An aide arranges rows of campaign buttons advertising Gov. Maura Healey's "Affordable Homes Act" on top of the governor's desk on Jan. 29, 2024. Photo by Sam Doran | State House News Service

As Gov. Maura Healey and lawmakers celebrated what they called “historic” housing legislation getting signed into law Tuesday, some of the advocates credited with influencing the bill say it is “underwhelming” and watered down, with a number of policies targeted at helping the state’s poorest residents left on the cutting room floor.

“Even though there’s some significant investments in the bond bill, particularly for affordable housing and public housing, it doesn’t meet the urgency of the moment. We were disappointed that policies to actually protect working class people in our state were not included in the bond bill,” Carolyn Chou of Homes for All Massachusetts said.

The bill authorizes $5.16 billion in bonding – though not all of that borrowing capacity will likely get used – and implements 49 new housing policies. Lawmakers left five policy proposals from Healey out of their compromise bill, and a number of House and Senate priorities were cut from the final law.

The bill also left out one of the highest-dollar bond authorizations proposed by either chamber: A $1 billion authorization to expand the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority’s service area to the Ipswich River basin and South Shore. House Speaker Ron Mariano made this a priority for his chamber, though it largely wasn’t part of the public conversation around the bonding bill until this spring when House Ways and Means revealed its version of the bill.

Mariano said expanding MWRA service to Weymouth could have created at least 6,000 homes, where a former U.S. Navy airfield has drawn the interest of developers but lacks the water and sewer infrastructure for significant new housing.

Housing Secretary Ed Augustus told reporters Tuesday that, with the additions lawmakers made to the bill, his office estimates the legislation will lead to the creation of over 45,000 new units and the preservation of 27,000 – more than originally estimated from Healey’s proposal. Massachusetts is expected to have a 220,000-plus housing unit shortage by 2030.

He credited that increase to policies such as new tax credits for companies that convert unused commercial buildings to residential units, and doubling the tax credit to rehabilitate historic buildings.

Other policies that made it into the final bill include allowing accessory dwelling units by-right, eviction sealing, expanding a seasonal communities designation, and $2 billion of bond authorizations steered towards upgrading the state’s public housing stock. But advocates said they’re not sure the legislation will make enough of a dent in the state’s housing crisis with so much left on the table.

‘Profound Disappointment’ on Transfer Fee

The Healey-backed policies that didn’t make the cut were local option transfer taxes to pay for affordable housing, local-option inclusionary zoning by simple majority votes, streamlining procurement requirements for the development of MassDOT- or MBTA-controlled facilities to sell or lease the property; exempting public housing redevelopment projects from certain labor requirements; and removing a requirement for local housing authorities to file a home rule petition in order to regionalize.

“Inclusionary zoning is something that could have helped lower-income and working class communities,” Progressive Mass Director Jonathan Cohn said. “[Legislators] seemed to leave ideas that could have helped working or middle class people living in expensive cities.”

Of the governor’s proposals, the transfer fee, especially, was touted by housing advocates as an important piece of addressing the housing crisis and giving municipalities more tools.

“We think that this was an easy way to expand funding for affordable housing in the communities where affordable housing is most needed, where housing prices have gone through the roof, whether it’s Boston, Cambridge, Somerville or the Cape and islands. So that was a profound disappointment, and one where we think the real estate lobby exerted their influence,” Charlie Homer of advocacy group Greater Boston Interfaith Organization said.

Neither chamber included the transfer fee in its housing bill after real estate interests lobbied hard against it, citing its potential ill affects on Boston’s troubled office sector. Asked by reporters Tuesday if she would go to bat for the policy again, Healey would not commit to making another push for it.

Broker Fees Regret

Senate-backed initiatives absent from the final law include a policy requiring broker’s fees to be paid by landlords rather than tenants, and grants for rural and mid-sized suburban town housing.

Sen. Lydia Edwards, Senate chair of the Housing Committee, said in June that the broker’s fee restructuring would have helped eliminate a barrier to housing for tenants.

Tenants are often required, when they first move into a new unit, to pay first month’s rent, last month’s rent, a security deposit and a fee for the real estate broker who showed them the apartment. Edwards said these costs can be between $12,000 and $15,000 on average.

“This would be incredibly impactful,” she said.

Left Scores Eviction-Sealing Win

Senate negotiators did secure an eviction sealing initiative in the bill, something that Edwards has made a priority since her time on the Boston City Council.

When Edwards testified on a housing bill in 2021, she called it the “scarlet letter E.”

“The fact is, if you file a case, the moment you create an eviction record that is permanent for life,” Edwards said at the time, adding that people of color, particularly Black women, are more than twice as likely to be evicted and “not given a softer landing” in the courts.

Andrea Park of the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute identified this policy as one of those in the final bill that will help with short-term housing solutions.

“There are a number of eviction protections we pushed this session, and more that we think could be done,” she said. “Not defaulting people at their first court event, doing more to move rental assistance like RAFT further upstream, enabling rent stabilization – these are things we believe would have been able to stabilize housing prices in the short term, while we wait for new units to be built.”

Another Failure to Pass TOPA

Another policy that advocates were disappointed didn’t make it into the final bill, and has the same objective of meeting this short-term housing gap, is the so-called Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA).

The House included local option TOPA, also known as tenant right of first refusal, in its version of the bill. This policy would require multifamily property owners to notify their tenants and municipality when they decide to sell their property. Tenants would then have the right to make a first offer to purchase the housing after being notified of the sale.

Boston-based housing organization City Life/Vida Urbana has said the policy is a “key ingredient in preventing evictions and stabilizing housing for renters,” but the measure has been strenuously opposed by real estate groups who warn it would make it very difficult to produce new housing. New apartment buildings are often sold by their developers to investors in order to raise money for their next building, but real estate groups say TOPA would introduce significant delays and uncertainty to that process, potentially turning off both these investors and banks that finance multifamily construction loans.

Though the House was alone in supporting TOPA this session – and it didn’t make it’s way into the law Healey signed Tuesday – Democrats have supported the idea in the past.

Local option tenant right-to-purchase bylaws were in an economic development bill that Democrats passed in 2021, but the language was vetoed by former Gov. Charlie Baker. Because lawmakers waited until the final days of the two-year session to send the bill to his desk, Democrats left themselves without an opportunity to override the governor’s veto.

‘We’re Not Saying “Mission Accomplished”‘

“We certainly hope leadership doesn’t declare ‘mission accomplished’ on issues of housing and affordability, because they left so much on the table, and so much to keep everyday people in our state,” Homes for All’s Chou said.

Healey, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, Edwards and House Housing Committee co-chair Rep. Jim Arciero all said during Tuesday’s bill signing event that the new law is meant to signify a first step in addressing the state’s housing crisis.

“We’re not saying ‘mission accomplished,'” Edwards said. “We’re saying ‘Mission is clear. Resources getting ready. Team is assembling.’ Because at the end of the day, we don’t forget people sleeping outside. We don’t forget about the people at Mass and Cass. We don’t forget about the people who are at the airport. We don’t forget about people working two or three jobs and watching their rent go up. We have not forgotten you. And I don’t want anyone to see this crowd celebrating and thinking ‘mission is accomplished.'”

Cohn, Park, Chou and other advocates said they hope lawmakers and Healey don’t put housing legislation on the backburner after the signing of Tuesday’s housing bond legislation.

“If you build a nice affordable development in 10 years that’s great, but by then Massachusetts’s low-income residents will be living in Rhode Island,” Cohn said.