THIS ISSUE BRIEF is part of a series examining a variety of controversial local and national issues, focusing on specific policy proposals that are under active consideration. The premise of these essays, as outlined here and here, is that many important public policy issues are more complicated than the most fervent adherents to either side usually acknowledge, a dynamic that often hinders our ability to engage in thoughtful debate. (Earlier essays in the series have addressed proposals for free community college; free MBTA service; right-to-shelter;  rent control; supervised injection sites; school library books; reparations;  voter ID requirements; a moratorium on prison construction; and limiting investments in natural gas infrastructure.)  

The Proposal 

Enact a universal basic Income plan to ensure that every household in Massachusetts has a minimum monthly income to cover essential living expenses. 

Background 

Universal basic income (UBI) is an anti-poverty and income stability proposal intended to ensure that all households have a guaranteed income with few, if any, strings attached.   

Five cities in Massachusetts have launched limited pilot programs with monthly stipends up to $500, to evaluate the impact on recipients, especially with regard to food security, health, and employment.  State Sen. Jason Lewis has introduced a bill to establish a five-year state-sponsored pilot for 1,500 people to ensure recipients have a monthly income from all sources that is “at least equal to a living wage,” which for a single-adult with two children would average about $11,250 (pre-tax) in Massachusetts, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator. 

A form of UBI, called the negative income tax, was proposed by free-market economist Milton Friedman in the early 1960s as a way to put cash in the hands of poor people without the need for large bureaucracies to manage anti-poverty programs. President Richard Nixon, with advice and advocacy from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, borrowed Friedman’s idea as the basis for his Family Assistance Plan, which would have replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children, but it was rejected by Congress in 1972.   

A related approach, called the earned income tax credit, was first enacted by Congress in 1975 to provide low-income workers with supplementary income through a refundable credit against their federal tax bill. Similarly, in 1997 Congress passed the child tax credit to help pay for childcare to enable parents to work or go to school.   

The EITC and CTC have been expanded over the years and some states, including Massachusetts, have enacted their own versions to supplement the federal benefits. The federal EITC is worth up to $7,800, with Massachusetts adding up to $3,100. The maximum federal CTC benefit is $2,000 per child ($1,400 of which is refundable for families that don’t pay federal income taxes), to which Massachusetts adds up to $440. 

Although the idea of a universal basic income has resurfaced periodically over the years, it has gained political traction over the past decade, especially during the COVID pandemic when the  federal government provided billions of dollars in additional cash assistance and tax credits to displaced workers and low-income families. 

Bumper Stickers and Sticking Points 

End Poverty, Now!: Poverty is not a bug, but a feature of American capitalism. The free market is inherently rigged against poor people, limiting their opportunities for employment or forcing them into low-wage, mostly part-time jobs with no benefits. The accelerating pace of technological change is making a bad situation worse, not just for poor people, but for the middle class, too. As a result, the only solution to poverty and financial instability is to ensure every family has a government guaranteed income.  

No More Handouts!:  Cash welfare payments inevitably discourage people from working and create patterns of dependency that are passed on from generation to generation. Increasing the size of welfare checks and extending them to people who are already self-sufficient only serves to undermine personal responsibility and deepen a sense of entitlement, sapping the country of the hard-working, entrepreneurial spirit that has made it the world’s most successful economy. 

Evidence-Based Case in Favor 

The animating idea behind a universal basic income is that by establishing a financial floor under every household, federal and state governments can simplify the current patchwork of cash and in-kind benefits for low-income households, thereby increasing participation of eligible families and reducing the negative impacts and perverse incentives of “cliff effects,” wherein recipients lose public benefits as their income rises.   

At the same time, a guaranteed income promises to create greater household financial stability and security, especially in light of long-term wage stagnation and the ongoing disruption of labor markets due to technology and globalization, thereby enabling families to better plan for their future while reducing food and housing insecurity and creating a better environment for raising children. 

To date, the largest and longest running guaranteed income programs have been implemented in economically developing countries with high levels of deep poverty, such as Prospera in Mexico and Bolsa Familia in Brazil, both of which have produced positive results in terms of health indicators, educational outcomes, employment, and inter-generational economic mobility. 

More recently, a growing number of pilot programs have been launched in US cities, typically providing families with monthly cash grants of $400-$1,000. From this pool of data points, some promising findings are emerging.  

Importantly, the majority of expenditures resulting from UBI payments go for basic needs, like food, housing, transportation, and health care, according to aggregated data from over 30 US pilots compiled by Stanford University’s Basic Income Lab. In no case does it appear as if cash grants have been used for frivolous purposes, let alone self-destructive ones, such as drugs or alcohol. 

Here in Massachusetts, the Shah Foundation sponsored a 2020-21 pilot in which 2,000 Chelsea residents received $400 per month via debit cards. A study of the program by Harvard’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston found that about three-quarters of the funds were spent at supermarkets or grocery stores and other food retailers. 

A similar program in Cambridge provided low-income, single-parent households with $500 per month for 18 months. Recipients “reported higher incomes and lower income volatility” than a control group, according to a study conducted by the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania, contributing to a lower housing cost burden and greater food stability.  

Besides the positive direct financial effects associated with UBI, researchers consistently find indirect benefits related to mental health, family stability, and educational outcomes. For example, according to researchers at the Penn center, the children in the Cambridge UBI “treatment group” saw positive educational effects, such as higher grades and fewer absences. 

All these studies point to consistently positive effects of these UBI pilots, even though the monthly stipends have been relatively small, and the duration of the pilots has been short. 

A more recent large-scale example of the potential impact of cash grant programs is the expansion of the federal child tax credit during COVID. In 2021, low-income families received a fully refundable tax credit of up to $3,600 per child and child poverty dropped by over 40 percent, lifting over 2 million children out of poverty.  After the CTC expansion lapsed in 2022, child poverty rates doubled.  

Evidence-Based Case Opposed 

Universal basic income proposals can be terribly expensive and perhaps more important, most studies of UBI programs have shown little, if any, positive impact on employment and earnings.  Similarly, although there is strong evidence that these initiatives raise household income and improve living conditions, they do not appear to help families escape poverty. 

