Mass. must build 222,000 homes over the next decade to rein in housing costs, state says
Building the needed homes will not be easy.
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'The primary factor contributing to the state's housing crisis is that there are not enough homes to meet the needs of people living here,' the report said. 'For more than two decades, Massachusetts' growth in housing demand has outpaced additional supply, resulting in low vacancies and intense demand for the homes that are available.'
The figure was developed by the Healey administration's newly-formed Housing Advisory Committee as part of the state's first comprehensive housing plan, and encapsulates the projected number of homes that will be needed by 2035 to accommodate the state's existing population, newly formed households by younger people who are seeking homes for the first time, and people who move here.
Workers at an apartment building under construction in Revere in 2023.
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
The committee, along with researchers at the UMass Donahue Institute, assumed modest population growth over the next decade when calculating the projection. But even if the state's population remains flat, Massachusetts
would still need to build some 73,000 homes over that period to account for existing demand and newly formed Gen Z and Millennial households.
If the state were to build 222,000 homes by 2030, it would ease the immense pressure on the housing market, the advisory committee said in a report Thursday. But it would not solve the housing problem altogether. The state's public housing portfolio is still at risk of losing units, and many homes are at growing risk of flooding due to climate change, the report found.
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And the report did not specifically account for the need for housing that's affordable to lower-income households.
It did identify a set of strategies to help fill the supply shortage and maintain the state's existing housing stock. The state should continue to simplify zoning rules to make it easier to build, and identify state-owned parcels that could be developed in the short term. It should also dedicate more resources to the preservation of existing affordable housing, and streamline efforts to repair the deteriorating state public housing portfolio.
Andrew Brinker can be reached at
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