PM in the News: “What was the point of Massachusetts’ new tax break for renters?”

Nik DeCosta-Klipa, “What was the point of Massachusetts’ new tax break for renters?,” WBUR, April 17, 2024.

“Nobody is going to complain about getting $50 back, but it doesn’t mean very much,” Jonathan Cohn, the policy director for the left-leaning group Progressive Massachusetts (and a renter himself), told WBUR. “Given that many people’s rents will go up by more than $50 each year, that’s not even combating one-twelfth of an annual rent increase for people.”

…

Cohn credits the Healey administration for pursuing other, more “meaningful” measures to address the housing crisis in the multi-billion-dollar bond bill, which is primarily aimed at funding and encouraging more affordable housing. (Whether — or how much of — the bill passes before the end of the legislative session this summer remains to be seen.) Healey’s administration has also moved to aggressively enforce the state’s MBTA Communities Act, which requires cities and towns near the T to zone for additional multi-family housing.

Letter: Mass. Can Do More to Lower Housing Costs”

Green affordable housing

Marianne Rutter, “Letter: Mass. Can Do More to Lower Housing Costs,” Newburyport Daily News, April 12, 2024.

To the Editor:

It should come as no surprise to my fellow readers that Massachusetts has a housing crisis. To rent the average 2-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts requires an income equal to $41.64 per hour, more than twice the minimum wage.  Do the math yourself:  Coming up with monthly rent is a near impossibility in a two-earner household working $15/hour minimum-wage jobs, even if both wage-earners are holding down two jobs.

Home ownership has become increasingly out of reach, as the state’s median home price has passed $600,000.   In parts of our northeastern corner of the Commonwealth, the average home price today is 25% higher than that.

The Legislature needs to take action before the crisis gets worse. 

Governor Healey (who, let’s remember, hails from our part of the state), has shown leadership in responding to this crisis by introducing the Affordable Homes Act, which combines funding authorizations for various housing programs with important new policy measures for affordable housing.  One of the most exciting proposals is the real estate transfer fee local option. 

This would enable cities and towns to levy a small fee on large real estate transactions in order to create a dedicated revenue stream for affordable housing production and preservation. Cities and towns across the state have already expressed a desire to do so, and the state should let them and ensure that the local option is flexible enough for cities and towns across the state to benefit.

I am grateful that the housing crisis will be at the center of the Legislature’s attention this year.  I’m urging Senator Barry Finegold and Representatives Dawne Shand, Adrianne Ramos and Kristin Kassner to advocate actively for the strongest legislation possible. Massachusetts must be a place where people can afford to live at any stage of life, and the only way to make or keep that a reality is through good policy.

Marianne Rutter

Amesbury

Letter: Transfer fee could boost affordable housing

Green affordable housing

Rachel Roth, “Letter: Transfer fee could boost affordable housing,” Your Arlington, April 4, 2024.

I am stunned by how much the cost of housing in Arlington has increased since my family moved here about 20 years ago. Renovated upstairs units in two-family condos routinely list for $1 million, and to rent the average two-bedroom apartment, someone must earn $41.64 per hour, more than twice the minimum wage – and that’s for the entire state, not just high-cost areas like greater Boston.1

We are fortunate to have Reps. Dave Rogers and Michael Day fighting for housing security, such as the right to have an attorney when facing eviction, yet there is so much more to do, including in the governor’s housing bill, unveiled last October.

The bill would be improved by adding options for cities and towns to raise money with local real estate transfer fees or implement rent control. According to the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, with a robust real estate transfer fee, Arlington could raise almost $8 million each year for affordable housing, and Winchester could raise over $9 million.2

I ask our reps to keep pushing for strong housing laws with both statewide commitments to adequate and affordable housing production and allowances for some locally tailored options as well.

Letter: More Housing Helps Older Residents to Downsize

Jason Brown, “Letter: More Housing Helps Older Residents to Downsize,” West Roxbury / Roslindale Bulletin, April 4, 2024.

My older family members have lived here in Boston for a majority of their lives. As they grow older, their options to age-in-place or downsize are quite small: either stay in a too-big house (with too many stairs), or face a limited and expensive housing supply in Boston and across the Commonwealth.

Massachusetts faces an affordable housing crisis, and I’m hopeful of the proposals in Governor Healey’s Affordable Homes Act, which combines funding authorizations for various housing programs with important new policy measures for affordable housing.

For example, the Bill would permit Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) of <900 SF to be built by-right in single-family zoning districts in all communities and prohibit the parking mandates and owner-occupancy requirements used to make ADUs harder to build. This kind of thinking could open up new space for older residents to downsize without leaving the area.

