Massachusetts Housing Secretary says uncertainty may scare away investors
BOSTON (SHNS) – State government leaders in Massachusetts are trying to instigate a building boom to address a housing shortage marked by high rents and sale prices, but a top housing official is now warning that headwinds from Washington could threaten their efforts.
'The equity that's often needed to facilitate a deal doesn't like uncertainty, and we are in the midst of lots of uncertainty,' Housing and Livable Communities Secretary Ed Augustus said in Lee on Wednesday during a policy talk with local experts hosted by the Berkshire Edge.
He added, 'If you come in and want to fund a project, and you look at what the [financial estimate] says, but you're going to actually go in the ground 18 months from now, how could you guarantee that those are the prices that you're going to have, given this uncertainty?'
It's an argument Augustus also made earlier in the week, testifying before lawmakers in Gloucester on Monday about Gov. Maura Healey's fiscal year 2026 budget proposal.
'What developers tell me is equity, which they are usually pursuing in order to get the financing to build a unit, equity doesn't like uncertainty. And the idea that this project may cost 10 or 15 or 20% more than they're projecting, it doesn't often attract that investment,' Augustus said on Monday.
The administration has long pointed to a goal of increasing the statewide supply of year-round housing by 222,000 units over the next decade — a 7% increase in supply.
As production slowed over the past few decades, the share of homes available for sale or rent in Massachusetts has shrunk to 1.6%, and costs have skyrocketed.
Programs focused on keeping low-income residents housed are struggling to keep up with housing inflation. The Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program has seen large increases in spending, without making a significant bump in the 160,000-person waitlist of people who need help paying rent.
'We're putting significant additional dollars into the voucher program, but not necessarily getting more vouchers. We're just having to pay higher rents for the vouchers that have already been leased so that we don't lose any of those units and have people fall into homelessness. So again, some of it is just, you're paying a lot more, but you're not necessarily getting more. You're trying to keep what you've got,' Augustus said Wednesday.
The governor and Legislature passed a law last year that authorizes $5.16 billion in long-term bonding, mostly focused on production of new units. State officials are trying to put some of that money, and new production-oriented policies, to work in a state where building remains mostly under the oversight of local zoning rules.
The state housing secretariat estimates that the law will lead to the creation of over 45,000 new units and the preservation of 27,000.
The law was signed in August, three months before the election, and Healey and Augustus have both warned recently that policies coming down from President Donald Trump could threaten the planned production boom.
In addition to seeing a pullback of investors, the housing secretary warned Wednesday about Trump's tariffs on lumber making it more expensive to build housing.
'When you get most of your lumber from Canada, and that's subject to a 25% tariff, that is driving up the costs,' he said.
Trump's promised tariffs on Canadian lumber are scheduled to start on April 2. The 25% tariff on softwood lumber used in most home building would be on top of the existing 14.5% lumber tariffs previously imposed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
At a National League of Cities Conference, Vice President JD Vance spoke Monday about the national housing crisis, calling it 'not acceptable or sustainable' that the average income it takes to buy a new house is nearly two times the average salary of a typical American family.
'We want Americans to be able to afford the American dream of homeownership because we know that when people own their homes, it makes them a stakeholder. It makes them a stakeholder in their neighborhoods, in their cities, and ultimately, of course, in this country that all of us love so much,' Vance said.
He pointed at the Biden administration, saying the cost of a median-price home more than doubled under former President Joe Biden. He mentioned how lower energy costs could aid housing development, and lamented how immigrants living in the country illegally are increasing the demand for limited housing.
In addition to urging people to be 'a little bit smarter about our local zoning rules,' Vance said the administration is working towards cutting red tape at the Office of Housing and Urban Development that 'hike costs and shift the decision-making from local governments to Washington, D.C.'
