(781) 786-2662

Housing Affordability

Massachusetts High Technology Council member organizations cite the high cost of housing in the Commonwealth as one of the greatest impediments to recruiting and retaining employees. Rapidly rising housing costs create risks that individuals who are born, raised and/or educated in Massachusetts will choose to move out of state, resulting in loss of talented workers to competitor states.

Massachusetts has a comparatively high quality of living relative to other states, but housing costs for both owners and renters continue to be significant obstacles to stable and prosperous lives for many residents and those who seek to relocate to the Commonwealth.

Policy Priorities: Housing Affordability

Though housing costs are the result of many factors, local land use restraints on the production of new housing are a key driver of the misalignment between supply and demand. This is why the Council, recognizing Massachusetts’ policy challenges of housing affordability and availability, supports efforts like the Housing Choice Initiative to accelerate housing production in the Commonwealth.

The Council continues to support measures to make it easier to build housing in service of important economic development goals, including:

Reforming local zoning laws to enable greater production of multi-unit developments and increase the regional supply of housing

Incentivizing cities and towns to permit the production of additional transportation systems and make it easier for local authorities to approve of transit-oriented development projects

Opposing new regulations that impose counterproductive burdens on development and add to the cost of building

The Council’s Public Policy Agenda

The Massachusetts High Technology Council is focused on sustaining the Commonwealth’s innovation economy amidst an ever-changing shifting federal and state policy context.