Massachusetts is unlikely to meet the Healey administration’s goal for 220,000 new housing units’ completion by 2035, according to a new report analyzing the state of the residential real estate market.
Before a national audience of transit leaders on Monday, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll offered an optimistic rebranding of Massachusetts’ troubled public transit systems.
Some top Democrats on Beacon Hill say they’re big fans of the book roiling the party’s intellectual circles with its critique of why blue states build too little housing.
If Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and Housing Secretary Ed Augustus had one message when speaking to real estate movers and shakers Tuesday morning in downtown Boston, it was “watch this space.”
If political happy talk could be converted into housing units, the cost of a home wouldn’t be nearing $1 million in Greater Boston. But it’s a reality our state and local pols seem incapable of grasping.
Days before attorneys representing Massachusetts state government and the town of Milton face off in a dispute over the MBTA Communities law, Gov. Maura Healey and Attorney General Andrea Campbell sought to spotlight the cities and towns that are taking the opposite tack.
While Gov. Maura Healey told reporters Tuesday that the Legislature is “getting things done,” Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll urged a group of municipal officials to put pressure on their lawmakers to wrap up work on the earmark-laden economic development bill that stalled out more than a month ago.
Housing advocates and elected officials rallied Wednesday in support of a statewide policy to allow accessory dwelling units by right, and the state’s top housing official offered his “word on the street” about the timing of a major housing bill’s arrival in the House.
Throughout the pandemic, labor shortages and supply chain issues bedeviled Massachusetts businesses. But business leaders say the housing crisis in Massachusetts is now the major existential threat to the state’s competitiveness.
A proposed tax on high-value real estate transactions to pay for affordable housing would add an estimated 3,210 affordable homes in Massachusetts over five years, according to the governor’s administration – a drop in the bucket of the state’s 200,000 housing unit shortage.
A $335.4 million federal grant to rebuild a key section of the Mass. Pike and build a new transit hub in Allston will help unlock Harvard University’s plans for a big, new science and technology-focused neighborhood. But the school isn’t the only winner, experts say.
Gov. Maura Healey is still waiting for the legislature to act on her big housing bill, but she paused Monday to swear in two panels of developers, municipal leaders and advocates Monday, charged with charting more housing production reforms.
A former state senator is lobbying support for creation of a regional government agency to protect Greater Boston communities from projected future storm surges.
As renters and would-be homebuyers face an affordability crisis, a leading trade group for the people who facilitate home sales is eyeing new building projects as the solution.
A huge batch of state grants for 27 different projects announced Thursday will see 1,597 affordable and mixed-income housing units built or preserved.
Supporters of a housing development tax incentive have plenty of ideas to improve how and where it’s applied, but as lawmakers from post-industrial cities prepare to try again to make the program permanent and triple its annual cap, a think tank consultant cautioned them to “speak with one voice.”
Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll seemed to move up the timeline for hiring a new housing secretary Tuesday, telling local officials that the Healey administration is planning to fill the new post “in a quick manner” after it becomes “available” later this month.
As Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll continue to make their case for expanding the Housing Development Incentive Program, the tax credit faces growing scrutiny over whether it does enough to help the neediest Bay Staters.
There appears to be no opposition to Gov. Maura Healey’s reorganization of state economic development bureaucracy to spur more housing production, but it’s uncertain when the state legislature will approve the move.
