Press Release: 4/14/2026

A New Mandate: Redevelopment Authorities and Social Housing in Massachusetts

 



Monday, April 13, 2026



View of buildings lining Massachusetts Ave in Central Square, Cambridge, with Boston skyline in the distance..



The authors will present their findings at a livestreamed event on Tuesday, April 14 at 4:00 pm ET.



Amid worsening housing affordability and a growing mismatch between the homes we build and the needs of households, proposals to revive a robust public role in developing mixed-income “social housing” are gaining traction across the US at both the state and local levels. While approaches differ, all advocate for a more active public role in planning, financing, and owning housing that is managed to ensure long-term affordability and which serves a broad spectrum of income levels. Recent public sector efforts to deliver mixed-income housing range from leveraging existing organizations to creating new entities. For example, Montgomery County, Maryland, utilizes its existing public housing authority and bond financing, while Seattle’s social housing developer is a newly created public authority, funded by a payroll expense tax on high earners. Income eligibility and rent-setting vary across programs.



In Massachusetts, too, momentum is building toward implementing social housing. The state’s 2024 Affordable Homes Act authorized a social housing pilot, and in 2025 the City of Cambridge issued a policy order to investigate approaches for advancing social housing. In a new paper, we explore opportunities for redevelopment authorities (RAs) to contribute to social housing development across the state. The study is driven in particular by concern over the lack of housing affordable to middle-income households in high-cost cities like Cambridge.



To date, emerging social housing models have not included RAs as potential actors, despite their status as existing public entities with powers that could be put to use. Created in the postwar years to address urban “blight” and spur economic growth through large-scale redevelopment, RAs were funded through generous federal and sometimes state programs and given unique powers under state law. In Massachusetts, RAs and public housing authorities are governed by Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 121B, adopted in 1952. Under this statute, RAs are empowered to assemble and dispose of real estate (including through eminent domain), utilize public financing tools such as bond issuance, conduct planning and pre-development activities to support and enable new projects, and operate with certain exemptions from procurement and other regulations. Despite greatly diminished funding and the lingering stigma associated with urban renewal, more than thirty RAs remain active across the state.



Figure 1: Jurisdictions with Redevelopment Authorities in Massachusetts



A map of Massachusetts locating jurisdictions with redevelopment authorities by outline, filled in different colors according to the type of organizational structure. Redevelopment authorities can be found across all but four of the thirteen regional planning agency areas.



Twenty-five municipalities have active urban renewal plans through a range of institutional setups, eight have an active RA but no active urban renewal plans, two have integrated their RA into municipal government and have no active urban renewal plans, and four have abolished their RAs. Because there is no centralized list of active RAs, this overview represents the authors’ findings and is not comprehensive.



Sources: Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, MassGIS, State Library of Massachusetts.



In the paper, we find that the institutional structure of RAs varies greatly; however, it is their staffing and financial capacity, not institutional structure, that determine how effective RAs can be. Despite a lack of funding and limited staff capacity, RAs have facilitated housing development in a variety of settings and with a range of public, private, and nonprofit partners.



To better support the creation of social housing, the paper recommends a number of concrete reforms at the state, regional, and local levels, including updating RAs’ legal mandate to focus on creating resilient, affordable, and equitable communities instead of combatting blight; providing them with dedicated funding, technical assistance, and training; and conducting further research on how they can best use their powers, collaborate with other housing organizations and trusts, and leverage public land to support social housing.



With targeted reforms, Massachusetts RAs are well positioned to further the production of social housing. The paper aims to jumpstart a statewide conversation about a central political challenge of our time: how government can deliver the basics of a dignified life, while remaining accountable and transparent to the public. By recentering attention on a subset of public authorities that have largely flown under the radar for the past half century, we hope to identify ways to retool them as productive and accountable actors for the future.



This paper was funded by the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority, the Cambridge Community Foundation, and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at the Harvard Kennedy School.