The first-term Democrat filed her over $4 billion Affordable Housing Act in October, stopping in Pittsfield to outline her approach to housing costs, which she described as the commonwealth’s greatest challenge.
"It's a $4 billion plan to create tens of thousands of new homes," said Healey. "40,000 new housing starts, the preservation, renovation of an additional 30,000 affordable homes. The goal with this legislation is to make housing more affordable, more available for everyone across the state.”
In North Adams city council chambers Tuesday, the need for housing was heard loud and clear from residents during the open mic portion of the meeting.
“The young generation is the future of the city, myself included. I am currently having issues and struggles with finding rental properties that I can afford just with the prices going up," said Lawrence Wilson. “A few years ago, it was much easier to find a space to live in a space that I can afford and a space that works. With it being hard for me to find rental and needing two or possibly three other roommates to live with, it really makes me nervous about my future in this area, because I would like to be able to afford a home and I would like to settle down in this space. But if things don't change, then I don't believe I will be able to.”
“I am fortunate enough to have a place of residence, but I know many of my friends, many of my fellow recent college graduates, many people that are excited and love the city just as much as I do that cannot live here because of the fact that they cannot find housing, cannot find affordable housing, cannot find roommates,” said Isaiah Moore.
Councilor Andrew Fitch requested time for a representative of North Adams Community Housing Organization, or NACHO, to speak.
“I see this as an opportunity to steer the conversation to the future of North Adams and building for the future of North Adams and leveraging resources that are out there in the world are ready to make that happen,” said Fitch.
Virginia RiehI told the council that NACHO formed in November, intending to bring forward more proposals to the body as their plans mature.
“What we're starting with tonight is to talk about this legislation, because it has a substantial amount of money associated with it which is a significant opportunity to North Adams to see some, get some of that money, bring it to the community, and be able to do things that perhaps were out of reach before,” she said.
Referencing data collected by the city itself, Riehl underscored how severe North Adams’ housing needs are.
“In that table that comes from the Community Development Office housing needs assessment, is, down there in that little bottom right-hand corner, you will see the extremely low, that is 1,000, a deficit of 1,000 housing units for people who are in that income category," she said. "That is 20% of the households in North Adams. We have 5,000 households in North Adams according to the census bureau. So that is really- I, when I put those numbers together, it was really jaw dropping, even for me. And it also, if we take the population, it's it affects 16% of the residents of the community at least. And I think these numbers are probably understated, because things have gotten more difficult since 2020 when this report was done.”
Riehl offered the council a few examples of initiatives Healey’s AHA would direct money toward.
“There's $100 million for a public housing demonstration program, that is really, at least as I read the language, there's some flexibility there to do things that are innovative that maybe couldn't be done under existing funding streams, and so that's one area of opportunity," she said. "The second is this trust fund that's been set up for housing stabilization, which, again, appears to have some flexibility in it and opportunities for the city.”
Riehl told the city NACHO suggested investing in more grant writers and tighter ties with statehouse leaders ahead of the bill’s targeted passing date of late June.
“The historical funding, the historical piece of the pie that has come to Berkshire County- I would say Berkshire County hasn't gotten what it needs, and nor has North Adams," said the NACHO representative. "And so, I think it shows how important it is for us to really assert ourselves and really tried to make that number much larger than it is and show the need and advocate.”
You can find the full presentation here.