'I'm hard-pressed to think of a time in my 40 years of life where it's been so hard for normal American citizens to afford a home,' Vance said. 'Even renting a home has become a challenge or, worse yet, fallen completely out of reach for so many of our families.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Bill lays out options for transferring small businesses
BOSTON (SHNS) – Warning that a 'silver tsunami' of Baby Boomer businessowners looking to sell in the next 15 to 20 years could lead to vanishing local small businesses, advocates asked lawmakers Thursday to provide incentives for employee ownership structures. John Abrams, who said his business was employee-owned for 40 years and has written two books on employee ownership, said about three million American small businesses including about 70,000 in Massachusetts have founders older than 55 and are likely to transition ownership in the next two decades. 'Some of those companies will be passed down in families, but less than in the past. Many will unceremoniously close their doors finding no buyer, leaving holes on Main Street. Others will be targeted by strategic buyers and private equity. They may be absorbed, bundled, relocated, carved up, sold for parts, their mission and culture undone. Jobs will be lost,' he said as part of a panel organized by the Coalition for Worker Ownership and Power. 'While many founders wish to preserve the businesses they devoted much of their life to, they and their advisors, financial planners, succession consultants, business brokers, accountants, know little of the employee ownership options available that can accomplish that.' Coalition members pitched the Joint Committee on Economic Development on a bill (H 503 / S 305) they said would make it easier for employees to buy the businesses they work for during ownership transitions, including by giving employees a right of first refusal, making technical assistance available and incentivizing the selling owner by exempting sales of less than $1 million (or the first $1 million in sales of a greater value) from the state capital gains tax, according to a committee summary. Halsey Platt, the owner of a residential construction business based in Ayer, told the committee that he is in the process of converting his business into an employee cooperative. He said he has been building the business for 33 years. As he begins to think about exiting the business, he said 'the notion of being able to have my employees be able to build generational wealth was incredibly appealing to me.' 'I think by the Legislature enacting these laws, it will make my choice and that business transition more normalized. And I think if the Legislature moves forward with this, part of what happens here in Massachusetts will be that it changes the landscape, that then employees get educated about what an employee cooperative is and they are able to start to think about that,' Platt said. 'This bill is not restrictive in terms of the owner of the business who wants to sell. It is simply giving those employees the opportunity to match that offer.' WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Judge throws out ‘unfunded mandate' lawsuits over MBTA Communities Act
Multiple lawsuits against the state filed by towns trying to avoid following the MBTA Communities Act were dismissed by a judge Friday. Nine towns — Duxbury, Hamilton, Hanson, Holden, Marshfield, Middleton, Wenham, Weston and Wrentham — filed lawsuits earlier this year after the state Division of Local Mandates determined the law was an 'unfunded mandate.' The cases were the latest in a history of challenges to the 2021 law, which requires towns and cities served by the MBTA to update their zoning to allow more multifamily housing. 'We are pleased the courts have again affirmed the intent of the MBTA Communities Law, and we look forward to working with the remaining communities to complete their zoning changes,' Housing and Livable Communities Secretary Ed Augustus said in a statement. 'Massachusetts' housing shortage has led to unaffordable prices and rising rents, but the MBTA Communities Law is working to deliver new housing where it's needed most and to bring down the cost of housing for all residents.' The MBTA Communities Act requires 177 cities and towns served by the MBTA to create at least one zoning district where multifamily housing is allowed by right. The goal of the law was to reduce barriers to new housing development and relieve pressure on the expensive local housing market, though no housing is guaranteed or required to be built. In a January ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld the law as constitutional and mandatory, though the court said the compliance guidelines had not gone through the correct legal process and were, therefore, unenforceable. Since then, the state has released new, emergency guidelines, giving noncompliant towns until July 14 to comply. Under the Local Mandate Law, since 1980, any state law or regulation that would impose more than 'incidental administration expenses' on local governments must either be fully funded by the state or be conditional on local acceptance of the rule. In October, the Wrentham Select Board requested the Division of Local Mandates determine whether the MBTA Communities Act violated this law. In February, DLM Director Jana DiNatale confirmed that she believed it did. She wrote in a letter to the town's Select Board that grants the state has offered towns to help them develop new zoning and accommodate new housing development showed that the law did impose additional costs, but did not fully fund its local implementation. However, the DLM determination, unlike the January Supreme Judicial Court ruling, did not immediately make the law unenforceable. In his Friday decision, Super Court Judge Mark Gildea wrote that he disagreed that any of the towns had demonstrated any direct costs associated with following the law. The nine towns had listed anticipated impacts to infrastructure, public safety and other municipal services related to new housing development, but Gildea said these were speculative and indirectly, not directly, related. 