40B's Inability to Make Progress Highlighted in Latest Housing ReportOn October 28, 2008, The Boston Foundation released its sixth annual report on the status of Housing in Eastern Massachusetts. According to their press release, the report delivers "sobering news to both homebuyers and homeowners," and concludes that the Commonwealth continues to suffer from migration of residents to states other than Massachusetts, and a "growing economic misfit between cost of living and income." Perhaps most notable about the 90 page report was that only a few small paragraphs even mentioned Chapter 40B, making it obvious that the challenges facing our state require policies that will actually help struggling residents. The approximately 600 words that did discuss 40B gave updates on the stale production results of the law and a list of communities that have grown under Chapter 40B's forced growth mandates. A great deal of time was spent focusing on the costs of programs that would alleviate housing problems and help families to remain in their homes. However, what the report failed to mention was that with the state's unrelenting push for more 40B construction, the state has failed residents by critically underfunding our existing affordable housing stock. By 2010, more than half of the state's total affordable housing stock will be lost - approximately 26,000 units. That is the same number of affordable units that it took forty years to build under Chapter 40B at a cost of approximately $10 billion to taxpayers. With economic pressures further squeezing taxpayers and residents, the state's only solution is to forcibly build unnnecessary housing - despite the fact that people are leaving Massachusetts in record numbers, causing home vacany rates to be the highest in our history. Please join us in educating state officials that if we are to move forward and find a comprehensive program that will keep Massachusetts competitive, we cannot undermine that progress with a continued blind commitment to Chapter 40B. |
