SPRINGFIELD — There is a shortfall of more than 441,000 affordable housing units in the commonwealth, according to a new report from Housing Navigator Massachusetts.
The report, published Wednesday and supported by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Greater Boston, noted that an ongoing primary goal for the commonwealth is to increase the affordability and accessibility of its housing.
A key finding: Massachusetts has enough affordable housing for only 32% the state’s low-income households.
“We no longer have to admire the problem. We have to build more,” said Jerome DuVal, executive director of Housing Navigator Massachusetts, in a call Thursday.
The nonprofit agency is an advocate for equitable and quality rental housing in Massachusetts and offers a search tool for people to find affordable places to live.
The agency’s report is broken down into the state’s 13 regional planning commission coverage areas, as “this is a regional issue,” said DuVal.
There is a gap of close to 40,000 rental homes in the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission’s region, representing Hampden and Hampshire counties, the report shows. And, about 65% of low-income renters here are unstably housed.
The housing crisis is “so severe” that it affects everyone, regardless of their demographics, the report says.
“People with all income levels are struggling to find affordable housing,” said DuVal.
There is a deficit in one-bedroom apartments, especially for people younger than 60, the report said. Similarly, there are as many as six small low-income households for every small affordable unit, the report said.
The report also encourages community leaders look at the needs of their residents before building new units or rehabilitating old buildings.
For Gerry McCafferty, Springfield’s director of housing, the agency’s findings weren’t a shock.
“This report tells us what we know already about the status of housing in Springfield,” said Gerry McCafferty, the city’s director of housing.
She said that in Springfield, called the City of Homes, “there is a need for smaller units,” she said.
“Our conclusions are that people want more studios and one-bedrooms, regardless of their income,” she said. More than half of the renter population in Springfield consists of small households, she said.
The city is in the middle of creating its consolidated plan for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, done once every five years. In the next phase of the plan, McCafferty said the city will be hosting more stakeholder meetings to strategize the future of housing in the city.
DuVal said communities tend to use age-restricted housing and enact zoning policies that don’t match the needs of the people who live there, resulting in an uneven distribution of living spaces.
For example, in Longmeadow, all of the town’s affordable housing units are age-restricted for seniors, and in Ludlow, 96% of the units are age-restricted. Meanwhile, in Springfield, only 20% of the affordable housing units are age-restricted.
“The report is calling on municipalities to ask people how they want to be living” and make adjustments accordingly, said DuVal.
Many communities, McCafferty noted, keep out the more diverse rental community by either not offering apartments to rent or by aging people out.
“Springfield is doing everything we can, but cities can’t do this work alone,” she said. “Everyone has to put in the effort to make it work.”
The report lists several recommendations for the short and long term, as well as policy choices that can be made locally and at the state level.
One of the key recommendations is to ensure that “the regulatory landscape adapts and changes with a municipality’s needs over time,” said DuVal. He added that there needs to be a more creative way of building housing more affordably.
In Springfield, one way the city has worked to look for housing solutions in innovative ways is by making money available to property owners to rehab their properties. McCafferty said this program helped more two and three-bedroom units come back on the market.
The city’s housing stock is very old, has weathered natural disasters and multiple foreclosure crises, McCafferty said.
“There is a strong need for new units and to rehabilitate existing properties,” she said.
April Ognibene, the chief operating officer at Housing Navigator, noted that the report emphasizes that mobile rental vouchers, like the federal Section 8 program and the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program, could reduce the unstably housed population by about 66,000 households.
The state lacks the housing where those vouchers could be applied, however.
“We hope community leaders will look closely at what’s available and what can be done,” she said.
more news from Western Massachusetts
Read the original article on MassLive.