'The Municipalities have neither pled specific costs for anticipated infrastructure costs, nor provided any specific timeline for anticipated construction projects,' he wrote. 'Instead, the only allegations and averments before the court are generalized comments about large-scale issues they foresee.' Last week, the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities announced that 133 cities and towns, or about 75% of those affected by the MBTA Communities Act, had passed new zoning meant to comply with the regulations. Zoning changes under MBTA Communities Act spurs 3K new houses - so far Middleborough sues state over MBTA Communities: 'One size does not fit all' Mass. AG Campbell says 'unfunded mandate' determination won't stop MBTA Communities Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
State-level AI regulation ban emerging as D.C. flashpoint
BOSTON (SHNS) – Governors and legislatures 'won't be happy' if the federal government bars them from enacting any state-level regulations on artificial intelligence for the next decade, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey said Wednesday while pledging an effort to get the policy rider tossed from a funding bill. The junior senator from Massachusetts convened civil rights activists and academic experts for a virtual event, where they escalated their opposition to a provision in the U.S. House-approved reconciliation package imposing a 10-year moratorium on state AI restrictions. Markey said that when the bill emerges in the U.S. Senate, he will try to have it eliminated 'as a violation of the Senate rules for reconciliation.' 'We have to be clear about the provision: rather than proposing any plan to address the risks of AI, [the bill would] say you can't do anything about it. But governors are not going to be happy with that, state legislatures won't be happy with it, and I think increasingly, Republicans and Democrats are not going to be happy with it,' Markey said Wednesday. Alondra Nelson, a former Biden administration science official who is now a professor at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study, argued that governments cannot wait another decade before pursuing limitations on the use of AI and automated decision-making systems. 'AI systems are already, today, reshaping equality and opportunity in real people's lives. We know that IRS algorithms have disproportionately targeted black taxpayers for audits. We know that facial recognition systems are already leading to wrongful arrests. We know already that insurance companies are using surveillance data that creates discriminatory pricing for different Americans. We know that the uses of AI in health care are sometimes missing cancer in darker-skin patients while detecting it in other patients,' Nelson said. 'These aren't hypothetical future risks. They're certainly not risks that we can wait for 10 years to address. These are documented harms that are happening to members of the American public right now.' The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee added the moratorium language to the budget reconciliation bill. At a markup hearing last month, committee chair Rep. Brett Guthrie of Kentucky said the proposal would implement 'guardrails that protect against state-level AI laws that could jeopardize our technological leadership.' However, the proposal has drawn some bipartisan pushback. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said Tuesday she did not know the 10-year AI regulation ban was in the bill when she voted to advance it and is 'adamantly OPPOSED to this.' She added that she would not vote in favor of the finalized bill — which cleared the House by a one-vote margin — if it returns from the Senate still containing the moratorium. Forty attorneys general, both Democrats and Republicans, jointly penned a letter to congressional leaders on May 16 announcing opposition to the provision, warning that its impact 'would be sweeping and wholly destructive of reasonable state efforts to prevent known harms associated with AI.' Attorneys general previously called for federal AI governance to focus on 'high risk' systems with emphasis on transparency, testing and enforcement. Attorney general letter on AI moratoriumDownload 'Rather than follow the recommendation from the bipartisan coalition of State Attorneys General, the amendment added to the reconciliation bill abdicates federal leadership and mandates that all states abandon their leadership in this area as well,' the 40 AGs wrote in the letter circulated by the National Association of Attorneys General. 'This bill does not propose any regulatory scheme to replace or supplement the laws enacted or currently under consideration by the states, leaving Americans entirely unprotected from the potential harms of AI. Moreover, this bill purports to wipe away any state-level frameworks already in place.' Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell was among the letter's signatories. On Beacon Hill, elected officials have been weighing the potential risks of AI against the economic upsides of a fast-growing industry. Lawmakers and Gov. Maura Healey last year included $100 million in an economic development bond bill to create a Massachusetts AI Hub, which Healey's office said would 'facilitate the application of artificial intelligence across the state's ecosystem.' Lawmakers targeted AI in several bills pending this term, proposing new guardrails around its use in health care decision-making, additional consumer protection measures, a study on greenhouse gas emissions from the electrically demanding technology, and more. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