In addition, communities across Massachusetts have shown interest in passing real estate transfer fees to raise much-needed additional funding for affordable housing, and the state should let them take action.

I am grateful that housing will be at the center of the Legislature’s attention this year, and I hope that our West Roxbury elected representatives will advocate for the strongest legislation possible. Massachusetts must be a place where people can afford to live at any stage of life, and the only way to make that a reality is through good policy.

Testimony on the Affordable Homes Act (Bonding Committee)

Green affordable housing

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Chair Kennedy, Chair Finn, and Members of the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures, and State Assets:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic. 

Massachusetts faces a growing affordable housing crisis. To rent the average 2-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts requires an income equal to $37.97 per hour, more than twice the minimum wage. Home ownership has become increasingly out of reach, as the state’s median home price has passed $600,000. The high cost of housing has led to displacement, and in a growing number of municipalities, the local workforce can no longer afford to live there.

We are glad to see that Governor Healey recognizes the need to use a variety of tools to address our housing crisis and strongly support the comprehensive approach in the Affordable Homes Act, H.4138.

We were delighted to see the inclusion of key provisions like the following:

  • Creating a five-year housing plan (which should focus not only on supply but also on affordability to different income levels)
  • Enabling cities and towns to pass inclusionary zoning ordinances by simple majority—a vital tool for increasing affordable housing supply and diversifying communities
  • Making it easier to use public land for housing development
  • Establishing an Office of Fair Housing
  • Launching a Social Housing pilot program
  • Authorizing $150M for public housing decarbonization and $115 million for sustainable and climate-resilient affordable housing
  • Permitting Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) of <900 SF to be built by-right in single-family zoning districts in all communities and prohibiting the parking mandates and owner-occupancy requirements many municipalities use to make ADUs harder to build
  • Enabling cities and towns to pass real estate transfer fees as a tool to raise money for affordable housing production and preservation
  • Creating a process to enable individuals to seal eviction records

All of these are essential to a three-pronged approach to the housing crisis: protecting tenants, increasing housing production, and investing more in affordable housing. We can do all three, and this bill does.

However, we would like to outline how to make some of these provisions more accessible and effective as well as some additional measures to consider including.

Real Estate Transfer Fee Local Option

Cities and towns across Massachusetts want to take action to address the housing crisis, but they are often unable to do so without state approval. Seventeen communities have now requested the ability to use this tool, beginning with Provincetown in 2010. In the years since this initial request, circumstances have only become more dire, and more cities and towns have passed such home rule petitions or are actively considering doing so.

Our housing crisis is simply too great to leave funding and financing tools on the table. All communities must be able to use this tool that will allow us to generate additional resources for desperately needed local affordable housing.

To ensure that the transfer fee language in the bill can best meet the needs of diverse cities and towns, we urge the following:

  • Setting the Right Threshold: Home sale prices vary greatly across Massachusetts, with rural communities and Gateway cities often having property values well below $1 million. They should still be able to benefit from this tool. Similarly, communities should be able to set higher thresholds if that is best for local needs and market conditions.
  • Maintaining Flexibility: Communities should be able to determine whether buyers or sellers of a property bear fees and should be able to create local exemptions that best apply to their community.
  • Applying Fees to the Full Transaction: Allowing municipalities to apply fees to the full amount of transactions, rather than only the amount in excess of a threshold, will allow communities with higher needs and sales prices to generate more desperately needed revenue.

Sealing Eviction Records

Having an eviction record is creating a devastating barrier for tenants looking for housing. Records are created as soon as a case is filed and are publicly available forever–– regardless of the outcome. These records impact people’s ability to obtain housing, credit, and employment, harming many and disproportionately impacting women and people of color.

Regardless of whether one does anything wrong or is actually evicted, being party to an eviction or housing case is being unfairly held against tenants when they try to rent a new place. Even winning in court hurts tenants.

We are delighted to see eviction sealing language in this bill, but we would recommend several steps to ensure that tenants can best be protected:

  1. Ensuring that dismissals, cases that tenants win, and no-fault evictions be automatically sealed by the court as opposed to a petition process which involves extra steps for the court and all parties.

  2. Ensuring that in non-payment cases, tenants can seal after 14 days of paying a judgment and after 4 years if they were unable to pay because of an economic hardship or other good cause reasons.
  1. Ensuring that in a fault eviction, where one must wait 7 years to seal, that an intervening eviction which prevents one from sealing can only be a fault eviction and not just any type of eviction case, such as a no-fault eviction.

  2. Clarifying that the court has the direction to consider disability and domestic violence issues in fault cases and to adjust the sealing process accordingly.

