Resources

Author Raven E. Saks, an economist from the Federal Reserve Board, finds that in places with relatively few barriers to construction, an increase in housing demand leads to a large number of new housing units and only a moderate increase in housing prices. In contrast, for an equal demand shock, places with more regulation experience a 17 percent smaller expansion of the housing stock and almost double the increase in housing prices.

In September 2005, Gloucester-based economist Edward Moscovitch quantified how Massachusetts could drive down prices and stop eating up land in football-field sized chunks if it adopted smart growth production policies.

Authors Karl Case, John Quigley and Robert Shiller examine the link between increases in housing wealth, financial wealth and consumer spending.

Analysis indicates that, for many Massachusetts communities, population growth associated with new housing is not inevitably followed by increased demand for services and higher municipal costs. While overall costs will increase with growth, per capita costs often increase less or decrease. Many of our fastest-growing communities experienced the slowest growth in per capita tax burden during the 1990s. In fact, there seems to be little correlation between increases in per capita costs and increases in population, and it seems that municipal services are generally increasing in cost regardless of the rate of population growth. This finding suggests that the standard models relied upon by cities and towns to estimate the fiscal impact of development may be systematically overestimating these costs in many communities. Given the shortage of affordable housing throughout Massachusetts and that these estimates are frequently used as the basis for decision making by local development agencies, it is clear that the methods communities use to estimate the costs of development must be reconsidered.

In October 2000, a report released by the Executive Office for Administration and Finance highlighted impediments to housing development and proposed a special commission be created to recommend statutory, regulatory and operational changes to reduce undeeded barrier to housing development. This report is a product of that Special Commission on Barriers to Housing Development.

Published by The Center for Urban and Regional Policy (CURP) at Northeastern University, this report brought forth new ideas for how to increase the region's housing stock to meet demand and moderate market prices. The report identified the need for constructing 36,000 additional new units of housing in Greater Boston over the next five years.