Video from Last Thursday’s Forum on Steward & the Health Care Crisis

hank you so much to everyone who joined us last Thursday for our forum “The Steward Crisis and the Future of Health Care in Massachusetts.” Thank you to our wonderful moderator Enid Eckstein, engaging speakers, and event partner Mass-Care.

If you missed the event (or wanted to watch again!), you can find the video here: https://youtu.be/t8rbARiy__A.

During the forum, Bill Walczak mentioned his recent writings on the Steward situation. You can find two of those articles here:

https://www.dotnews.com/2024/steward-case-poses-just-beginning-our-community-s-health-care-woes

https://www.dotnews.com/2024/disowned-our-state-dot-region-s-residents-healthcare-experts-should

Stay tuned for future actions to take and future forums to continue this important discussion.

The House and Senate Passed a Final Version of the Affordable Homes Act. What’s in It?

On August 1, or, in Massachusetts State House time “still July 31,” the House and Senate passed a final version of the Affordable Homes Act, which Governor Healey first introduced all the way back in October.

The vote was 128 to 24 in the House, with Democrats Colleen Garry (D-Dracut) and Dave Robertson (D-Tewksbury) voting no and Republicans Marcus Vaughn (R-Wrentham), David Vieira (R-Falmouth), and Steven Xiarhos (R-Yarmouth) voting yes. The Senate vote was 38 to 2, with Peter Durant (R-Spencer) and Ryan Fattman (R-Sutton) voting no.

The Affordable Homes Act, also referred to as the housing bond bill, is a combination of bond authorizations and new housing policies.

First: what is a bond bill?

A bond bill is legislation that authorizes the state to issue and sell bonds to fund capital projects and programs. The bond bill contains capital authorizations, which identify programs that can be funded through revenue raised through said bonds. Importantly, a bond bill only authorizes the spending; it provides a menu, not a direct appropriation.

The final bill promises $5.16 billion in new investment in housing, but it is important to remember that this is not an exact budget appropriation. Indeed, Healey’s own capital spending plan dedicates only $2 billion for housing over the next five years, and $400 million in fiscal 2025. To be clear, this is a significant increase over recent years, but it indicates that all $5.16 billion in authorized expenditures are unlikely to be realized.

Among the bond authorizations, there were many important items, such as:

  • $2 billion authorization for public housing
  • $150 million for public housing decarbonization and $275 million for sustainable and green housing initiatives
  • $10 million authorization for a fund to help nonprofits acquire existing, non-subsidized housing units and keep them affordable for at least 30 years, protecting them from the speculative market

So next: what policies got included?

The final bill included such new policies as the following:

  • Legalizing accessory dwelling units (ADUs) by right (Governor’s, House, & Senate bills): The bill requires cities and towns to adopt by-right permitting in single-family zoned districts, caps parking mandates at 1 spot per unit for ADUs further than ½ mile from public transit, and bans owner occupancy requirements. Many cities and towns across the state have been fighting to pass zoning reforms to allow such ADUs (that is, small, independent residences built on the same lot as a single-family home) as a way to increase housing stock.
  • Eviction record sealing protections (Governor’s & Senate bills): The bill prohibits a consumer reporting agency from including in any report a sealed eviction record, and it gives tenants the ability to petition to seal eviction records in no-fault, non-payment, and fault cases over set time periods and the ability to seal any case that is dismissed or results in a final judgment in favor of the defendant. Unfortunately, none of this record sealing will be automatic; tenants will have to petition the court to get records sealed. Nonetheless, this is an important step because having an eviction record can create a devastating barrier for tenants looking for housing and these records impact people’s ability to obtain housing, credit, and employment, harming many and disproportionately impacting women and people of color.
  • Foreclosure Prevention Pilot Program (Senate bill): The bill creates a pilot foreclosure prevention program in 5 communities with the highest foreclosure rates statewide. The program would allow homeowners facing foreclosure to request a mediation with their lender, together with a neutral third party, to pursue alternatives to foreclosure.
  • Creation of an Office of Fair Housing (Governor’s, House, & Senate bills): The bill establishes an office within the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities with explicit focus on fair housing and establishes a trust fund for enforcement initiatives, fair housing testing, education, and outreach. Strong fair housing laws and enforcement ensure that people are not discriminated against in buying or renting a home for reasons of race, color, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, etc. 
  • Facilitating the Use of State Land for Housing (Governor’s, House, & Senate bills): The bill would help streamline the disposition of land under the control of a state agency or quasi for housing purposes. When the state owns the land, it can also lower the costs of building housing, making it easier to build affordable units.

What policies were excluded from the final bill?

  • Transfer Fee (Governor’s bill): This local option policy would have allowed cities and towns to apply a small fee to high-end real estate transactions in order to fund affordable housing. 
  • Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (House bill): TOPA is a local option policy in which tenants would be given the right of first refusal to band together to purchase their building when the owner puts it on the market.
  • Banning Broker’s Fees (Senate bill): This language would have required broker’s fees to be paid by the party who originally engaged with the broker — meaning, in almost all cases, the landlord rather than the tenant.
  • Inclusionary Zoning by Simple Majority (Governor’s bill, modified in the Senate bill): This would have allowed cities and towns to adopt inclusionary zoning policies with a simple majority vote of their City Council / Town Meeting / Select Board, rather than the  two-thirds vote that is currently required. Such ordinances require developers to build a certain percentage of affordable units as a part of new construction.

What’s the takeaway?

The bill contains a number of policy victories, but it only makes a dent in the overall affordable housing crisis. We need continued advocacy to make sure that promised spending actually happens, and we need our Legislature to give cities and towns the tools that they want (like a transfer fee, like TOPA, like rent stabilization) to best respond to the crisis locally. Where the Affordable Homes Act fell short, it did so due to heavy lobbying from the real estate industry: a sign of the need for greater organizing among progressives and tenant advocates in support of a housing justice agenda.

Statement about Beacon Hill’s Adjournment after a Dysfunctional, Unproductive Session

Jonathan Cohn, policy director of Progressive Massachusetts, released the following statement from the organization about the Legislature’s adjournment with key work left undone

“We are disappointed and appalled to see the ostensibly full-time House and Senate adjourn this morning after failing to take decisive action on so many key issues. 

Rather than advancing a robust shared legislative agenda throughout the past year and a half, our Legislature pushed so many important priorities off to the very end of the session, creating bottlenecks and setting themselves up for failure. 

It does not have to be this way. Why is it? Because of a State House Leadership that is overly deferential to corporate interests and lacking in vision, an autocratic internal structure, and the learned helplessness of too much of the rank-and-file. 

The Legislature ran out the clock on passing meaningful legislation on climate change, despite our living through a summer that continues to break heat records. The Legislature whittled away at the policy components of Governor Healey’s housing bond bill, caving to real estate interests and ignoring public opinion. We have a housing crisis and a climate crisis, and our Legislature is in clear denial about both. 

The list of bills left stalled or defeated through inaction is long and includes legislation that one or both chambers have passed overwhelmingly in past sessions. Next year, we fully expect many of these bills to be refiled, and the Legislature will hold hearings on them in which they will pretend to hear about them for the first time, an insult to the public’s intelligence and their own. 

Advocates have worked hard this session to build momentum for legislation on housing, climate, criminal legal reform, maternal health justice, health care reform, and countless other issues. Their voices, backed by robust public support for action, should be heard. 

The ongoing Veepstakes has highlighted the prolific legislating of narrowly held Democratic majorities in Michigan and Minnesota. When Democrats finally achieved governing trifectas, they immediately went to work to pass long lists of held-up priorities, showing what can be done when the government prioritizes the well-being of the public. Massachusetts likewise finally achieved a Democratic governing trifecta (despite long having the third largest Democratic supermajority in the country) and instead demonstrated dysfunction and lack of ambition. As Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to make the case to the American public that voters should give Democrats a trifecta in DC this November, our Legislature isn’t just failing the people of the commonwealth; they continue to fail the whole country.” 

The 193rd legislative session of the Massachusetts General Court has been historically unproductive. As of July 29, fewer than 230 bills had been signed into law across the two years of the session. By contrast, the last several legislative sessions saw 564 (2021-2022), 539 (2019-2020), 626 (2017-2018), 635 (2015-2016), and 701 (2013-2014) bills signed into law. 

Of the 227 bills signed into law this session as of Monday, 203 were about one city, one town, one person, or a combination of several towns. 

Progressive Massachusetts is a statewide, multi-issue, membership-based advocacy organization focused on shared prosperity, racial and social justice, strong democracy, and environmental sustainability. The organization was founded in 2013 and has 21 chapters across the Commonwealth. 

Wanted: Bold Climate Action

Last week, the House took up its climate omnibus bill. While the bill contains a number of important reforms, it lacks the ambition of the Senate’s recent bill, which did far more to accelerate the transition away from gas. And the Senate’s bill still hadn’t gone far enough to meet the moment, especially around environmental justice.

The process in the House was also emblematic of the chamber’s democracy deficit: of 107 amendments filed, 91 were withdrawn, and the handful that were adopted were watered down. What we see time and time again in the MA Legislature is that bad process leads to bad outcomes.

To read more about this, check out blog posts from Jess Nahigian at the Sierra Club and Dan Zackin at 350 Mass.

The Mass Power Forward coalition will be hosting rallies at the State House from through next Wednesday (7/31). You can sign up to join a rally here.

Better Late Than Never: House and Senate Pass Final FY 2025 Budget, Sending it to the Governor

At the end of last week, the MA House and Senate agreed to a final version of the FY 2025 budget. There are a number of big wins (but some disappointments) in it.

What We’re Excited About:

  • $170 million for universal school meals
  • $117.5 million for tuition-free community college
  • Major steps to deliver affordable, high-quality education and child care that will mean more stable funding for providers, better pay for educators, and more affordability for families
  • Continued funding for fare-free transit in Regional Transit Authorities
  • An access to counsel pilot program that will provide legal representation for low-income tenants
  • Increased cash assistance for families, seniors, and people with disabilities in poverty
  • Continued work to replace our state flag and seal

Click here to see how the full $1.3 Billion in new Fair Share revenue was allocated by the House and the Senate — new investments that you made possible by volunteering and voting for the Fair Share campaign in 2022.

What We’re Disappointed About:

  • That only $10 million was provided for the implementation of free calls in prisons and jails (No Cost Calls), well below the $35 million allocated in the Governor’s budget and the House budget
  • The exclusion of stronger reporting requirements for No Cost Calls implementation passed by the Senate
  • The exclusion of a key voting reform to delink the municipal census from voter registration passed by the Senate
  • The legalization of online lottery sales, which is an extremely regressive way of raising revenue

The budget now goes to the Governor to sign.

The Legislative Session Ends in Four Weeks. Here’s What’s Left

State House at night

Four weeks. 

That’s how much time is left in the current formal legislative session in the MA State House. The session will technically continue until the very beginning of January, but the Legislature is unlikely to take up any non-controversial bills after July 31. 

In 2024 so far (the second year of the legislative session), 122 bills have been signed into law. 116 of those 122 were about either one city, one town, one person, or–in one case–two towns. 

Here are the other 6: 

  • Becoming the 49th state to criminalize revenge porn
  • Passing a supplemental budget that imposed cruel limits on shelter stays
  • Authorizing the state to borrow $400 million over the next two fiscal years to finance improvements for municipal roads and bridges — and then establishing that said bonds shall be payable not later than June 30, 2059
  • Establishing a Mitochondrial Disease Awareness Week and a Noah Fernandes Mitochondrial Disease Awareness Day
  • A short-term budget to address the fact that they haven’t passed a budget yet 

That means that there is a LOT left to do in this final month. 

What can you do now? 

You might be seeing your legislators at the local July 4th parade or festival. Make sure that they know you are paying attention and want the Legislature to take action on these many pending issues. And then after you enjoy the holiday, stay tuned for actions and events on how to build momentum in these final weeks. 

Where do things stand? 

The House and Senate have ongoing negotiations (“Conference Committees”) to finalize several bills: 

Added to that list soon will be the Affordable Homes Act, which the House passed in early June and the Senate passed last week. 

What else is still in play? 

Several bills have passed one chamber but not the other. Just over the past couple of weeks, the Senate recently passed a plastics reduction bill and a climate omnibus bill, and the House passed a maternal health bill as well as an economic development bill. 

The Senate has also passed bills to allow for gender-neutral state IDs, to make it easier for unhoused individuals to get state IDs, to require school districts that teach sex ed to use comprehensive, medically accurate curricula, to strengthen our child care and early education infrastructure (a fight also happening through the budget), and to control some prescription drug prices. The House also passed a hospital regulation bill and a long overdue update to parentage laws. 

Some important bills have gotten out of committee, awaiting further action. Here are a few: 

And others are sitting in committee, still alive but awaiting action, such as legislation to raise the age of criminal majority in order to keep teenagers out of adult prisons. 

What should you take away? 

