October 26, 2022
On October 26, 2022, the Boston Foundation held its first in-person forum in more than two and a half years. The occasion was the presentation and discussion of the 20th annual Greater Boston Housing Report Card, which this year explores barriers to accessing subsidized housing as well as current trends in housing supply and demand. It was a particularly meaningful inaugural on-site event for the Foundation, which has recently redefined its mission’s focus on equity and affirmed its commitment to pursuing it through engagement, leadership and research. As TBF President and CEO M. Lee Pelton said in his opening remarks,
Greater Boston continues to struggle with a lack of affordable housing, as tight inventory and rising costs continue to place significant burdens on homebuyers and renters. At the same time, flaws in the systems around subsidized housing mean that thousands of people who qualify for subsidies are getting lost in a fragmented system that is difficult to navigate.
Those are the major conclusions in the Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2022. The report card comprises three parts: a look at the current state of the market by Luc Schuster and the team at Boston Indicators; a special analysis of equity in subsided housing conducted by Katherine Levine Einstein and Maxwell Palmer of the Initiative on Cities at Boston University; and an accompanying series of interactive data and insights.
Two of the report’s authors, Luc Schuster, Executive Director of Boston Indicators, and Katherine Levine Einstein, Associate Professor & Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at Boston University, shared key findings on core metrics and subsidized housing access, respectively.