Mass. Passes $5.2B Housing Bill, But Economic Development Bill Stalls
Massachusetts lawmakers passed the largest housing bill in the state's history early Thursday morning after an overnight hearing in which they raced to address a host of bills before the end of the legislative session.
Lawmakers brokered a deal for a $5.2B housing bond bill that experts say will help alleviate the state's housing crunch. The bill includes zoning efforts including the creation of by right accessory dwelling units, and it brings about billions in funding for affordable housing creation.
Although the bill has received applause from many housing advocates and developers, the final version left out some pieces that had been hotly debated, including a transfer fee proposal and a provision that would eliminate broker fees for tenants.
The package is the first major housing-related initiative that has been passed since Gov. Maura Healey took office last year.
"The bond bill passing is a huge, huge milestone and is helping provide some relief for the pipeline," Beacon Communities President Josh Cohen said at Bisnow's Boston Affordable Housing Summit Thursday morning.
"The optimistic part is that the need is there," he added. "We have public sector partners that are devoted to this. We've got a groundswell of the political, constituent, neighborhood level to do this work. It's all about putting together great deals and being prepared to wait a little bit."
Healey first introduced the legislation in October as a $4B bill that would become the largest housing bond bill in the state's history. In July, the House and the Senate passed their versions of the bill leading up to Thursday's final vote.
"CHAPA applauds the commitment shown by the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Governor to take the steps necessary to meet the moment," the Citizens Housing and Planning Association said in a statement. "While the Affordable Homes Act is a remarkable and historic piece of legislation, it will not be a panacea for all of the housing challenges facing Massachusetts."
The bill includes $2B toward the state's 40,000-unit public housing portfolio to repair the aging infrastructure. It also included the momentum fund to help boost mixed-income developments and a provision to seal eviction records for tenants in certain cases.
Others applauded the bill for allowing accessory dwelling units across the state that could generate between 8,000 and 10,000 new housing units over the next five years.
“This is a critical win for the growing pro-housing movement in Massachusetts. ADUs are a gentle yet effective tool in the Massachusetts toolbox to address our severe housing storage," Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, said in a statement. "We look forward to joining key housing stakeholders in Massachusetts to continue the charge for supplying more homes for our current and future residents."
However, parts of the original bill were scrapped, including the creation of a transfer fee between 0.5% and 2% on property sales of more than $1M, plus a $1M expansion of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, which would have expanded water infrastructure to communities that can't support new housing development.
Although lawmakers pushed the housing bond bill to the governor's desk, as well as other bills involving statutes for establishing parentage and increasing benefits to veterans, several other bills failed to pass before the end of the legislative session, The Boston Globe reported.
The state's $2.9B economic development bill failed to pass, as House members and senators couldn't reach an agreement by the end of the session. The bill included language that would have unlocked land for a new soccer stadium to be built in Everett, plus billions in investments for life sciences and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and wind energy.
“This legislative session, our Commonwealth missed a vital opportunity to clean up a brownfields site for an environmental justice community, robbing the city of Everett and its community of the ability to remove a dilapidated and decommissioned power plant and remediate a site contaminated over the decades and replace it with a public park, water front access, and a privately funded soccer stadium - which was just one piece of this very significant project,” a spokesperson for The Kraft Group, which hopes to build the soccer stadium for the New England Revolution, said in a statement to the Globe.
Another bill that stalled would have brought stricter oversight over hospitals in the commonwealth, an issue that has gained more attention due to Steward Health Care's ongoing bankruptcy proceedings and the shuttering of two of its hospitals.