What we should always remember is that we have a full-time legislature and the second largest Democratic supermajorities in the country (and a Democratic trifecta). Our Legislature can and should be ambitious and comprehensive in its policymaking, not procrastinating or playing catch-up. Everything mentioned in this email is something the Legislature can and should do, with the only limitations being those they impose on themselves. 

Statement on the Senate Redraft of the Affordable Homes Act

Massachusetts has a housing crisis, and voters across the state are calling for bold action. If only the Massachusetts Senate Leadership would care to listen.

While we are happy to see the bill preserve vital pieces of Healey’s bill like eviction sealing and accessory dwelling units, it in no way meets the urgency of our housing crisis. 

Rather than strengthening and building on Governor Healey’s housing bond bill, Senate Leadership has decided to cave to the real estate lobby, nixing the local option real estate transfer fee and relegating it to a commission that will likely never even meet.  

Let us be clear: the public wants to see robust action on the housing crisis. MA voters support a local option real estate transfer fee by 3 to 1 and routinely show strong support for a wide range of necessary policy solutions. 

Every day, more and more people are being displaced as they can no longer afford the crushing rents and sky-high housing prices. We need every tool in the toolbox, at every level. We can only tackle the housing crisis with investments from the federal level, the state level, and municipal level. Our State Legislature needs to stop preventing cities from playing their part. 

Around the country, right-wing Republican elected officials have been trying to prevent progressive cities from passing their own laws. Massachusetts Democrats, however, beat them to that by a century and—whether out of indifference, elitism, or plain-old corruption—uphold that system today. Our Commonwealth deserves better policy making than this.

Mass Voters Show Strong Support for Progressive Housing Action

A newly released UMass/WCVB poll shows strong support for progressive housing policies, showing yet again how out-of-touch the State House can be.

Rent Control: 72% of voters supported allowing local governments to set a limit on how much rents can be increased each year, with only 13% opposed.

Local Option Real Estate Transfer Fee: 62% of voters supported allowing cities and towns to tax real estate transactions above $1 million to help raise funds for local affordable housing, with only 21% opposed.

Accessory Dwelling Units: 66% of surveyed voters supported allowing homeowners to add small, add-on living spaces called accessory dwelling units to their property, with only 9% opposed.

And despite the buzz around opposition in a few towns, the MBTA Communities Act, which requires cities and towns with MBTA proximity to rezone near transit, had the support of 55% of MA voters, with only 18% opposed.

Statement on the House Redraft of the Affordable Homes Act

“Massachusetts has a housing crisis, and voters across the state are calling for bold action. If only the Massachusetts House Leadership would care to listen.

Rather than strengthening and building on Governor Healey’s housing bond bill, House Leadership has decided to cave to the real estate lobby, axing the local option real estate transfer fee, eviction sealing protections, and measures to increase affordability of new development. We need every tool in the toolbox, and at every level, to address our housing crisis.

Let’s be clear: members of House Leadership are being dishonest when they claim that they oppose a local option real estate transfer fee because it is a “piecemeal” solution that doesn’t help every city and town. Such concerns were nowhere to be found during the budget process, when those very same representatives had no problem stuffing the budget full of outsized perks for their own districts. Dedicated funding for dog parks in the North End don’t benefit even the full city of Boston, but giving Boston the ability to tame real estate speculation and preserve and expand affordable housing has benefits far beyond the city itself—not to mention the many cities and towns that want to take actions well.

The House is certainly not acting with an eye to public opinion. MA voters support a local option real estate transfer fee by 3 to 1. 

Last year, when state representatives passed tax cuts for the rich proposed by Governor Healey, many of them emphasized the importance of giving the Governor a “win.” Now that the Governor wants a “win” for working and middle-class residents across the Commonwealth, the House sings a different tune, showing that they care less about Healey’s legacy or their everyday constituents than they do about their donors.” 

Just over 100 Days into 2024: What Beacon Hill Has Accomplished

Now that we’re in mid-April, we’re just over 100 days into 2024 and just over 100 days until July 31, i.e., the last day of the formal period of the legislative session.

So what’s happened in 2024 so far?

74 bills have been signed into law in 2024:

  • 44 are about just 1 town.
  • 17 are about just 1 city.
  • 12 are about just 1 person

That totals 73 out of the 74 being about 1 town, 1 city, or 1 person. (Some are about 1 person in 1 city or 1 person in 1 town, or 1 person in 1 county, of course.)

And that 1 bill left over? Perhaps something promising?

It’s about 2 towns.

We have a lot of work to do.