Wednesday, June 24, 2025
Chair Cyr, Chair Haggerty, and Members of the Joint Committee on Housing:
My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group with chapters across the state committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.
We urge you to give a favorable report to S.971: An Act reforming the housing development incentive program and H.1478: An Act advancing the Massachusetts social housing program. Both of these bills would help spur the development of the mixed-income housing that our Commonwealth desperately needs.
Last session, your chambers voted to increase funding for the Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP), which provides subsidies for new development in gateway cities. Although our gateway cities can benefit from housing production, this program too often ends ups subsidizing units with shockingly high rents in hot markets in little need of the “carrot” of tax incentives.
Zoning reforms are necessary to encourage transit-oriented development in all communities and to encourage the construction of more multifamily housing and fewer McMansion single-family homes. However, housing advocates are routinely told that there is not enough money for subsidies for low-income housing, affordable housing, and public housing while the state provides greater subsidies to high-end units.
This weekend, the Boston Globe reported on the freeze on housing vouchers in the Commonwealth due to increasing rents and funding uncertainties. Why are subsidies for high-end housing flowing when vouchers are being frozen?
The HDIP program would benefit from reforms to ensure that it does produce affordable units. S.971 would do just that, turning HDIP into a program to support mixed-income development and recognizing that we need more housing at all income levels.
Social housing has been a proven model for building mixed-income housing, combining the benefits of traditional public housing with the cash flow of market-rate development. This recognizes the public interest in building housing for a wide range of incomes, and buildings can often be designed to be 1/3 low-income, 1/3 middle-income, and 1/3 higher-income.
When thinking of the type of housing H.1478 would create, I think of my neighbors in Tent City, a mixed-income building in the South End that was the result of years of activism by Mel King and housing justice activists. It remains a thriving community, and our Commonwealth would benefit from more like it.
Dedicated funding for social housing would help our Commonwealth reach our overall housing production goals as well meet the increase in affordable housing needed to meet demand. The issue has been gaining momentum in recent years, and your chambers included some money for a pilot program in the Affordable Homes Act. But we must do more. Our housing crisis demands an “every tool in the toolbox” approach, and this is an essential tool.
We also urge you to reject legislation that would weaken new tools embraced by the Commonwealth. To give one example, the Accessory Dwelling Unit language in the Affordable Homes Act was an important win, and S.1002 (An Act relative to accessory dwelling units on smaller lots) would undermine that. We urge you to give it an adverse report.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts