For more and more families in Greater Boston, buying a home has quickly become out of reach.
A new analysis from the Boston Foundation released Wednesday found that just one in seven renter households can afford a starter home in Greater Boston. With much higher housing prices and mortgage rates, it’s a dramatic change from just four years ago, when nearly a third could afford a starter home.
And people who continue renting are also facing similar financial challenges, as nearly half of all renters in the state are cost-burdened — spending more than 30% of their income on housing.
Because of the steep cost of living, more people are moving out of Greater Boston than moving in.
“But these trends are not inevitable,” said Lee Pelton, president and CEO of the Boston Foundation. “They reflect choices, policy choices, investment choices. And collective priorities that we have the power to change.”
The report offered policy recommendations on how to address the housing crisis, including funding incentives for cities and towns to increase their housing supply. One clear solution to address the housing crisis is to build more homes.
The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities forecasts that the state needs an additional 222,000 homes by 2035 to address price instability. Over the last five years, Massachusetts has added 98,000 units — including 71,000 in Greater Boston, according to U.S. Census data.
While those units aren’t included in the 220,000 goal set for 2035, it’s a promising feat, said Luc Schuster, executive director of Boston Indicators — the research arm of the Boston Foundation.
“It shows that the local construction industry can build at a pace that — if we kept that up annually for the next 10 years — we might really be able to meet that goal,” Schuster said.
Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll said at the report’s release on Wednesday that the need for more housing is the biggest challenge for the Healey-Driscoll administration.
The current housing crisis has a ripple effect on all areas of the state’s economy, Driscoll said.
“It’s in the middle of our economic policy,” she said. “It’s our health care policy, our competitiveness and addressing the means to move Massachusetts forward is going to take us all digging in and digging deeper on housing.”
She said of all the difficult challenges within government, building more housing isn’t one of them.
“It really isn’t,” Driscoll said. “It should not be as hard as it is. And I think for us to solve this, we’ve got to work together.”
Danyson Tavares, executive director of the Boston Society for Architecture, agrees with that collaborative approach.
“I don’t think this is something that’s going to be solved by an architect [or] a construction company on its own,” he said. “We have to come across the aisle and figure this out as a region.”
