You reap what you sow. And after driving up rents and prices to insane levels thanks to decades of blocking any and all new residential construction, NIMBY homeowners in Massachusetts and across the country have succeed in sparking an extreme counter-reaction.
With lawmakers on Beacon Hill once again dithering over the state budget and, having blown a deadline weeks ago with the arrival of the new fiscal year, things certainly aren’t looking great for zoning reform legislation. But some are optimistic a turning point is near.
Last week, Google announced to some acclaim it would spend $1 billion to build 15,000 market-rate and 5,000 affordable homes in the housing-starved San Francisco Bay area. Before any like-minded Massachusetts actors get a similar idea, we suggest a better use of that money would be helping efforts to modernize our mass transit and suburban zoning laws.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday took the first major step toward launching a widely anticipated campaign for the presidency, hoping her reputation as a populist fighter can help her navigate a Democratic field that could include nearly two dozen candidates.
With municipal officials still hoping Gov. Charlie Baker’s housing production bill will pass by the end of the year, a state representative from Cambridge has asked House leaders to keep it from advancing.
Want to see the growing middle-class housing crunch morph into a full-blown crisis? Start subsidizing builders to get them to build moderately priced apartments, condominiums and homes.
