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Study finds housing costs out of reach for many in greater Springfield area

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Both sale and rental prices for housing in the Pioneer Valley have increased sharply during the pandemic because of a supply shortage, according to a new study by the UMass Donahue Institute prepared for the housing agency Way Finders.

Housing affordability worsens since the pandemic, researchers find

The greater Springfield, Massachusetts area is frequently touted as an affordable place to live.

It may be true when compared to other parts of the state where housing prices and rents are higher. A recent study, however, found housing costs in the Pioneer Valley to be increasingly out of reach for the region’s residents.

The findings are in a report published by the UMass Donahue Institute for Way Finders, the nonprofit housing agency based in Springfield.

WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill spoke with Keith Fairey, the president and CEO of Way Finders.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.