{"id":144,"date":"2026-06-18T13:05:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T13:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worcestermovingreport.com\/?p=144"},"modified":"2026-06-18T13:05:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T13:05:59","slug":"new-report-urges-state-to-think-small-on-housing-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worcestermovingreport.com\/?p=144","title":{"rendered":"New report urges state to think small on housing crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MASSACHUSETTS IS NOT<\/mark><\/strong> building enough homes to keep up with demand or address existing overcrowding, but a new report finds that the state is specifically lagging in building the type of houses particularly suited to young families and elder residents: small ones. <\/p>\n

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The released Wednesday describes a dramatic mismatch between the size of homes people need for their household size and the homes actually being built. <\/p>\n

Household sizes are shrinking \u2013 from an average Massachusetts household size of 3.23 people in 1970 to 2.52 in 2024 \u2013 while small home construction nationally has hit a wall. In 2024, 63 percent of Massachusetts households had one or two people, but just 44 percent of occupied housing units had two or fewer bedrooms, according to the report. <\/p>\n

In part because of the trend toward knocking down smaller houses and replacing them with larger ones, there are 8,000 fewer single-family homes with two or fewer bedrooms in the state since 2010, according to Andrew Mikula, the report\u2019s author. <\/p>\n

Massachusetts has become \u201ca victim of our own affluence,\u201d said Mikula. \u201cIt\u2019s like we forgot how to build smaller homes that can be more affordable for folks.\u201d <\/p>\n

The real obstacles, he said, are a \u201ccornucopia of regulations, and bureaucratic processes, and land values rising, and other trends that make it very difficult to build new homes that are small and low-cost in the same way that a ranch style home or bungalow would have been 50 years ago,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Mikula is also the leader of a ballot measure campaign that would make it easier to build single-family homes on smaller lots. \u201cThe Legalize Starter Homes\u201d measure, which is set to appear on the November ballot, would prevent communities from requiring lot sizes greater than 5,000 square feet or more than 50 feet of frontage to build single-family homes anywhere that has public water and sewer access. <\/p>\n

The Pioneer Institute is not involved in the ballot campaign. <\/p>\n

The report offers a suite of policy recommendations to encourage more starter home construction, including, but going beyond, similar zoning changes to the ballot question. These range from zoning changes, to boosting the state\u2019s accessory dwelling unit law, to allowing denser construction in certain areas. <\/p>\n

Land is expensive in the Bay State, with the average value of a single-family residential land parcel in Massachusetts exceeding $1 million per acre in 2022. <\/p>\n

The report says this argues for allowing denser housing in pricey areas, like townhomes or multifamily buildings, without special variances. It also means that smaller lot size requirements could make building small homes more affordable for developers, Mikula said. <\/p>\n

To make building a new 1,600-square-foot home financially viable, the math could pencil out if it was built on a roughly 4,000-square-foot lot, he said. This is far smaller than most square footage requirements under local zoning codes. <\/p>\n

Pushing for smaller houses collides with recent trends toward larger homes and the difficult discussion of what it means to \u201cright-size\u201d housing. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a tricky scenario,\u201d Mikula said, \u201cbecause, in the abstract, people will say, \u2018I want extra bedrooms.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cBut for most first-time homebuyers,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s daunting enough to try to save up for a down payment without having to save up to buy a house that\u2019s much larger than your household size would suggest you need.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Pro-housing groups have long struggled with the third rail of downsizing discourse: the idea that many older residents are \u201coverhoused.\u201d <\/p>\n

In 2005, then-Gov. Mitt Romney\u2019s second-in-command, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, faced the ire of advocates for the elderly when she invoked that term in addressing senior housing woes related to high property tax bills. Rather than offering seniors property tax breaks, she suggested we should \u201cbring them into our city and town centers, into more appropriate housing and free up those properties to get back on the tax rolls of the community.\u201d <\/p>\n

Last year, Ben Forman and Elise Rapoza of the MassINC Policy Center argued that Healey was on the right track. <\/p>\n

In 1980, they wrote, only about one-third of households headed by an adult who was 65 or older occupied a home with three or more bedrooms. In 2025, more than half of such households still live in these family-sized homes. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe might chalk this trend up to homes generally getting larger in recent decades,\u201d they said. \u201cBut the data show a striking pattern\u2014younger households in Massachusetts are far less likely to occupy a family-sized home today than they were four decades ago.\u201d <\/p>\n

This means a constriction at both ends of the small-home market: ever smaller young households stuck in renting cycles with no starter homes available, and a growing population of older residents who couldn\u2019t downsize if they wanted to, given the dearth and expense of available housing. <\/p>\n

Recent studies from AARP and National Association of Realtors research found that older adults tend to want to stay in their homes and communities as long as possible, but smaller and easier to manage homes are on the priority list. About a fifth of respondents in by the realtor group said their reason for buying a new home is \u201cdesire for a smaller home,\u201d second only to being closer to family. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m certainly not suggesting seniors should do something that they don\u2019t want to do,\u201d Mikula said, \u201cbut I think when we look at the polling data, we see a lot of seniors very interested in downsizing, or at least that they expect to have to downsize at some point, based on either mobility challenges or financial challenges.\u201d <\/p>\n

One answer to the demand for smaller homes among seniors is the much-touted promise of accessory dwelling units, also known as ADUs or \u201cgranny flats.\u201d <\/p>\n

The housing bond bill passed two years ago legalized ADUs in all single-family districts in the state, and permitting is rising but slowed by local regulations, according to research from Boston Indicators. <\/p>\n

These small units are ripe for reform, the Pioneer report argues. Lawmakers should standardize ADU dimensional rules, increase allowable ADU sizes, and loosen related septic regulations, Mikula wrote. According to 2024 AARP research, older adults are more likely than other age groups to choose an ADU if they were to downsize from their current home. <\/p>\n

The housing crisis in Massachusetts is pushing young people out and tying some seniors in place as they age, Mikula said. <\/p>\n

If this housing stock remains scarce, he said \u201cI think we\u2019ll continue to see a lot of out-migration of young people when they\u2019re in their prime family formation years,\u201d and \u201cI think we\u2019ll also continue to see, in a way that\u2019s harder to quantify sometimes, seniors continuing to be trapped in their homes, having difficulty meeting their own mobility needs, and maybe more difficulty moving closer to family as they age.\u201d <\/p>\n

Read more Compromise would reshape how Massachusetts teaches reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Massachusetts\u00a0has become “a victim of our own affluence,” said Andrew Mikula, the report’s author. “It’s like we forgot how to build smaller homes\u00a0that\u00a0can be more affordable\u00a0for folks.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-housing"],"yoast_head":"\nNew report urges state to think small on housing crisis - Worcester Moving Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worcestermovingreport.com\/?p=144\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New report urges state to think small on housing crisis - Worcester Moving Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Massachusetts\u00a0has become "a victim of our own affluence," said Andrew Mikula, the report's author. 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