According to a 2019 analysis, a nationwide UBI program that pays $12,000 per adult per year,  phasing out at the median income level, would likely increase the annual fiscal impact of the federal social welfare programs they replace (excluding health care and Social Security retirement benefits) by over $900 billion or 250 percent.   

Here in Massachusetts, the Department of Transitional Assistance estimates that there are about 700,000 recipients in the Commonwealth of SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) and/or TAFDC (Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children) cash grants. Taken together these programs provide the average participating household with about $12,500 per year in benefits – not counting additional funds low-income households can access through federal and state CTC and EITC refundable tax credits, which average over $5,000 combined.  

If Massachusetts were to provide additional cash grants on top of existing federal and state benefit programs to get all households to the poverty line (pegged by the federal government at close to $80,000 statewide for a family of three) it would cost the Commonwealth billions of dollars. The pilot program proposed by Sen. Lewis would be even more expensive, since it ties UBI payments to a “living wage,” which averages close to $135,000 per year for a single-parent family of three in Massachusetts, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator. 

But that’s not all. Most UBI proposals are designed to go beyond low-income families. As a result, they would include more numerous working- and middle-class households that would end up receiving the bulk of additional resources, even if cash grants were gradually phased out as earned income increases.   

UBI programs that narrowly target low-income families would be cheaper, but they would present the same “cliff effects” as the existing social welfare system, since any additional earned income would reduce public cash grants, thereby discouraging work.   

Notwithstanding the potential costs of UBI, there’s little evidence to suggest that they enable, let alone encourage, the surest pathway out of poverty, namely work.  

A recent randomized controlled trial of two privately funded three-year pilot programs in Dallas and Chicago found that a $1,000 per month stipend caused “a 3.9 percentage point decrease in labor market participation. Participants reduced their work hours as a result of the transfers by 1-2 hours/week and participants’ partners reduced their work hours by a comparable amount. Among other categories of time use, the greatest increase generated by the transfer was in time spent on leisure.” 

The potential for negative effects on employment – especially full-time employment – not only undermines the likelihood of escaping poverty in the near term, it also raises the risks of ongoing inter-generational dependency.   

Potential for Common Ground or Higher Ground 

Poverty rates in America have long been among the highest in the economically developed world, with little movement since the 1970s except in response to the ups and downs of the overall economy, despite several rounds of policy reforms. In many respects, UBI proposals are a natural reflection of these frustratingly stagnant trends.   

The difference of opinion over UBI generally comes down to what’s valued most by either side of the argument: reducing the effects of poverty now or increasing self-sufficiency in the future. 

There’s no solution that’s been shown to do both together and, unfortunately, neither are there cost-effective approaches that have even been able to achieve either one separately. While the current patchwork of social services and income supports is overly complex and expensive to operate, as a practical and political matter the best near-term option may be to pursue incremental improvements, rather than sweeping transformation.   

EITC, CTC and SNAP appear to have the biggest impact on reducing childhood poverty. EITC directly incentivizes work by supplementing earned income, while CTC and SNAP directly address the basic needs of children and families. CTC, which is the largest anti-poverty program targeting children, also fully phases out at relatively high income levels, thereby mitigating some of the “cliff effects” associated with increased earnings. 

Less than 80 percent of eligible EITC and SNAP households participate in those programs, while over 90 percent receive CTC benefits. Fully aligning or even consolidating all three programs (or at least EITC and CTC) would simplify and improve access, as would more efficient or automatic methods for enrollment. Other reforms related to eligibility, work or education and training requirements, and the phase-in and phase-out rules could also be considered. 

Regardless of the path forward, it seems impractical for Massachusetts to make significant changes to social welfare programs on its own, including the implementation of some version of UBI, without the full participation and leadership of the federal government. 

James Peyser served most recently as Massachusetts secretary of education under Gov. Charlie Baker. 

Data: 

• Poverty rate in MA (2024): 10.4 percent (39^th in the US) 

• Median household income in MA (2025): $89,645 (2^nd in the US) 

• Percent of MA population enrolled in Medicaid (2025): 27.2 percent (23^rd in the US) 

• Projected Fiscal Impact of MA Earned Income Tax Credit (2025): $341M 

• Projected Fiscal Impact of MA Child and Family Tax Credit (2025): $460M 

• Average annual SNAP benefit per MA household (2023): $4,020 

• Average annual TAFDC benefit per MA household (2023): $8, 532 

• Overall public welfare spending in MA per capita (2022): $4,545 (1^st in US) 

Sources and Resources: 

US Census Bureau:  https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty.html 

US Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service: https://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap 

Internal Revenue Service:  https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/tax-credits-for-individuals-what-they-mean-and-how-they-can-help-refunds 

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy:  https://itep.org/ 

Peter G. Peterson Foundation: https://www.pgpf.org/issues/social-programs/ 

Stanford Basic Income Lab:  https://basicincome.stanford.edu/ 

Center for Guaranteed Income Research:  https://www.penncgir.org/ 

MIT Living Wage Calculator: https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/25/locations 

The post Should Massachusetts implement a program providing universal basic income?   appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

WITH THREE state-funded youth mental health programs at risk of closing, lawmakers and providers ramped up their opposition this week to Gov. Maura Healey’s proposed budget cuts that come as Massachusetts continues to grapple with a behavioral health care crisis.

Two 15-bed intensive residential treatment programs (IRTP), operated by NFI Massachusetts in Westborough, that serve teenagers with serious mental health and safety issues would close under Healey’s fiscal 2026 spending plan. That would leave just two other IRTPs in the state.

The governor’s budget would also shutter the state’s only clinically intensive residential treatment (CIRT) program, called Three Rivers in Belchertown, that has a dozen beds and treats children ages 6 to 12.

At a budget hearing Monday in Attleboro, Department of Mental Health Commissioner Brooke Doyle said those facilities are slated to close due to low patient counts, inadequate staffing and location hurdles. The cost-saving measure comes as DMH — which would receive a 7 percent overall budget increase under Healey’s proposal — looks to prioritize resources for its over-capacity psychiatric hospitals.

