The Metro Mayors Coalition promised a housing building boom. With 2030 now only four years away, that promise is looking shaky.
The 15 cities and towns that signed on to create 185,000 new homes by the end of the decade have so far delivered only a fraction of that total. Through 2024, the region has permitted tens of thousands fewer units than it needs, which is keeping prices and rents climbing and leaving more households on the edge of being pushed out. Municipal leaders and planners are now scrambling for ways to speed up construction before the deadline turns into a postmortem.
According to The Boston Globe, coalition communities had permitted roughly 76,600 new homes through 2024 and allowed just 4,755 new homes in 2024 alone. “We’re behind, and we’re going to have to do more if we want to fix our housing shortage,” MAPC Executive Director Lizzi Weyant told the Globe. The Globe also reported that the median single-family home price has climbed about 36 percent since 2018 to nearly $950,000, while a typical two-bedroom rent rose from about $1,850 to roughly $2,300.
Where the goal came from
The 185,000 unit target was not pulled out of thin air. It came after staff at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) projected job and population growth and estimated how many homes the region would need to keep housing costs from spiraling even further.
In a progress memo, MAPC noted that communities would now need to permit about 14,961 units per year for the rest of the period just to get back on track. That figure shows how wide the gap has grown. The memo also points out that most permitted units since 2015 have been multifamily, which means actually hitting the regional goal requires a continued shift toward denser housing types rather than a return to mostly single-family building.
Why construction has slowed
Developers are not shy about explaining why projects are stalling: higher borrowing costs, expensive materials, and a lot more financial risk than they were facing a few years ago. Several recent reports back that up, showing that building permit activity has downshifted across Massachusetts.
The Boston Foundation’s housing report found a sharp drop in permits since 2021, a trend that could create a major bottleneck even if local boards start saying yes more often in coming years. Those difficult economics, combined with organized local resistance in some suburbs, have helped halt or delay projects that penciled out before interest rates spiked and construction costs escalated.
Different towns, different trajectories
The picture is not uniformly bleak. As The Boston Globe reported, some communities have been building aggressively. Everett expanded its housing stock by more than 36 percent since 2010, and Somerville permitted roughly 3,900 units between 2015 and 2024.
On the other end of the spectrum, some coalition members barely moved the needle over that same period. Braintree, for example, allowed about 100 new homes, a tiny contribution to a regional promise that runs into the hundreds of thousands. Those wide local differences help explain why the overall pledge now looks attainable only if a small group of high growth cities and towns dramatically ramps up production.
What officials are doing
At the state level, the Healey Driscoll administration has set its own benchmark: roughly 222,000 new homes by 2035. To help get there, it has rolled out new financing tools such as a Momentum Fund intended to seed mixed income projects, according to a MassHousing press release.
MassHousing and other state agencies argue that new funding sources, the MBTA Communities zoning rules, and targeted local reforms should help move projects from concept to building permit. At the same time, they acknowledge that rising construction costs and tight financing remain serious obstacles. Housing advocates say the next 12 to 24 months will be crucial in deciding whether these policy tools translate into more shovel ready projects or just more plans on paper.
With four years left before 2030, the math is blunt: without a sharp jump in both permitting and construction, the Metro Mayors Coalition will miss its housing pledge. Turning big regional promises into actual homes will require faster approvals, well aimed public funding, and a lot of political will across all the communities that signed on in the first place.
