A forum in Springfield, Massachusetts this month featured mayors from Hampden County explaining what their communities are facing — and doing — as state leaders try to address a housing shortage.
The mayoral forum, put on by Liberty Bank and hosted by Springfield Technical Community College, featured leaders from Springfield, Holyoke and more discussing housing projects that are either underway, wrapped up, or are in the planning stages.
The keynote speaker was state Secretary of Housing Ed Augustus, who opened by describing the crisis as being felt across the state, from the Berkshires to the Cape and Islands, adding all communities have been impacted.
Officials have indicated the state needs somewhere around 200,000 more units going forward to meet demand.
Meanwhile, Augustus says a number of residents have been leaving the Bay State due to a lack of affordable housing and costs. One age group in particular he says is leaving en masse: 25-to-36-year-olds.
“We've been investing in them - from K to 12, public higher education - just when they're ready to be the most productive in their careers, we're sending them to other states because they're only going to spend 30 percent of their income in those places and they're spending 50 plus percent of their income here in Massachusetts,” he told the mayors and others gathered for the forum.
The Healey administration previously put forward its “Affordable Homes Act,” a $4 billion housing bond bill to support, among other things, the creation of 40,000 homes. The House passed its own version of the bill earlier in June, with the Senate unveiling its version this week.
As lawmakers continue to debate the legislation, local efforts to make more housing available were front and center at Thursday’s forum.
Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno touted how the city has been supporting the creation of hundreds of units, including multifamily rental developments such as 31 Elm Street and its 70 units downtown, or nearly 100 units via the redevelopment of the Knox building in Mason Square – a former automobile factory.
“As you continue to move forward with our housing development – also, too – the old Chestnut Towers has been completely redone, if you go up in Mason Square, Bergen Circle has been completely redone. We continue to go down State Street/Main Street area, you're going to see that the corner building across from MGM, that's going to be a mix,” Sarno said. “As Secretary Augustus indicated - office space now - there's a glut of it now, so that's going to be repurposed [for] housing and first-floor retail.”
It was much of the same for Holyoke, as Mayor Joshua Garcia highlighted projects in his city – including the revitalization of one of the oldest public housing developments in the country – the Lyman Terrace redevelopment and its 164 low-income housing units.
Among several other projects, Garcia said a vital component has involved refraining from knocking down the city’s many older structures and instead repurposing them – something Garcia, Holyoke’s Director of Planning & Economic Development, Aaron Vega, and Vega’s late-father and community organizer, Carlos, long-advocated for.
“Carlos Vega fought a lot of those fights - trying to keep the city moving away from this idea that improving neighborhoods means knocking down buildings,” the mayor said. “And so, in our city's history, we've kind of got on this path, prioritizing, doing anything and everything we can to preserve and save buildings and not knock them down.”
West Springfield Mayor Will Reichelt said in his city of over 28,000 residents, dense housing is the only practical solution given how little land is left.
“It's a very difficult to have a conversation - I have councilors who are dead set against apartments, generally high density specifically, that don't want to see that any of that development in West Springfield,” Reichelt said. “They put a subdivision everywhere you can physically put a subdivision in West Springfield. If we really want to add more housing, it's going to be high density and it's going to be an uphill battle.”
Other mayors who spoke included Westfield Mayor Michael McCabe and Agawam Mayor Christopher Johnson.
One of the officials overseeing the forum, Glenn Davis, First Vice President, Community Development/CRA Officer at Liberty Bank, says the event provides an opportunity to hear directly from local leaders on what’s going on in the community and what needs to happen when it comes to housing.
“This has really been a great forum, great discussion and dialogue from the mayors, and I think, if anything, the more we can have this conversation and engage our political leaders and private citizens, then we really create an atmosphere where we could actually begin to move and create housing,” he said after the forum.
