I know many have been too occupied with international events to pay much attention to local news - and the Globe’s Metro section does seem thin lately - but an excellent article on Massachusetts housing problem in Commonwealth magazine (free registration required) is worth the read. Not only does it trace the issue through the problems of supply and demand and weak state power and rudderless public policy, it makes the good point that seeming slow-growth policies of the suburbs have actually encouraged sprawl in the Greater Boston area, as newer homebuyers are pushed further and further out. And the role of educational budgets in all of this is a twist that doesn’t get talked about enough.
“It comes down to the haves and the have-nots,” says one person (head of the home developers trade organization) quoted in the article. “The haves make all the rules, so the have-nots will not have. It’s an American tragedy, and it’s happening right here in Massachusetts.” In other situations, such zero-sum logic would be wrong, misguided or only half-true. But when it comes to housing policy in the state, the analysis, sadly, rings true.
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