Massachusetts governor launches advocacy group to push for more housing

Massachusetts’ Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll have taken the unusual step of setting up a nonprofit to advocate for pro-housing efforts at the local level.

One Commonwealth Inc., will work to provide political and financial support for local housing initiatives, a key pillar of the governor’s agenda. The organization will raise money to help residents with grassroots training and pro-housing messaging. “While governors often support their favored candidates with donations from their campaign coffers or from separate political action committees, what Healey and Driscoll are doing is something different: creating an advocacy group to back an important policy,” reports the Boston Globe.

The nonprofit will likely join the fight to support a 2021 law that requires more than 170 municipalities served by public transit to modify zoning to allow multifamily housing. Dozens of cities and towns have passed zoning reform plans, but opposition is strong in some towns.

At least five communities to date have rejected plans to comply with the law. The town of Milton, whose voters rejected a rezoning plan, is facing the withholding of some grant funding and is being sued by the state’s attorney general for noncompliance.

The median price of a single-family home in Greater Boston has reached $900,000 this year, making the drive to build new housing more urgent.

The U.S. is ill-prepared to provide adequate housing for the growing ranks of older people, according to a report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Over the next decade, the U.S. population older than 75 will increase by 45%, growing from 17 million to nearly 25 million, with many expected to struggle financially.

Yale University breaks ground on the nation's largest Living Building student housing complex

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A groundbreaking on Oct. 11 kicked off a project aiming to construct the largest Living Building Challenge-certified residence on a university campus. The Living Village, a 45,000 sf home for Yale University Divinity School graduate students, “will make an ecological statement about the need to build in harmony with the natural world while training students to become ‘apostles of the environment’,” according to Bruner/Cott, which is leading the design team that includes Höweler + Yoon Architecture and Andropogon Associates.

Almost a million apartment units are currently under construction in the U.S., says Apartment List.

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New York City aims to spur construction of more accessory dwelling units (ADUs)

To address a serious housing shortage, New York City is trying to get more homeowners to build accessory dwelling units (ADUs). The city recently unveiled a program that offers owners of single-family homes up to nearly $400,000 to construct an apartment on their property.