Additional Measures to Include

We join with over 240 organizations to call for the inclusion of Access to Counsel in the Affordable Homes Act. 9 out of 10 tenants are unrepresented in eviction court, leading to higher rates of displacement and community instability. Evictions negatively affect people’s physical and mental health, and result in job loss and decreased school attainment for children. Guaranteeing legal representation to all tenants facing evictions would have a major positive impact.

We also urge you to use this opportunity to repeal the ban on rent control and enable municipalities to enact local rent control ordinances to stabilize housing costs and prevent no-cause evictions. We have been seeing a growing interest in rent control across the Commonwealth, with multiple municipalities filing home rule petitions to be able to take action. Rent control is an essential tool to combat displacement, and cities and towns should be able to pass such policies as fit their local housing situation.

Cities and towns that want to take action should be able to do so, and we urge you to include a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase local option (along the lines of S.880/H.1350), which would enable cities and towns to pass laws allowing tenants to join together to match a third-party offer when their homes are being sold.

We also urge you to use this bill to establish a statewide Foreclosure Prevention Program to require servicers to participate in pre-foreclosure mediation with homeowners to explore alternatives to foreclosures, an idea put forth in S.653 and H.942.

We also urge you to take additional steps to increase our supply of affordable housing, such as by funding and writing into statute the Small Properties State Acquisition Fund, which would provide subsidies for nonprofit acquisition of homes from the market, and by including funding for the production of affordable homeownership units that can be kept affordable in perpetuity. We also urge you to add an affordability requirement to the Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP) so that public subsidies to development address the need for affordable housing stock.

Lastly, A Technical Correction

We stand with the Massachusetts AFL-CIO in asking you to address a major concern about Section 35 of the bill. As written, this section would remove the application of prevailing wage laws to certain private development projects on public land. We hope that this was a drafting error and such language can be removed. The state should be using public land to both advance housing goals and create good-paying jobs, and these are not in conflict.

Thank you for all your work on this important bill and vital topic.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

More Letters to the Editor on the Affordable Homes Act

Nancy Phillips, “State delegation needs to support rent control along with governor’s Affordable Homes Act,” Cambridge Day, March 26, 2024.

Massachusetts is in the throes of a terrible housing crisis. A family trying to rent an available two-bedroom apartment in our expensive state (costing, as of February, $2,949 a month on average, according to Apartment Advisor) needs an annual income of at least $117,960. At $56.71 per hour, this is almost four times the state’s $15 minimum wage. (Here in Cambridge, which boasts some of the highest rents in Massachusetts, the average available two-bedroom unit rents for a staggering $3,592 a month, which requires an annual household income of $143,680.)

Meanwhile, waiting lists for rent-subsidized, affordable apartments are vastly oversubscribed, with applicants forced to wait at least three years – and in many towns as long as 10 years.

In response to this crisis, Gov. Maura Healey has introduced the Affordable Homes Act, which addresses the housing crisis in several useful ways, among them:

  • Making it easier to use public land for housing development;
  • Enabling cities and towns to establish real estate transfer fees as a means of raising funds for affordable housing development;
  • Enabling cities and towns to pass inclusionary zoning ordinances by simple majority rather than the currently mandated two-thirds vote. (Inclusionary zoning bylaws are those that require developers of new housing to include a certain percentage of affordable units.)

One critically important issue the bill doesn’t deal with, though, is repealing the 30-year-old statewide ban on rent control so those decisions can be made locally. Surely cities and towns can be trusted, and should be permitted, to make their own decisions on this as they do on other local matters.

I’m sure Cambridge’s state House members and senators will support the Affordable Homes Act. Equally if not more important, I hope they’ll make a strong effort to get the ban on rent control repealed. We in Massachusetts need to be able to do everything possible to provide affordable housing and keep people from being displaced.

Steven Leibowitz, “Healey’s Affordable Home Act gives local governments flexibility to increase housing,” Cape Cod Times, March 24, 2024.

We have talked about the issue of affordable housing on Cape Cod for decades. Our communities are working hard but struggling to find answers. We have the enormous challenge of second home ownership, environmental challenges and preserving open space, and the ever-present argument of the “character” of Cape Cod — something I’ve yet to see defined, especially in a way that overshadows the needs of residents. The people make the character.

Gov. Healey has filed the Affordable Homes Act, legislation that will create a new toolbox of opportunities for cities and towns to creatively address our housing crisis. This is an opportunity for the state to step up as a partner, unlocking options specific to one’s own community. It provides for a town such as Barnstable to have a local transfer fee on expensive real estate that could generate millions for affordable housing. This bill is the first serious effort in decades to provide money and strategies to create affordable, needed, workforce housing.