“These programs have been very difficult to maintain adequate and safe staffing within. They’ve been understaffed for extended periods of time, and that has contributed in large part to why we had difficulty keeping all the beds filled,” Doyle said in Attleboro. “The programs do provide a specialized service need, and the reality is, that we haven’t been able to operate them fully today. So what we’re proposing to do is to right-size the IRTP, reflecting the volume that does get utilized.”

Doyle said the state pays for those beds “in full,” regardless of whether or not they are occupied. She argued that makes it “not sustainable to continue to pay for 50 percent utilization.”

Doyle highlighted the state’s investment in community-based mental health resources, though the IRTP and CIRT programs are seen as a last resort to stabilize young patients who repeatedly end up in the hospital and pose significant safety risks to themselves and their family.

“Without these services, youth will continue to cycle through expensive and disruptive emergency and acute hospital services,” Lydia Todd, executive director of NFI Massachusetts, said at a State House budget hearing Tuesday, according to a copy of her prepared remarks. “Their families face income loss because it is impossible to maintain employment when they are regularly needed to respond to mental health crises.”

Todd added, “If this program is closed, the commonwealth will lose a recently renovated facility, a highly credentialed, experienced and skilled multi-disciplinary team of 95 staff, a Joint Commission-accredited program, and most importantly, the ability to help youth and families with the most serious needs to manage their mental health issues in their natural communities, and be less likely to end up in one of our adult systems.”

Todd told the News Service 95 out of 100 positions are filled. 

“We could be fully utilized — no problem,” she said. 

Program leaders and lawmakers contend the programs are underutilized due to a complicated DMH referral process that can leave youth languishing in hospitals for weeks or months before they secure placement. Due to high staff turnover during the COVID pandemic, some hospital mental health providers also were unaware the IRTP and CIRT programs existed, said Sen. Jake Oliveira of Ludlow. 

“It’s my hope that we can restore the funding for these critical programs because everything that we hear from constituents and everything that we read, there is a dire need for youth beds, particularly adolescent mental health beds throughout Massachusetts,” Oliveira told the News Service. “If we have programs that are underutilized, then DMH needs to do a better job with the referral process to get help to families across Massachusetts.”

Doyle admitted the referral process was “too clunky” at the hearing Monday.

“So I’ve actually made some changes to that referral process, going to preview it with stakeholders this month, with a go-live plan for May,” Doyle said.

In another major budget cut, DMH plans to slash the case management workforce in half, which would save the state $12.4 million. That move recently triggered DMH workers represented by SEIU Local 509 to take a vote of no confidence in Doyle. 

Gov. Maura Healey has already hit pause on a controversial plan to shutter a 16-bed psychiatric hospital in Cape Cod. That closure, combined with the three youth mental health programs, would have saved the state a total of $20.1 million, according to a presentation from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.

As House Democrats prepare to release their budget next week, Rep. Aaron Saunders of Belchertown said he plans to fight to ensure the CIRT, operated by Cutchins Programs for Children & Families, receives funding.

“We need it to be there,” Saunders told the News Service. “It is a level of intervention and service that other programs are not designed to provide, and that to me really is the linchpin.”

Saunders added, “In my conversations with the administration, I’ve tried to impress upon them that there needs to be access, in some way, shape or form, to this level of service.”

Tina Champagne, CEO of Cutchins Programs for Children & Families, urged lawmakers Tuesday to “dig deeper and to save our programs.” In prepared remarks, Champagne said the state remains in the throes of a “children’s mental health crisis” and argued “this is no time for a reduction in intensive mental health services in our state.”

“The decision to cut the CIRT is not only in direct opposition to well-established evidence-based practices for children and families with some of the most persistent and challenging mental health and safety concerns, but also puts the the most vulnerable children and families in the commonwealth at even greater risk by perpetuating the cycle of ACES and traumatic experiences,” Champagne said, referring to adverse childhood experiences.

She added, “The degree of safety and mental health challenges that must occur for youth to be considered for a DMH referral for the CIRT is highly intensive and the youth’s safety concerns are typically quite serious. If these youth could be treated elsewhere in the community, they would have been referred to those services, and usually have already utilized these services, but they are not intensive enough to maintain safety and mental health stabilization.”

At the hearing, Oliveira told Doyle he was insulted by her remarks that signaled the Belchertown program was not viable due to its location in western Massachusetts.

“That’s insulting to any western Mass. lawmaker who might be sending people halfway across the state, hours away to get the programs to utilize them,” Oliveira said.

The commissioner told Oliveira she regretted if her testimony seemed to be “disrespectful.”

“It’s more of a matter that we have to weigh parents’ requests and parents’ priorities, as well,” Doyle said. “So, it has always been a western Mass.-located program. It’s not new. And what we’re seeing is that it is getting a bit more challenging, particularly with workforce constraints, that when we don’t have full staff operating, it requires that the department have to make decisions with parents about whether or not their their child can be safely treated in that environment, based on staff that are available at that time.”

Rep. Kelly Pease, a Westfield Republican, questioned whether the adolescent mental health programs represented the “smart place” for DMH to make cuts. Without providing sufficient care to young Bay Staters early on, the state may exacerbate the prison pipeline and end up incurring more costs in the future, Pease told Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh.

Walsh insisted those programs were 50 percent occupied and emphasized EOHHS’s push to “right-size our behavioral health infrastructure.” Pease argued the low patient census was a function of DMH’s “antiquated process to get a referral.”

“I think the question for the Legislature is: Do you want to pay for standby capacity in two or three programs across the state that may or may not be used?” Walsh said at the hearing Monday. “In the meantime, you should challenge us to significantly improve our antiquated or very complicated processes to get people into these systems — some of which, I will remind us, were the result of court decisions. So we have patient referral pathways for people with, for children with behavioral health challenges that were built by lawyers, with due respect.”

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MIKE KENNEALY, a former private equity manager who spent four years as state housing and economic development secretary under Gov. Charlie Baker, declared his candidacy for governor on Monday and said Massachusetts is “heading in the wrong direction.” 

Jumping into the ring against Gov. Maura Healey, who plans to seek reelection in 2026, Kennealy released a launch video Monday morning. He pointed to rising expenses, education, the emergency family shelter crisis and outmigration as key areas where the Bay State is struggling.

