Embedded Files
Exeter High School Student-Run Newspaper!
New England’s Affordability Crisis
By Alex Dobbins
There’s a viral video going around from Marblehead, Massachusetts. A man spoke up during a town meeting on May 4th and asked the simple question, “Aren’t we kind of being pricks?” This was in the context of Marblehead creating laws in the context of complying with the MBTA Communities Act.
The MBTA Communities Act was signed into law in 2021 by then-Governor Charlie Baker. The goal of the law was to address the major housing shortage in Massachusetts, and it required 177 towns and municipalities that are served by the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority) to create new zoning areas that would allow multifamily housing near transit areas. It’s a win-win, because you gain more people and money for the economy, whilst ideally reducing the major reliance on cars.
This is a map of the MBTA Commuter Rail. You might notice that it is absolutely massive, and that is because it is.
Back to Marblehead. Essentially, many towns are refusing to comply and create zoning laws, due to reasons that will be explained shortly. Massachusetts has begun suing and withholding grant funding from towns that don’t comply with the law. Marblehead was one of them, so during a town meeting (as that is their style of government), roughly 1,300 of the over 20,000 inhabitants of Marblehead packed into a room to vote on a multitude of things, including this.
Essentially, the town government came up with a plan: They would allow the multifamily housing zoning, but here’s the twist- the areas they had selected were on a golf course. A literal golf course. So, basically no chance that anything ever has the chance to be built. Yes, they are technically compliant with the state law. They are held to a lesser standard because Marblehead itself doesn’t have commuter rail, but a neighbor (Swampscott) does have it. So they made themselves compliant, without ever having to worry about building anything.
Marblehead is just Exhibit A of an issue plaguing the entirety of New England, and it’s worse elsewhere because Massachusetts is the only state that has widespread public rail transit, and therefore the path to making legislation like the MBTA Communities Act. So why is no housing being built?
Well, for one, New England has an inherent issue in that so many towns are just so tiny. They were all established hundreds of years ago, when the priority was small, tightly connected communities that were all centered around a church or meetinghouse of some sort. These towns averaged around 6 square miles. That doesn’t work in 2026.
Another large issue is pretty simple: supply and demand. Every New England state has consistently missed their goals for new housing for many years, but especially since COVID. The demand for New England homes remains high, as it’s overall a desirable region, but there is no supply to meet that demand, which spikes prices. We saw this pretty quickly during COVID when everyone wanted to move to New England, and everyone’s home value skyrocketed.
It gets a little more complicated from there. There is a strong sentiment among mostly older New Englanders to preserve the character of New England. A large part of this means no large housing projects, that would possibly diminish the charming character of New England. With how New England is designed, the states don’t necessarily have a ton of control over what towns do, so towns can essentially come up with their own zoning laws. Most of the town governments are filled with older people who have the time to devote to running a town, so what do you get? Zoning laws that don’t bring more housing. If housing is built, it’s 55+, and the process is arduous for developers, when the town is focused on making sure the houses aren’t too close to each other or aren’t too close to the road to preserve the character.
So what does that get you?
Massachusetts requires an income of around $162,000 a year, just to afford a median-priced home.
Massachusetts is also the 4th most expensive state in the country to rent.
Maine and New Hampshire home prices have doubled since 2016.
Median rent in New England sits at $1,200/month as of 2024, but that has increased around 10% a year since 2022.
A poll found that only 23% of Massachusetts residents believe that their state is affordable. Connecticut’s poll found them as low as 16%.
In Massachusetts, making $100,000 a year makes you “lower-middle class.”
It doesn’t help that most people in New England are at least enjoying one byproduct of this crisis, in that the value of their home has possibly almost doubled, if they’ve lived there since 2016 or so. Who cares if nobody can afford New England as long as your home is worth a lot of money?
This has led to a large amount of families leaving New England. The populations of each New England state have been increasing, mostly being retired peoples and working-age adults. But with costs being so high in New England, it’s not viable for families. And this leads to schools losing kids, budget cuts, less state aid, etc.
Isn’t building more housing advantageous? Hypothetically, yes. New England towns are struggling to cope with rising insurance costs, inflation, and overall rising costs to run towns and town-associated entities (schools, police, fire, EMS, etc). Permits bring money to towns, more people, and more housing brings more property taxes. But it’s confusing when you look into schools. When you bring more families, you also bring more students who require special needs. Sometimes the public school district cannot give the student the attention they require, and it’s better to send them to a private school that can meet their needs. Most state laws require the public school district to pay to send the student to a special needs school, which is sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars per school year. For a town, enough of those situations can knock out any profitability of new housing. So, it’s much easier to allow 55+ communities instead, where there is no risk. And they can continue to cut jobs in schools, and limit the growth of those budgets.
It’s not all terrible. There’s sort of a scale where building the new housing matters. A small town doesn’t care much for it, and not building the new multifamily housing isn’t a super big deal for them. A legitimate town needs to build it. There are numerous towns that are taking the law seriously, one of those being Lexington. Lexington is an extremely upscale town in the Boston suburbs, and they have been working to formulate a pretty large plan to build tons of new housing, within reason (unfortunately, towns can’t just build build build because they’ll eventually have to start expanding schools, etc), but there are still many towns that are dragging their feet.
So is there a solution? It’s complicated, but an obvious start is building more housing, duh. The issue lies in that individual towns have too much power. The states should be stepping in and deciding zoning laws, not leaving it up to the towns. The towns got to decide, and now they don’t want to build anything. States, however, have an incentive to of course get more residents into the state. So, if there’s any possibility where they can increase their authority in these situations, they should be taking advantage of it. Otherwise, it might only get worse.
Works Cited
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/measuring-housing-affordability
Page updated
Report abuse