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Tell us: Should Boston do more to address the housing shortage?
More than 80% of residents polled said city officials need to take stronger action to increase housing supply.
A new poll by a coalition of pro-housing groups in Massachusetts shows that homeowners and renters in Boston overwhelmingly support more aggressive action to address the city’s housing crisis.
The poll, conducted by Abundant Housing Massachusetts and MassInc Polling Group, found that 81% of residents – 78% of owners and 84% of renters – said city officials need to take action to increase housing supply.
“The results of this poll show just how much residents agree that Boston has become far too expensive for everyone who lives in the city. In our political environment, it is almost impossible to find this much strong agreement on any given issue, but more than 8 out of 10 residents say city officials need to act now to address this crisis,” Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, said in a statement.
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What kind of action do residents support? Broadly, over 80% said they support building 30,000 new homes in the city.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has said her administration has created more affordable housing and ushered more families into homeownership than during any three-year period since 1998. According to a February statement from her administration, 5,455 income-restricted units were completed or in construction between 2022-2024, with another 4,076 in the pipeline.
But despite inroads made to increase the affordable housing supply in the city, construction has slowed significantly in recent years.
According to the Boston Globe, 2023 and 2024 were the slowest years for housing construction since 2011. Between 2013 and 2022, an average of 4,247 units were started in Boston, city data show. However in the last two years, new construction has plummeted; just 2,358 units broke ground in 2023 – a 46% drop from the previous year – followed by 2,389 units in 2024, the Globe reported.
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More than three-quarters of residents surveyed said they’d support updating the city’s zoning code to allow for more housing.
Some 80% of residents said they want the city to join the rest of the state in allowing homeowners to built accessory dwelling units (ADU) by right — without needing special approvals from local government as long as they meet size, safety, and location criteria.
Another 77% said they support allowing six-story residential buildings throughout the city (with 71% supporting 12-story buildings near MBTA stops). And 70% said they would support more flexible parking requirements to allow more housing.
Last summer, state lawmakers passed a $5.2 billion housing bond package to legalize ADUs, sometimes referred to as “granny flat or “in-law apartments” statewide.
Currently, zoning allows all owner-occupied 1-, 2-, and 3-family homes in Boston to add one internal ADU to their home. However, Boston’s Zoning Code does not currently include regulations that allow homeowners to build attached or detached ADUs; only Mattapan allows all types of ADUs, including external additions and detached ADUs, to be built without special approval.
We want to know: Should Boston consider stronger action to increase housing supply? If so, what actions should the city take?
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Should Boston do more to increase housing supply?
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