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Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Housing held a hearing Oct. 1 on bills relative to public housing authorities, including Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposal to regionalize public housing.
The governor’s bill would consolidate the state’s 240 local public housing authorities into six regional housing authorities, each with oversight of about 12,000 units in 40 municipalities. Each regional housing authority would assume ownership of public housing land, buildings and equipment, and would provide fiscal and operational management for all state and federal public housing in the region.
Under the governor’s plan, daily operational management would remain on-site through local regional housing authority employees. Each regional housing authority would have a nine-member board, appointed by the governor and including housing management experts, tenants and organized labor representatives, all of whom would live in the region.
Undersecretary Aaron Gornstein of the Department of Housing and Community Development testified that the governor’s proposal was based on best practices in the property management sector, which uses an “economy of scale” of no less than 1,500 units per management entity to ensure cost-effective service delivery. He said 207 of the smaller housing authorities in Massachusetts each manage fewer than 500 units.
“The intent of this legislation is not to eliminate the many important and valuable assets of our local public housing system,” Gornstein said. “Rather, the intent is to embrace these assets, including the current employees, and reorganize them into a more logical, modern, efficient and sustainable system that is poised to meet today’s needs and take advantage of today’s opportunities.”
The Massachusetts Chapter of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, with a membership including each local housing authority in the state, testified in opposition to the governor’s bill and offered its support to an alternative housing authority reform bill.
The proposal, filed by Rep. John Binienda of Worcester, would allow larger housing authorities to serve as “collaborative management and service agencies” for smaller housing authorities, providing technical assistance in areas such as vacant unit turnover, procurement and capital improvements. Local boards, however, would retain control and ownership of housing authority land, property and equipment.
The Joint Committee on Housing held additional hearings in October at locations across the state to obtain further public testimony on the housing authority reform bills. The bills remain in committee.