Author: Charles C. Euchner, Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. With Elizabeth G. Frieze, Harvard University
Affordable housing is important to the vitality of Massachusetts communities, but the state needs to encourage the marketplace to create a broader range of housing types. The first step is to identify the factors that raise the cost and reduce the supply of housing in the Commonwealth. Both state and local governments have a legitimate interest in regulating certain aspects of housing development to assure reasonable safety and health standards and allow for the overall well-being of the community and its character. Some regulations are clearly necessary. Government support of affordable housing may also require grants, tax credits, and the like. But the housing crisis cannot be solved with public funding alone. Even extraordinary sums of money can produce only a limited number of units. In the end, the primary role of state and local government should be to lay a basic foundation and then allow developers, community development corporations, and others to build.
Getting Home: Overcoming Barriers to Housing in Greater Boston
Few dispute the idea that Greater Boston faces a serious housing crisis that threatens the continued economic growth of the region. Evidence of a housing crisis in the Boston area includes high apartment rents, high home prices, and an insufficient supply of housing units. The lack of a varied housing stock prices many workers out of the market—and drives both households and businesses out of the region, including entrepreneurs and their colleagues who are engaged in the start-up phase of business.
Download Report: Getting Home: Overcoming Barriers to Housing in Greater Boston
“The Next MBTA Commuter Rail Contract” was provided in December 2002.
Download Report: The Next MBTA Commuter Rail Contract
“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
Author: Charles C. Euchner, Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. With Elizabeth G. Frieze, Harvard University
Affordable housing is important to the vitality of Massachusetts communities, but the state needs to encourage the marketplace to create a broader range of housing types. The first step is to identify the factors that raise the cost and reduce the supply of housing in the Commonwealth. Both state and local governments have a legitimate interest in regulating certain aspects of housing development to assure reasonable safety and health standards and allow for the overall well-being of the community and its character. Some regulations are clearly necessary. Government support of affordable housing may also require grants, tax credits, and the like. But the housing crisis cannot be solved with public funding alone. Even extraordinary sums of money can produce only a limited number of units. In the end, the primary role of state and local government should be to lay a basic foundation and then allow developers, community development corporations, and others to build.
Getting Home: Overcoming Barriers to Housing in Greater Boston
Few dispute the idea that Greater Boston faces a serious housing crisis that threatens the continued economic growth of the region. Evidence of a housing crisis in the Boston area includes high apartment rents, high home prices, and an insufficient supply of housing units. The lack of a varied housing stock prices many workers out of the market—and drives both households and businesses out of the region, including entrepreneurs and their colleagues who are engaged in the start-up phase of business.
Download Report: Getting Home: Overcoming Barriers to Housing in Greater Boston
“The Next MBTA Commuter Rail Contract” was provided in December 2002.
Download Report: The Next MBTA Commuter Rail Contract
Getting Home: Overcoming Barriers to Housing in Greater Boston
/0 Comments/in Economic Opportunity, Housing, Press Releases, Press Releases: Economic Opportunity /by Editorial StaffAuthor: Charles C. Euchner, Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. With Elizabeth G. Frieze, Harvard University
Affordable housing is important to the vitality of Massachusetts communities, but the state needs to encourage the marketplace to create a broader range of housing types. The first step is to identify the factors that raise the cost and reduce the supply of housing in the Commonwealth. Both state and local governments have a legitimate interest in regulating certain aspects of housing development to assure reasonable safety and health standards and allow for the overall well-being of the community and its character. Some regulations are clearly necessary. Government support of affordable housing may also require grants, tax credits, and the like. But the housing crisis cannot be solved with public funding alone. Even extraordinary sums of money can produce only a limited number of units. In the end, the primary role of state and local government should be to lay a basic foundation and then allow developers, community development corporations, and others to build.
Getting Home: Overcoming Barriers to Housing in Greater Boston
Getting Home: Overcoming Barriers to Housing in Greater Boston
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Housing /by Charles EuchnerFew dispute the idea that Greater Boston faces a serious housing crisis that threatens the continued economic growth of the region. Evidence of a housing crisis in the Boston area includes high apartment rents, high home prices, and an insufficient supply of housing units. The lack of a varied housing stock prices many workers out of the market—and drives both households and businesses out of the region, including entrepreneurs and their colleagues who are engaged in the start-up phase of business.
Download Report: Getting Home: Overcoming Barriers to Housing in Greater Boston
The Next MBTA Commuter Rail Contract
/0 Comments/in Public Testimony /by Charles Chieppo“The Next MBTA Commuter Rail Contract” was provided in December 2002.
Download Report: The Next MBTA Commuter Rail Contract