“The political class on Beacon Hill is more concerned with their future than with ours. Our beacon on a hill has become a beacon in the rearview mirror,” Kennealy said in the video. “The people of Massachusetts expect and deserve better.”

Although the press release announcing Kennealy’s campaign launch made no mention of his party affiliation, a spokesperson confirmed he is running as a Republican.

Other Republicans mentioned as potential candidates for governor include Worcester County Sheriff Lew Evangelidis, former MBTA Chief Administrator Brian Shortsleeve, former U.S. Senate candidate John Deaton, and Sen. Peter Durant, who said last month he would make his decision “relatively shortly.”

Kennealy spent nearly two decades working in private equity before joining the public sector in 2013 as part of the leadership team that worked on turning around Lawrence Public Schools, according to his campaign.

He became an assistant secretary under Baker, and rose to the Cabinet-level role of housing and economic development secretary in December 2018. Healey, who succeeded Baker, later split that job into two separate positions of housing secretary and economic development secretary.

Kennealy stayed in that job for the remainder of Baker’s tenure through 2022, helping to lead the state’s response to the economic upheaval inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Following his time on Beacon Hill, Kennealy worked as senior advisor and chief strategy officer at the Boys and Girls Club of Boston.

His campaign appears poised to spotlight affordability issues, a steady theme on Beacon Hill for Healey and the House and Senate Democratic supermajorities. Kennealy named “a state we can all afford” as his top priority, followed by “a great future for everyone” and “government we can believe in.”

Healey in February announced her intention to seek reelection, saying she believes “there’s a heck of a lot more to do.”

Massachusetts voters over the years have elected a succession of Republican governors while preferring to keep Democrat supermajorities in the House and Senate, as well as an all-Democrat congressional delegation.

A UMass Amherst-WCVB poll of Massachusetts voters conducted in mid-February found about 52% approve of Healey’s job performance so far compared to 36% who disapprove.

Pollsters also asked at the time about hypothetical matchups between Healey and potential Republican challengers, including Kennealy. Four in 10 voters said they’d back Healey over Kennealy, 15% said they would pick Kennealy, and another 39% were not sure.

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PAYMENT IN LIEU of taxes, or PILOT, provides reimbursement to towns and cities for lost revenues from tax-exempt land and property within their boundaries. In rural parts of the state, a major source of PILOT reimbursements are state forests.  

Reimbursement payments to towns are based on a complicated formula, which has changed over the years, that includes the appraised value of the property and the latest three-year statewide average tax rate. That’s where the problem begins.  

Communities represented by the Woodlands Partnership of Northwest Massachusetts—a public body established in 2018 state law and led by 20 towns in the northwest corner of the state—have been acutely aware of something that has come to be known in Massachusetts municipal circles as the Plymouth-Savoy conundrum.  

This prototypical example illustrates the inequity in the current formula by comparing the coastal town of Plymouth and the Berkshire County town of Savoy. Though the two communities have similar acreage in the program through state forests, the PILOT payment for Plymouth is nine times that of Savoy (in FY24, this was $1,210,586 versus $132,040).  

In January, state Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s office and the Division of Local Mandates released the report Pursuing Equitable State-Owned Land Reimbursements for Municipalities, which recommends, among other things, a funding floor to address systemic inequity in the PILOT formula.  

According to the report, the median reimbursement rate per acre in the state is $127, but there are wide disparities in the rates paid to different communities. In Franklin and Berkshire counties, the median rate is $32 and $33, respectively, with some towns paid far below those levels. Hawley, for example, a town in Franklin County, is paid $10 per acre, while Monroe, another Franklin County town, receives just $5 per acre. At the other end of the state—and the PILOT reimbursement spectrum—Norfolk County’s median payment is $408 per acre. 

The valuation of these lands based on property values specific to the communities they are in does not consider the harder-to-monetize benefits these public spaces provide, while simultaneously bringing local impacts and stressors to roads and public safety. What’s being ignored in this calculation are the crucial elements of biodiversity, habitat, carbon, clean water, natural resources, and recreation, among others.  

In the frequent discussion around limited financial resources in rural communities, and the resulting increasing and often desperate talks of regionalization as remedy to underfunding for schools, roads, and emergency services, it’s important that this systemic issue be included as both cause of fiscal stress and potential avenue for solution. 

The Woodlands Partnership, Auditor DiZoglio, state Sen. Paul Mark, and local officials are convening a public forum on this issue on Monday, April 7, at 1 pm, at Windsor Town Hall. 

There have been repeated legislative efforts to rectify the inequity in this program, which would not only provide critical support for small towns lacking capacity and services but would also support the state’s climate and conservation goals, as towns in areas with low reimbursement rates are often indifferent—or even hostile—to additional proposed conservation.  

When it comes to legislative efforts, programs that cost relatively little and have great effect on services, such as this one, should be prioritized—especially when such efforts connect to and further broader state and climate goals.  

When a small town has only a few hundred people in it, however, and is struggling to provide basic services to its residents, it’s often hard to have that message heard all the way out in Boston.  

Dicken Crane of Windsor is chair of the Woodlands Partnership of Northwest Massachusetts. Art Schwenger of Heath is vice chair. Sam Haupt of Peru is chair of the Partnership’s Municipal Financial Sustainability Committee.   

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ON THE EVE of a legislative hearing on her surtax surplus plan, Gov. Maura Healey submitted another spending bill for the Legislature’s review, filing a $756 million supplemental budget she said would address “time-sensitive deficiencies” in state government accounts.

The proposal Healey filed Wednesday afternoon (HD 4540) includes $134.5 million for supplemental payments to safety-net hospitals, $60 million for direct care for older adults, $240 million for state employee health care costs through the Group Insurance Commission, and more. It would carry a net state cost of $544 million after federal reimbursements, she said.

Healey’s office pitched the $190 million the bill includes for a child care financial assistance program as a way to “support Massachusetts residents at a time of rising costs.” Another $43 million would go toward the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) program that offers aid to families facing potential eviction, which has faced increasing demand during a period of housing strain.

