“When people talk about recession risks, that’s what they’re worried about: inflation goes back up, the Fed has to hike even more, they drive the economy into recession, deliberately, basically, and that becomes the model,” Horowitz said.
“It’s one of the small failures of transparency and good governance in Massachusetts among a litany of others that have not yet added up to cataclysmic problems or dramatic issues,” said Evan Horowitz
According to a recent report, conducted by the GBRB and cSPA, 70 communities — more than a third of the CPA’s towns and cities — have failed to allocate funding above the 10% threshold to affordable housing.
"I think there was a risk with the [House and Gov. Maura Healey's] packages, that they were just going to make the state a little bit too vulnerable to economic downturns by siphoning away some necessary revenue..."
“A lot of stuff counts as spending it on housing,” including paying staff and putting money into designated housing trust funds, and “even by that very loose definition towns aren’t spending very much.”
“The pandemic created some unique and difficult circumstances,” said Evan Horowitz. “But it’s still unbelievable that we got our accounts so fouled up that professional auditors can’t spot billions of dollars in misdirected funds.”
The report said that housing has been overshadowed in CPA due to "a clear and longstanding tension between this commitment to housing and the other facets of the program, like historic preservation and the protection of open space."