Legislation aims to create more permanently affordable housing in Massachusetts

By Nicole Abrams

State legislators and community land trust advocates are pushing for public funding for affordable housing in Massachusetts.

Last week, state Sen. Liz Miranda and Rep. Chris Worrell advocated for their bill titled “Homes for Lasting Affordability” before the Joint Committee on Housing by state legislators.

The bill, which was drafted by the Greater Boston Community Land Trust Network, calls for the creation of a state funded permanent affordability homeownership program that focused on funding smaller projects of up to 25 units.

Mark Martinez, a housing staff attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute and the president of the board of the Highland Park Community Land Trust, drafted the bill. He said that units are lost every year because they are not permanently affordable and there aren’t any state funds that go towards permanently affordable housing. 

“That's why we created this bill, to start to advocate for a pool of money that would be able to come in from the state, that would be able to be used for permanently affordable housing,” said Martinez.

Martinez said that the Greater Boston Community Land Trust Network created this bill as a way of allowing community land trusts to build permanently affordable housing on their land.

“What we need are funds to help with that, because building anything in Massachusetts right now is really expensive, and it becomes even more expensive when we talk about affordable housing,” said Martinez.

During her testimony, Miranda explained that the rising cost of housing was leading to more wealth inequality, especially among communities of color.

“The current state of programs for affordable housing construction exclude permanently affordable owned homes and we need to close this gap,” said Miranda during her testimony.

Worrell also explained in his testimony that this bill would create more housing stability for families in the Commonwealth.

“If we are serious about tackling our housing crisis and ensuring that families can stay in communities they help build, we need to champion policies like this,” said Worrell.

Minnie McMahon, program director for the Greater Boston Community Land Trust Network at the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), explained that the network consists of multiple area community land trusts with shared concerns around the lack of housing affordability.

McMahon explained that these community land trusts allow for the community to buy the land at a low cost.

“The community owns the land through this nonprofit that they collectively govern, and they decommodify it. They take it out of the market,” said McMahon.

Penn Loh, a teaching professor at Tufts University’s Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, said that he learned about community land trusts through DSNI in the mid ’90s.

“What I found really incredible was that because the community owned land, it really had a level of control over development that was like no other neighborhood,” said Loh, “and being able to build permanently affordable housing was amazing.”

McMahon explained that the houses purchased through DSNI have reduced costs for homebuyers.

McMahon also cited a study that was done in 2011 by the Lincoln Land Institute that showed the rates of foreclosure proceedings in community land trust loans from 2008-2010 was at less than 1%. 

“So, basically shared equity homeowners were not impacted. They were not impacted by the foreclosure crisis,” said McMahon.

In an interview, Miranda explained that she has lived in the Dudley Triangle Neighborhood her whole life and got involved with the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative when she was 13 years old.

“When I think about the permanency of people's grandparents and parents and children and grandchildren living in the same home, I think about why that's so important to have other communities have that,” said Miranda.

Miranda also said that a priority of hers is to “address the racial wealth gap.”

Miranda explained during her testimony that the racist history of exclusion, such as redlining, has disproportionately affected Black and brown communities.

Miranda also explained that Boston’s Black population is dwindling because they cannot afford to live in the city. Instead, they move away to other cities outside of Boston and are forced to commute for 1-2 hours to work in the city every day.

“One in three of my friends and family do not live in the city of Boston where we grew up,” said Miranda, “and before we know it, we're not going to recognize our own city, this beautiful city on a hill made up of over 100 languages and different cultures.”