The legislation additionally includes $15 million for grants and marketing related to the American Revolution 250th anniversary celebration, and $15.5 million for more secure electronic benefits transfer cards that Healey said would “help combat food benefit theft.”

“This budget bill proposes targeted investments that improve quality of life in Massachusetts, such as ensuring access to health care, supporting families with child care costs, and making sure veterans get their benefits,” Healey said in a statement alongside the bill. “We’ve also heard clearly from local officials and medical professionals across the state, especially in communities impacted by Steward Health Care’s closures, that they need more support. That’s why we’re proposing significant funding for EMS providers that have faced extraordinary costs. Our administration remains committed to maintaining a responsible state budget that tangibly benefits the people of Massachusetts.”

Other sections of the 25-page bill would ratify collective bargaining agreements with public employees, raise procurement thresholds under public construction laws, and allow Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency vehicles to use red and blue lights when responding to emergencies.

The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Ways and Means is partway through a series of hearings about Healey’s $62 billion fiscal 2026 state budget, and the panel will meet Thursday to consider Healey’s separate $1.3 billion proposal (H 55) to spend surplus surtax revenue.

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AS MASSACHUSETTS CONTENDS with an enormous crisis of housing affordability and availability, building more homes to bring supply into alignment with demand is essential. Even when market conditions are good, this has been a challenge for the state, with housing starts lagging far behind what’s needed to support a growing population.  

But things are poised to get even more difficult. The number of housing units permitted has already fallen by nearly 30 percent over the past three years, and the housing construction pipeline could become even more constrained by Trump administration policies if tariffs on materials and reductions in the immigrant workforce drive construction costs even higher.  

Against that backdrop, it will become even more important to find ways to make more efficient use of the state’s existing housing stock. That’s where there’s a role for the Special Commission on Senior Housing, which was created by the Affordable Homes Act signed last year by Gov. Maura Healey.  

The commission held its first meeting in late March. As it works to recommend policies, programs, and investments to expand the supply of housing for seniors, devising strategies to help older adults move into smaller homes should also be high on the commission’s agenda.  

Effective downsizing strategies would give more seniors the chance to live in homes that are easier and less expensive to maintain, while freeing up larger homes for Millennials and Gen Z-ers stuck in one- and two-bedroom apartments. To be sure, not every senior will want to downsize. It is just as important therefore to put equal thought into approaches that help seniors who want to stay in larger homes plan for how to maintain them, both for their safety and well-being and so these homes can eventually be passed down to the next generation in relatively good repair. 

A comprehensive plan that gives seniors in larger homes a variety of options makes sense. But it can also be a fraught topic. Two decades ago, then-Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey drew blowback with the mere suggestion that helping “overhoused” seniors move to smaller quarters fit with Gov. Mitt Romney’s prudent approach to smart growth. 

At the time, it was dubbed “smart policy and bad politics,” but with the right approach it doesn’t have to present that challenging tradeoff.  

In hindsight, Kerry Healey was right to start this conversation more than 20 years ago. Census data reveal the extent to which this problem has magnified over the years by giving us a look at who has traditionally lived in the state’s family-sized homes across the generations.  

In 1980, only about one-third of older households (those headed by an adult who was 65 or older) occupied a home with three or more bedrooms; today, more than half of households headed by an adult age 65 or older still live in these family-sized homes.  

We might chalk this trend up to homes generally getting larger in recent decades. But the data show a striking pattern—younger households in Massachusetts are far less likely to occupy a family-sized home today than they were four decades ago.  

Over 70 percent of the 36-to-45-year-old cohort had a home with three or more bedrooms in 1980. Now the figure is down to around 60 percent for this age group. For 26-to-35-year-olds, there has been an 8 percentage point decline in family-sized home occupancy since 1980. Those in their prime childrearing age today live in three-bedroom homes at about the same rate as the 65+ cohort did four decades ago.  

To a degree, these patterns reflect recent generations delaying marriage, putting off having kids, and ultimately giving birth to fewer children. But those trends are endogenous to the housing market problem: The inability to afford housing is shaping household formation decisions and it is certainly changing the mix of family households in Massachusetts through migration.  

With school enrollments falling and workforce challenges looming, it is important to recognize that the largest share (26 percent) of family-sized homes in Massachusetts are now occupied by those in the 65 and over age bracket. If the same share of older Massachusetts residents were living in family-sized homes today as in 1980, Massachusetts would have an additional 142,000 properties with three or more bedrooms for young families to occupy on the market.  

Of course, this would mean more seniors living in existing smaller homes. But to put that number of family-sized homes in perspective, consider that the Healey administration has said 222,000 new housing units are needed over the next decade to stabilize the market and rein in costs.  

To be sure, many seniors are just fine with their larger homes, and no one should pressure these residents to make a change. But two decades after this issue was raised and briefly became the subject of public debate and scrutiny, anecdotal reports suggest many older adults want to downsize.  

The new commission can provide much needed leadership by helping us better understand the various obstacles faced by seniors who may wish to make a move. Maybe it’s moving costs, tax and estate planning concerns, or the idea of packing and setting up camp somewhere new is just too overwhelming. It could also be that they don’t want to leave friends and loved ones behind, and there is a lack of smaller housing units in their communities.  

A quick public opinion poll could give housing leaders a better handle on these issues and help guide policy recommendations. With limited resources and many challenges, data insight to make smarter decisions has become even more paramount as we work to tackle the state’s housing crisis on multiple fronts.   

Ben Forman is director and Elise Rapoza is senior research associate at the MassINC Policy Center.

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“WE WILL NOT tolerate a kangaroo court…” 

That was state Auditor Diana DiZoglio declining, by way of a tweet, to take part in a Senate-sponsored hearing scheduled for Wednesday on the constitutionality of the law passed by the voters in November allowing her office to audit the Legislature.  

The “kangaroo court” she’s referring to is a four-member Senate subcommittee created to guide the Senate in developing its position on the constitutional issues the new law has raised (a picture of four kangaroos wearing English barrister wigs appears below the tweet). The “we” who will not tolerate the kangaroo court are the auditor and her supporters.  

You might ask why the law’s constitutionality is being raised now rather than before the election. Are laws that might be unconstitutional allowed to appear on the ballot anyway?  

Yes, they are.  