Please urge your state reps and senators to support this effort and amendments to strengthen the bill further, such as a flexible local transfer fee. The way to preserve Cape Cod is to keep people invested in and able to stay here.

Testimony: Investing in Our Commonwealth and Our Shared Prosperity

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Chair Michlewitz, Chair Rodrigues, and Members of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director at Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group fighting for a more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic commonwealth. Thank you for your work on the FY 2025 budget.

In the following, we outline several key priority areas for the budget to ensure that it builds on recent progress in investing in our commonwealth.

Strengthening Our Commitment to Public Higher Education

Our public colleges and universities are essential vehicles for economic mobility of our commonwealth’s residents and economic vitality of the commonwealth itself. Studies have shown that college graduates are more likely to be healthier, earn significantly more on average, and are less likely to face job loss during an economic recession, and graduates of our public colleges and universities are more likely to stay in Massachusetts to live and work, contributing to our commonwealth and common wealth.

However, our state has been disinvesting from public higher education for the last two decades, with funding for public higher education still below its (inflation-adjusted) value in 2001. When the state reduces funding to public colleges and universities, the result is higher tuition and fees, and a growing debt burden faced by students and families.

The published in-state tuition and fees increase at public 4-year institutions in MA increased 135 percent from 2001 to 2021 after adjusting for inflation, and for two-year institutions, 81 percent, but real Median Household Income in Massachusetts only increased by 8 percent. Just between 2009 and 2021, the average student debt rose 52% for four-year graduates and 62% for community college graduates. When we close off opportunities like that for our students, we are all worse off. 

As you craft the FY 2025 budget, we urge you to incorporate key provisions of the Cherish Act and the Debt-Free Future Act, such as

  • Instituting fair and adequate minimum funding levels for public higher education
  • Ensuring that students are able to graduate from our public colleges and universities debt-free
  • Ensuring that adjunct faculty and part-time staff are eligible for state health care and retirement benefits
  • Reducing wage disparities on campuses
  • Increasing funding for student supports
  • Investing in green and healthy buildings on campus

Fully Funding Our Public Schools

The passage of the Student Opportunity Act in 2019 was a major win for education justice in the commonwealth. We are very appreciative of recent comments that the Legislature will fully fund the Student Opportunity Act’s fourth year of implementation, keeping the law on track to be fully funded by the 2026-2027 school year. Importantly, maintaining that commitment includes fixing the Chapter 70 inflation calculation glitch that, if left unsolved, could permanently reduce school aid and prevent the Commonwealth from meeting the real-dollar targets in the Student Opportunity Act.

Full Funding for School Meals for All

We also urge you to support full funding in support of School Meals for All (Line Items 1596-2422 and 7053-1925).

The research on universal school meals is clear: participation in school meals improves academic achievement, attendance, and student behavior at school; decreases childhood food insecurity; leads to children eating more fruits, vegetables, and milk; and reduces visits to the school nurse.

With the implementation of School Meals for All, more than an additional 100,000 students participated in school lunch in October 2023 compared to October 2019 in schools not previously serving universal free meals. This program has been a success all around, and we must ensure it continues to be so.

Advancing the Common Start Vision

As a member of the Common Start coalition, we would also like to amplify the common Start coalition’s asks:

  • $510 million to continue operational grants to child care providers (line item 3000-1045)
  • Increased funding that makes substantial progress towards the Economic Review Commission’s recommendation of raising early education and care financial assistance reimbursement rates (line items 3000-1041 & 3000-1042)
  • $75 million to increase access to child care financial assistance (line item 3000-4060)
  • $20 million for the Head Start Supplemental Grant (line item 3000-5000)

The Governor, Senate Leadership, and House Leadership have all expressed a commitment to strengthening our child care and early education system, and these investments would help to do that.

Access to Counsel

Without legal representation, many tenants risk becoming homeless. Indeed, most tenants are unrepresented and face eviction alone. It doesn’t have to be that way, and an Access to Counsel program is a proven solution.

We urge the House and Senate Committees on Ways and Means to include in your respective FY25 budgets $3.5 Million (Line-item 0321-1800) to start a Access to Counsel program in tandem with the full Access to Council bill language in S.864/H.4360, which provides the framework for a statewide program.

Increasing Assistance to Families in Deep Poverty

We also urge you to include a 20% increase in cash assistance grant levels (line items 4403-2000 and 4408-1000.

The maximum grant for a family of 3 with no income is only $783 a month, far below even half the federal poverty level – known as Deep Poverty – which is currently $1,076 for a family of 3.  The maximum grant for an elder or person with a disability is only $401 a month.  In January, Governor Healey cut the 10% grant increase that the Legislature had scheduled to go into effect in April.

