Meeting the demand for affordable housing: State intervention in Massachusetts

This paper examines the response of Massachusetts to problems of housing affordability during the 1980s. State and local government historically has not played a major role in housing provision within the United States of America, constrained by fiscal dependence upon the federal government and by a lack of control over the more significant determinants of housing market performance. In the face of intensified problems of housing affordability and cutbacks in federal expenditures on low income housing programmes, the majority of US states increased their intervention in housing markets during the 1980s. Massachusetts more than doubled in real terms expenditures on housing and community development over the decade, initiating a variety of innovative programmes aimed at alleviating housing stress and stimulating the construction of affordable housing. The paper examines the impacts of these housing programmes upon problems of housing affordability, and assesses their likely durability in the context of the slow‐down in the Massachusetts economy in the 1990s. The increase in Massachusetts housing expenditures was a response to a local political economy of growth, rather than any fundamental dilution of the political and economic relations that limit the ability of states to shape housing market dynamics in the United States.