A proposed law may be excluded from the ballot only for one (or more) of a narrow set of reasons, and the possible unconstitutionality of the law is not among them, as the decision of Attorney General Andrea Campbell (who has the responsibility to determine which proposed laws may advance to the ballot) approving this question demonstrated.  

If last year’s ballot campaign had failed, of course, there would have been no need for the subcommittee’s work. But it succeeded, in part because lawmakers brought a long-simmering resentment about the Legislature’s secrecy and perceived arrogance to a boil.  

A series of unforced errors, like failing to finish its work on many of the most important bills of the session by its own self-imposed deadline, prompted voters to ratify the ballot question overwhelmingly, by a 72-28 margin. 

The Senate subcommittee will convene on April 2, seeking testimony from invited guests and members of the public on several questions, including whether the new law violates the separation of powers clause of the Massachusetts Constitution, which prohibits the three branches of government — legislative, executive and judicial — from infringing on one another.  

The purpose of the separation of powers doctrine is to “diffuse power the better to secure liberty,” and our state Constitution goes to syntactic extremes to leave no doubt about that objective:   

“In the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.” 

The resolution of separation of powers issues can be difficult, presenting the courts with challenges not unlike those the early Church fathers encountered when trying to illuminate the mystery of the Trinity: one God in three persons? One government in three branches?  

A proper analysis requires a “scrupulous” inquiry, the Supreme Judicial Court has ruled. In three recent cases, the court found no separation of powers violation in two (Gov. Baker’s Covid-era orders shutting down the economy for a time did not improperly encroach on the Legislature’s powers; the Legislature did not improperly abdicate its authority when it delegated the power to formulate the details of the MBTA Communities law to the executive branch), but a statute allowing the Department of Correction to decide where a mentally-ill prisoner should be incarcerated did improperly usurp the power of the judicial branch to make that determination.

The separation of powers clause is also the reason why the attorney general may not rely on the possible unconstitutionality of a proposed law to exclude it from the ballot: The authority to determine the constitutionality of a law is reserved for the judicial branch to exercise. 

Whether the auditor, who in this case is the representative of the executive branch, can demand to examine the records of the Legislature over its objection certainly presents a separation of powers issue, which the auditor’s own statements have complicated further.  

At one time, she claimed the authority to obtain not only the usual raw material of an audit (receipts, balance sheets, procurement records) but also information on internal House and Senate rules, which are expressly protected by other constitutional provisions and do not even invoke the separation of powers clause. A more recent statement announced that her audit would “start” with “all relevant financial receipts and information,” a formulation that left open the possibility that more problematic demands would follow.  

She has seemed to wave away any constitutional concerns by citing the approval of 72 percent of voters, but an electoral supermajority has no bearing on their proper resolution. She has claimed that lawmakers have “intentionally misled voters regarding the constitutionality of an audit,” and she has accused the Senate subcommittee itself of violating the separation of powers doctrine by exercising the power of the judiciary (hence the “kangaroo court”), but without further elaboration.  

The attorney general, in responding to the auditor’s request that she respond to the Legislature’s intransigence by filing a lawsuit, commiserated that “the consideration of separation of powers principles may be vexing, frustrating, or insufficiently responsive to the politics of the moment,” a sentiment that the auditor and her supporters would enthusiastically agree with.  

But especially in these precarious times, when the federal government is offering up daily illustrations of the dangers of consolidating power in one branch, it’s unwise to discount the wisdom of diffusing governmental power.

The Senate subcommittee hearing offers the auditor the opportunity to make the case that her demand of the Legislature is consistent with constitutional principles, but it seems that she has declined to take it.   

Margaret Monsell, a former assistant attorney general and former general counsel to the state Senate Committee on Ways and Means, is an attorney practicing in the Boston area. 

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While the winter winds battered away at the south coast of Nantucket, the island hummed along in year-round mode. Around 14,200 people puttered into work, sent their kids to the local schools, hit up the few dozen restaurants open during the off-season, and dodged downtown when the tides rushed in and flooded over brick and cobblestone. 

Before the high summer season roars in, when the population booms to 80,000, the wind and the water will have carved off more of the island, prompting some returning seasonal residents to pace around their properties with a wary eye on the bluff’s edge. 

“If people aren’t there during the winter, and they’re not seeing some of the biggest impacts and changes to the beach,” said Cynthia Dittbrenner, vice president of natural resources for The Trustees of Reservations. “So they come back to this beautiful, occasionally tragic, scene of erosion,” she said. “But if you’re there in the winter, you’re experiencing these incredible storms and the winds, and you see the erosion happening first-hand right in front of you. It’s like an education tool.” 

Across the Cape and Islands – the region with the highest share of seasonal housing in Massachusetts – headlines and eyeballs have been transfixed on the bluff-side luxury vacation homes tumbling into the ocean or threatening to do so.  

The region is already struggling with the workforce impacts of changing housing patterns while trying to maintain the seaside tourist draw that’s essential to local economies. A 2022 state assessment noted that a major consequence of climate change on the Cape and Islands is a reduction in affordable housing availability and tourist attractions and amenities.  

This is creating a housing crunch and a climate crisis at the same time – demand for these sandy, tony shores conflicting with the need to literally shore up the coastline.   

Groundwater is rising, low-lying areas are regularly flooding, and the ocean is slowly turning some peninsulas into islands, but there’s nothing like a house toppling into the sea to drive the point home: plan or paddle. 

And regardless, someone has to pay. 

The anecdotes, at first blush, seem like first-world math problems.

If a $5.5 million home nearly falls off a cliff in Wellfleet, who foots the bill? If a house bought on an eroding beach on Nantucket drops in value from $2.2 million to $200,000, but needs another $200,000 of work before the town finally orders it demolished, was it worth it? If the value of homes across the coast more than doubled during a global pandemic and the water continues to rise, who can afford or be able to live there now?  

The demand for coastal houses is quickly bumping up against the reality of nature, with soaring pandemic prices dropping along some of the more erosion-prone shorelines.  

At-risk houses pose a threat to more than the owners’ wallets. The saga of a controversial 5,100-square foot Wellfleet mansion entered its final chapter this year, after it was purchased for $5.5 million in 2021 despite the fact that wind and water had already clawed the bluffs dangerously near the sprawling house.  

