The Urgent Need to Preserve Existing Affordable Housing

And why “build, build, build” is a flawed solution

The supply of rental housing affordable to the state’s low-income families – rents below $1,400 per month — is rapidly shrinking, with a decline of over 115,000 affordable rental units in Massachusetts between 2012 and 2022.

The culprit? More naturally occurring affordable housing has been lost through new development and investor “flipping” than affordable housing has been built, says the author of this recent article in Commonwealth Beacon.

The widely accepted solution that we must “build, build, build” is “an incomplete and two-dimensional characterization of the problem…”  neglecting how the expensive inputs of land, labor and building materials raise the bar on rents and purchase prices of any newly built housing.