- The Boston Foundation released the 2024 Greater Boston Housing Report Card today, including a report on the potential use of publicly owned land for building housing by me and Katie Einstein. www.tbf.org/-/media/tbf/...
- The state and municipalities own a huge amount of land in greater Boston - almost 1/4.Nov 12, 2024 14:47
- About 1/3 of this public land is vacant. If just 5% of the vacant, non-conservation land was used for multifamily housing, more than 85,000 units could be built.
- Instead of using public land as a tool for building housing, towns use it to stop housing. We found 13 recent cases where municipalities spent more than $50m of public money to buy private land in order to prevent it from being developed into housing, including to stop affordable housing.
- What can be done about this? The state can streamline the public land procurement process; reform state funding programs so they can’t be used to block the development of housing; and provide technical assistance to municipalities seeking to dispose of surplus land…