A 2024 report prepared for Wellfleet by Bryan McCormack, a coastal processes specialist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant, estimated that the bluffs were eroding at a rate of 3.8 to 5.6 feet a year. The report estimated the house would collapse within three years.  

Cape residents and officials fretted that, should the property fall into Cape Cod Bay, the nearby oyster beds could be physically damaged and poisoned by toxic fiberglass and refrigerant materials. Radio station CAI reported that, after years of back and forth over who would shoulder the cost of demolishing the property, a demolition crew surprised the town by starting to dismantle the house in February.  

McCormack talked to CAI as the home was demolished. “Seeing that this is happening, going into dumpsters and being taken off site, rather than next week in a storm, it is, I think, a preferable outcome for a lot of the people in the town and for the people that use the beach, the people that are eating shellfish out of Wellfleet Harbor, the people that are living all through this system,” he said. 

But the showpiece homes aren’t alone. A 2020 report by First Street Foundation, a climate data organization, found 193,000 properties in Massachusetts face a substantial risk of coastal flooding, which includes more than half of the properties in some coastal towns.   

“Water doesn’t know property lines,” said Leah Hill, Nantucket’s coastal resilience coordinator, as she stared at a grey ocean. Hill was out in the field on a late March afternoon, checking on a stretch of the island’s 88 miles of shoreline, along which perches some of the state’s priciest and most vulnerable real estate.   

A 2021 assessment of Nantucket’s coastal risk, which informed a tailored resiliency plan, slapped a $3.4 billion cumulative annual price tag on doing nothing over a 70 year period. By 2070, some 2,373 structures on the island will be at risk from flooding and erosion, the assessment found, and the costs would rack up through direct physical damage, direct and indirect economic disruption, and direct social disruption for things like relocation and health costs from injuries and mental stress.  

“We’ve got essentially three types of flooding,” explained Hill. “We’ve got flooding from rain, so stormwater flooding. We have flooding from coastal storms, when we get those big nor’easters. And then we get flooding essentially from sea level rise.”   

When sea level rises around the island, it pushes on groundwater, which then pushes fresh water up above ground. This can cause water to settle on areas that were historically dry, expanding wetlands and causing issues like basement flooding far inland. It also causes salt water to intrude into wells and make them undrinkable, Hill said.  

And then of course, there’s erosion. 

“We have one of the highest erosion rates in Massachusetts,” Hill noted. “We are essentially, as you know, a body of sand in the middle of the Atlantic.” 

Nantucket’s climate assessment noted a key tension between “current private development practices and norms” and “a future built environment that is resilient.” It continued, “given these norms, any approach that aims to restrict development is likely to be met with significant opposition and must be carefully crafted to encourage resilient development.” 

There are strains on resources created by “a growing and seasonally fluctuating population,” the assessment further stated. There is more foot traffic, more vehicular traffic, and more demand for services and utilities on one hand. On the other hand, there are more people contributing to the seasonal economy. 

On Martha’s Vineyard, a 2022 climate action plan noted that the island’s south shore beaches are eroding three to five feet every year, threatening more than 700 local jobs that could be lost in vulnerable areas and impacting travel to the island when weather events force the ferry to suspend operations.  

“Shipping, trucking, and ferrying food to the island is becoming increasingly unpredictable,” according to the Martha’s Vineyard plan, and increased demand for local food as the climate changes will be constrained by lack of affordable housing and access to affordable land.

Depending on the time of year, prime waterfront housing on the Cape and Islands is also some of the state’s emptiest.  

About 60 percent of Nantucket units are now only in seasonal, recreational, or occasional use. The island’s part-time percentage is topped only by the Martha’s Vineyard towns Chilmark and Edgartown, both of which are in the high 60s, and Truro near the northern tip of Cape Cod, which is 71 percent part-time homes. 

“We’ve been growing,” Nantucket Select Board member Matthew Fee said of the island where he grew up. “We have more houses, and more bigger and nicer houses, and more people than we’ve had at peak before.” 

Fee wears two hats: select board member running for a sixth term and owner of the local bakery and sandwich shop Something Natural. He’s always been able to tell when a summer is in high demand mode by his “bread index,” that is, how many loaves of southern Massachusetts’ classic Portuguese bread have trundled out his bakery doors. 

The island, like much of the region, has always had a strong vacation season identity. But the savvy economic move for those who want to rent out a house is now to optimize short-term rentals. A one-to-three-bed Airbnb during the prime season can run from $350 to over $1,000 a night, while some eight-bedroom homes on rental listings will still go for around $25,000 a month. 

As state Sen. Julian Cyr puts it, “the real issue is our housing market is valued basically on what a given home or apartment rents for by the night in July and August.”

Fee’s bread index theory “really holds true,” he said of late, “and we are seeing huge spikes now over a Friday-Saturday-Sunday.” 

According to the state’s recent housing needs report, half of all registered short-term rentals statewide are in Barnstable County, despite having only 6 percent of the state’s housing units. From 2009-2019, 5,800 year-round homes on Cape Cod were “lost” – taken out of the normal housing market – to seasonal use or for other reasons. New production made up part of the difference, but not enough to stem the overall loss of year-round units. 

“Thousands of homes are at risk due to increasingly severe coastal and riverine flooding,” the report’s authors wrote. “But a home doesn’t have to be flooded to be lost. … The availability of modestly priced homes and apartments is dwindling as they are acquired and upscaled by investors who sell or rent at a much higher price point.” 

Sale and rental data trackers show a slow but consistent climb for years across these seasonal communities, but the pandemic sent prices into a new stratosphere. Buyers who wanted to spend more time on idyllic shores dropped in with higher budgets, with an eye toward short-term renting or leaving it vacant except for personal vacation use. 

What once was a “life-cycle” of housing is more complicated, Fee said.  

Past a certain price point, the house “usually doesn’t get rented but still demands all the services,” Fee noted, in terms of needing town infrastructure, contractor and staff parking and housing, and utilities to serve the bigger footprints. 

