AP News, October 3, 2023, Massachusetts Has A Huge Waitlist For State-Funded Housing. So Why Are 2,300 Units Vacant?
In Massachusetts, which has some of the country’s most expensive real estate, there are 184,000 people on a waitlist for the state’s 41,500 subsidized apartments.
Yet a WBUR and ProPublica investigation found that nobody is living in nearly 2,300 state-funded apartments, with most sitting empty for months or years. The state pays local housing authorities to maintain and operate the units whether they’re occupied or not. So the vacant apartments translate into millions of Massachusetts taxpayer dollars wasted due to delays and disorder fostered by state and local mismanagement.
As of the end of July, almost 1,800 of the vacant units had been empty for more than 60 days. That’s the amount of time the state allows local housing authorities to take to fill a vacancy. About 730 of those have not been rented for at least a year.
