Jennifer Gilbert (’95), Founder and Executive Director of Housing Navigator Massachusetts, coauthored an opinion for CommonWealth Beacon discussing how the state’s affordable housing count (Subsidized Housing Inventory or “SHI”) includes thousands of market-rate units, overcounting the number of truly affordable units in Massachusetts by nearly 34,000 (“The Affordable Housing Problem in Massachusetts Might Be Even Worse than We Thought,” Jun. 3). “[L]et’s ‘manage forward’ and realize a vision of Massachusetts where low- and moderate-income households can rent safe and available housing where they want to live. . . . We can design heavy incentives to achieve true affordability for lower-income households. We can be nimble: perhaps those existing 40B buildings are opportunities to target local subsidies that deepen affordability.”
