of housing units the CPA creates: the lack of local political will to seed new housing that CPA funds can be spent on.
New taxes on real estate sales were a hot topic on Beacon Hill last week, but unfortunately, both sides have it wrong, to one degree or another.
While Beacon Hill searches for solutions to the serious housing shortage that fuels affordability concerns in Massachusetts, a real estate industry organization wants to see the Community Preservation Act program retrofitted to put a greater emphasis on housing production.
Facing the lowest level of state support in the nearly 20-year history of the program, cities and towns that have adopted the Community Preservation Act are hopeful that 2019 will be the last year of volatile state funding for this key pipeline of money for parks and affordable housing.
