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New from CommonWealth Beacon |
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BALLOT BATTLES: Dueling housing ballot measures, one proposing strict rent control and one looking to ease restrictive zoning, collided with frustrated lawmakers over two days of hearings. Jennifer Smith has more. |
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OPINION: As Massachusetts’s population ages and more residents choose to live independently, the cost of the personal care attendants program, which is 50 percent federally funded, has grown. Yet rather than investing in this cost-saving model, the governor’s budget proposes an enormous cut, which will result in less care, writes Cari Medina, the executive vice president for Massachusetts of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. |
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| | | By CommonWealth Beacon Staff |
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In Massachusetts, the modern affordability battle cry may as well be “it’s the housing, stupid.” |
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As the Bay State wrestles with ballot measures and sweeping housing bills aiming to juice the building of about 220,000 units within the decade, some are hoping for a federal assist. A bipartisan coalition headed up by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott sent a sprawling housing bill out of the US Senate this month and over to a seemingly skeptical House of Representatives. |
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The so-called “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act” is packed with policy – a grab bag including tax credits for private developers that set aside affordable units, boosts for manufactured homes, and a slew of regulatory streamlining changes. |
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"Think of this bill like a meatball," Warren told NPR in mid-March. "It's got a lot of different ingredients in it, but it's the fact that it's all there together is what makes it so delicious.” |
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This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talked with Matt Noyes, director of state and federal advocacy for the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA). A number of threads in the sprawling federal bill have parallels on the state level, like pushes to streamline environmental review for certain projects and make more efficient use of vacant land. |
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“A lot of developers are challenged when they are starting a project,” Noyes said. “When they're looking to move the project through the approval process, they’ve got to pass an environmental review at the local level, at the state level, and at the federal level all at the same time. And there's so much duplication between those and a delay in every process.” |
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The Senate bill also includes language, deviating from the House version of the bill, that would prevent any investor that owns 350 homes from buying more. |
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Cries about the rise of institutional home purchases have come from municipalities feeling the strain of wealthier buyers during the pandemic and President Donald Trump alike, who promised bans on institutional investors in his recent State of the Union speech. Massachusetts, by and large, has not been a target of major investor purchases, researchers say. But areas like Nantucket, with limited land that has become increasingly desirable to wealthy buyers, are feeling the loss of full-time units leaving the market. |
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“We hear a lot from the Cape and Islands about concern around institutional investors purchasing single-family homes and the impact that that has on skewing the market down there,” Noyes said. |
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But even for proponents of limiting investor footprints, the bill isn’t perfect. |
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“One of the challenging pieces in there is the way the language is written right now, it also prevents institutional investment in build-to-rent housing, which we really need because that's where a lot of the money is gonna come – from investors,” Noyes said. “And we need more rental properties as well in the state.” |
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Noyes points to the unusually bipartisan nature of the housing bill as a promising sign, but national politics could interfere as the mid-term election year ramps up. |
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"It's unheard of to have that sort of virtual unanimity of Congress these days,” he said. If the bill doesn’t move, he said, that will be “because of reasons that have nothing to do with housing – foreign affairs, politics, and some of the other bills that the president has prioritized.” |
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On the episode, they discuss institutional investing fears in the Bay State (5:30), sending private dollars into affordable housing (14:00), and parallels between state and federal efforts to free up local land and reduce regulatory burdens (19:30). |
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More from CommonWealth Beacon |
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POLITICS: In the Political Notebook, CommonWealth Beacon reporters take stock of the campaign significance of a House roll call vote, note the inspector general’s increasing workload, and wonder whether North Shore residents will soon be seeing double. |
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OPNION: There may finally be an appetite to tackle a building code requirement that can slow new housing production: Having two staircases in multifamily housing above three stories. Sam Naylor, an architect and partner at Nominal, reviews recent reports on the benefits – and safety – of “single-stair” construction and urges Massachusetts to change its building codes. |
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EDUCATION: Economists say many recent grads are underemployed, and there’s evidence that even students with degrees once considered safe, like computer science, are now being impacted. But the numbers paint a messier picture. (GBH News) |
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ECONOMY: New IRS data show many high earners – mostly highly educated and young people – left Massachusetts in 2023. Their money mostly ended up in Florida and New Hampshire. (Boston Business Journal – paywall) |
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POLITICS: Boston city councilors spent $1.6 million in campaign money last year – on the expected mix of consultants, advertising, phones, and office costs. But the expenses also included transportation, hobnobbing at dinners, and donations to local nonprofits that reflect their priorities and may burnish their reputations. (WBUR) |
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HEALTH: Front-line clinicians who care for cancer patients at Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute are attempting to unionize, but MGB is mounting a fight. (The Boston Globe – paywall) |
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MUNICIPAL MATTERS: Great Barrington is facing a $5 million budget deficit this year, and officials are trying for a compromise plan that won’t require a Prop 2 ½ override. (The Berkshire Eagle – paywall) |
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