Deep poverty hurts kids.  It causes health and emotional damage, toxic stress, impaired school performance, and homeless and housing instability. We must do right by our neediest families.

A budget is a moral document, and we urge you to include such investments to advance a vision of a commonwealth that works for all residents.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

Letter: Need to Push Legislation for Affordable Housing

Nina Lev, “Letter: Need to Push Legislation for Affordable Housing,” West Roxbury – Roslindale Bulletin, March 21, 2024.

I have recently had the opportunity to help a family of newcomers to Boston. This experience has given me a new appreciation of our City’s resources. The children were welcomed by the Boston Public Schools. The family has benefitted from excellent care at Boston Medical Center and enjoyed outings at the zoo and city parks. In so many ways we have created wonderful amenities, BUT our housing crisis makes it nearly impossible for our young people to build lives here, newcomers to settle here, and even for many of our residents to remain here.

The average two-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts requires an income of more than twice the minimum wage, with
the State’s median house price being $600,000. Fortunately, the Governor has introduced the Affordable Homes Act which would provide funding for various housing programs and new policy measures for affordable housing. These include enabling cities and towns, like Boston, to pass real estate transfer fees to raise money for affordable housing and creating a process to enable individuals to seal eviction records.

I know from talking with our elected representatives from both Roslindale and West Roxbury that housing is one of their major concerns. We need to encourage them to work within the legislature to support the strongest legislation possible to ensure that the residents of our communities can thrive here throughout their lives.


Nina Lev
Roslindale

Letter: The Affordable Homes Act and the price of living in Massachusetts

Hewon Hwang, “Letter: The Affordable Homes Act and the price of living in Massachusetts,” The Concord Bridge, March 16, 2024.

Our house was the single largest purchase in our lives, but we could afford it on our salaries in 1993. Unfortunately, this is no longer possible for many families today.   

Massachusetts has a housing crisis. Homeownership has become increasingly out of reach, as the state’s median home price is approximately $600,000. In more than 20 communities, including Concord ($1,594,000 in 2023), the median home price recently passed $1 million. The high cost of housing has led to displacement, and in a growing number of municipalities, the local workforce can no longer afford to live there.  

Governor Healey has responded to this crisis by introducing the Affordable Homes Act, which combines funding authorizations for various housing programs with important new policy measures for affordable housing. One of its key proposals is the local real estate transfer fee option. It enables cities and towns to levy a small fee on large real estate transactions to create a dedicated revenue stream for affordable housing production and preservation. Cities and towns across the state have already expressed a desire to do so — Concord’s home rule petition has been refiled for the third time and is pending at the State House. The Affordable Homes Act also includes capital authorizations to support the badly needed repair, rehabilitation, and modernization of over 43,000 crumbling public housing units across the Commonwealth, including $150M for public housing decarbonization and $115 million for sustainable and climate-resilient affordable housing. 

The Affordable Homes Act is a much-needed measure to address our housing crisis. I hope our legislators, Rep. Cataldo, Rep. Gentile, and Senator Barrett, will continue to advocate for the strongest legislation possible at the State House. Let’s make Massachusetts a place where people can afford to live at any stage of life. 

Hewon Hwang 

Letter: Grafton Needs the Affordable Homes Act

Dan Cusher, “Grafton Needs the Affordable Homes Act (Letter),” Grafton News, March 14, 2024.

Grafton, along with every community in the Commonwealth, has a housing crisis. Typical rent for a 2-bedroom apartment in Grafton is $1,500, requiring an income around $70,000, more than twice the minimum wage at 40 hours per week. Home ownership has become increasingly out of reach, with Grafton’s 2024 median single-family home value rising to $596,235, and new construction in town prioritizing luxury McMansions. Seniors who raised their families here can’t afford to stay. Young people who grew up here can’t afford to come back. The Legislature needs to take action before the crisis gets worse.

I’m glad that Governor Healey has responded to this crisis by introducing the Affordable Homes Act, which combines funding authorizations for various housing programs with important new policy measures for affordable housing. One of the most exciting proposals for Grafton is the real estate transfer fee local option.

This would enable cities and towns to levy a small fee on large real estate transactions in order to create a dedicated revenue stream for affordable housing production and preservation. Cities and towns across the state have already expressed a desire to do so, and the state should let them and ensure that the local option is flexible enough for cities and towns across the state to benefit.

I am grateful that the housing crisis will be at the center of the Legislature’s attention this year, and I hope that Senator Moore and Representative Muradian will advocate for the strongest legislation possible.