By Tessa Roy, WPRO News
Democratic candidate for governor Matt Brown released a housing plan aimed at giving tenants more rights and cutting back on permitting and regulations he said hinder developers’ abilities to build affordable homes.
Brown said wages remain largely the same while home prices and rent rise.
“It’s just impossible for people to get by, and you add the cost of health care on top of that, the cost of child care, the cost of education. It’s just too much,” he said.
His solution to that problem would be a statewide cap on annual rent increases. Asked how the cap would work, he said it would prevent the cost of housing from “going through the roof compared to wages which are stagnant.”
He also agreed that landlords or property managers should consider their tenants’ cost of living when they raise rents.
Brown said there’s a shortage of affordable homes and claimed it’s too hard to build them. He blamed lengthy permitting processes and “bureaucracy” for hindering developers from building affordable homes.
“Right now all the incentives and all the breaks go to luxury housing, big new apartment complexes, very high end things. That’s not where we need to be focused,” he said. “We need to be focused on solving this crisis of affordable housing for middle class and working class people across the state.”
Brown said he wants to work with cities and towns to get them to cut back on “old rules and regulations” while supporting and encouraging more affordable housing units that are near jobs and transit.
