FILED ALONGSIDE HER inaugural budget on Wednesday, Gov. Maura Healey’s proposed cabinet reconfiguration legislation offers the first concrete look at the responsibilities of a new standalone housing secretariat.
Housing programs currently operate under the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. Within the governor’s $55.5 billion budget blueprint, some $992 million is recommended under a proposed new Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, which will largely absorb the housing programs currently operating under the housing and economic development cabinet post.
According to Healey’s housing bill, the new office’s mission will include administering programs focused on fairness and equity in housing opportunity; emergency and transitional housing; and housing production, rehabilitation, preservation, affordability, and stability and security. The current combined office of Housing and Economic Development would be renamed as the Executive Office of Economic Development and retain non-housing responsibilities.
The new cabinet post requires legislative approval, something that could take several months to work its way through. In the meantime, the main housing policy voices in the new administration – besides the governor – will be Healey’s housing and economic development secretary, Yvonne Hao, and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll.
“We’re not waiting for the housing secretariat to begin the work,” Driscoll said in an interview, adding that the housing secretary should be thought of more as a captain than someone with access to a magic housing production wand. “This isn’t a housing hero,” Driscoll said.
A steep task awaits the yet-unnamed secretary. The state is shy some 200,000 housing units, according to housing experts, and the bulk of new housing has been concentrated in the Boston region. About 150,000 applicants sit on the public housing waitlist and there are cripplingly low vacancy rates across housing sectors.
Though Driscoll told the Local Government Advisory Commission in February that the new secretariat would be “a chief reason” they could close that housing gap, Driscoll said in an interview Friday that it won’t come down to a singular person’s vision.
As with most of the Healey administration’s early proposals, housing was framed through the lens of state competitiveness.
“This consistently high cost of housing also places Massachusetts at a significant disadvantage as we compete with peer states to attract and retain businesses,” the legislation’s introductory letter reads. “In short, we must create an adequate supply of housing for our young families, workers, and an aging population if we want to remain one of the best states in the nation to live and work.”
Homelessness and emergency assistance are some of the largest ticket items under the new housing office. The governor’s budget proposes $110.8 million for “homeless individual shelters,” which would preserve a more than 2,600 shelter bed expansion, and $324 million to fund the state’s emergency assistance family shelters and services.
Driscoll last month led a working group of municipal and housing leaders to help shape some of the new secretariat’s goals. The new secretary should “implement a dynamic housing campaign that tells the story of what is at stake and how a successful housing strategy can transform the Commonwealth,” the group wrote in its report.
A unified vision is critical from the state level to the individual, Driscoll said. “You feel pretty lonely when you’re in a housing battle,” she said, as a developer trying to get something permitted, a local mayor struggling with inadequate homelessness support, and people being forced to leave their homes or shelters because of expense or capacity. The secretary will have to engage in a decent amount of “myth busting,” she said, because the loudest voices in housing discussions are not necessarily representative of their communities, and “we have to have them understand who they’re impacting.”
It’s the job of the administration to “remind people what’s at stake if we do nothing or stay on the current path,” she said. “Even if we’re building about 20,000 units a year, we can’t take 10 years to meet our housing needs.”