And, the houses that are now being bought, renovated, and kept empty during the off-season are the ones that used to be rented to middle managers, teachers, or town workers. They now have to find somewhere else on the island to live, if possible. Workers on the Cape have a similar issue, often commuting in from the mainland rather than compete for pricey housing where they work. 

“It’s good for business and we rely on it,” Fee said of the seasonal resident ebb and flow, “but it also puts pressures on the island.” 

For Cyr, who grew up in Truro and represents the Cape and Islands, the focus on the billionaire home imperiled by nature is something of a distraction. Coastal erosion risk is “a compounding challenge” to the broader housing crunch, he said.  

“There’s going to be some places that we’re going to have to retreat,” he said, citing locations with severe erosion along the Cape Cod National Seashore in Barnstable or the bluffs of Nantucket. But Cyr and resilience experts noted that erosion is a long natural process, which itself has carved the outlines of Massachusetts’ iconic shape. “This is part of a natural rhythm of a place,” he said, pointing to areas with little development that are eroding as well. 

Martha’s Vineyard beaches have lost more than 1,400 acres since 1897, and Nantucket nearly 1,900 acres, according to the State of The Coasts report from the Trustees, which preserves places of scenic, historical, and ecological value for public use. The islands also have nearly 1,800 acres of marsh at risk from sea level rise. 

In Cyr’s experience, the focus is on the dire day-to-day impacts of places dealing with groundwater issues and ever rising tides. 

“How do you bolster Commercial Street in Provincetown, or Beach Road from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown [on Martha’s Vineyard]?” Cyr said. “How do you deal with the pretty routine flooding that’s occurring now during high tides in Nantucket? That’s what much more of the conversation is, less these bigger, more dramatic examples.” 

Climate and planning efforts in Massachusetts have tended toward the town-by-town, until recently. 

Cyr’s brisk reference to “retreat” connects to a thorny debate over managed retreat, a process of moving infrastructure, people, and property out of vulnerable areas through policies that could include options like voluntary buyouts, relocating roads, and changing zoning districts. 

A 2023 state-wide assessment of coastal communities’ willingness to consider managed retreat, reported on by CommonWealth Beacon, found that there is still significant reluctance to contemplate relocating infrastructure unless absolutely necessary. Chief concerns were the lack of places to relocate to, political feasibility, and a loss of tax revenue – especially when it comes to high-priced real estate. 

Since then, some municipalities have moved ahead with plans to consider significant changes.  

The small coastal town of Hull, a peninsula including the particularly vulnerable Hampton Circle neighborhood, is engaged in planning efforts that include elevating certain homes or planning for a buyout program encouraging homeowners to move out of an area with a particularly high risk of flooding. 

In Falmouth – which considered a plan to make a historic retreat from its iconic Surf Drive coastal roadway in the face of sea level rise, flooding, and other impacts of climate change – there is a desire to push the conversation off as long as possible. According to The Enterprise, town officials recently learned that, because of an eelgrass bed near the beach, the town will no longer be allowed to dump new sand onto Surf Drive Beach to stall erosion and protect the roadway. 

Beach committee chairwoman Barbara Schneider said people need to face the fact that Surf Drive Beach will disappear. “We are no longer talking about saving beach,” Schneider said, according to The Enterprise. “All we’re talking about right now is saving a road and people’s homes.” 

Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, both of which occasionally lose coastal houses to erosion, are working to refine their resilience plans. 

Hill, from Nantucket, is putting out a bid soon for a retreat and relocation program that would incorporate a climate risk assessment and put procedures in place for contacting and technically assisting homeowners if they need to relocate their home – either to a safer perch or for demolition. 

Resiliency advocates are somewhat limited in their efforts because of public-private barriers. Nantucket’s climate plan is only tailored to town-owned land, where it can build up sea walls or beaches. 

“We don’t have control of what private property owners want to do on their property as far as risk management, if anything, unless it’s through a regulation,” Hill said. “So we’re focused on mitigating flooding and erosion out to 2070 on our most critical roadways – the way to get to the Steamship Authority and all of those critical assets.” 

State building code regulations can create some obligations. For instance, if an owner in the downtown Nantucket flood plain wants to do renovations that would cost more than 50 percent of the market value of the structure, the whole building must be brought up to code including flood mitigation measures. But, the parcel-by-parcel process can be unwieldy. 

A new report from Massachusetts’s Unlocking Housing Production Commission on meeting the state’s housing goals recommends creating a separate residential building code so that projects that cost a higher percentage of the total building value will have to meet higher flood protection and other climate requirements, and vice versa. 

Given the speed of erosion on the islands, finding a way to contact owners if their houses are in trouble can be essential. It’s a quirk of the wealthy seasonal community – on some streets the owners of many properties are corporations or LLCs, not a person, so the town will send a letter to the corporate address if there is a structural concern.  

There may be a chance for less piecemeal planning on the horizon; at least, less piecemeal than town-by-town. 

Recent initiatives on coastal climate resilience planning and seasonal housing stressors offer a chance for more coordination between regions. 

In late 2023, the Healey administration launched ResilientCoasts, an initiative that promises a “comprehensive framework” to coordinate local and state efforts. According to public presentations in March, a final draft plan is expected this spring, which will establish coastal resilience districts based on geography, coastal characteristics, and risks, as well as identify strategies to support local and regional efforts to improve resilience coastwide. 

“Climate change presents a unique opportunity to build safer communities – but no municipality can do this alone,” said Maria Hardiman, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, in a statement. Though no exact figure is attached to the effort yet, Hardiman said “for every dollar we invest in resilience now, we save $13 in damages and economic impacts in the long run. These investments are critical to protecting public safety and our economy, including the Massachusetts tourism industry and access to beautiful outdoor spaces.”  

Discussion about who should pay for resilience improvements reminds select board member Fee of debates about sewer access decades ago as the island expanded.  

There is a “natural tension,” he said, between the homeowners who need upgraded infrastructure because of modern building demands and those who are adequately served by the older systems.  

“One side says it’s a common good and we all should pay for it, and one side says half the island doesn’t require sewer,” he recalled, so why put them on the hook? After years of debate, the island split the coverage and the tax burden – balancing the costs between the current tax base, those who use the sewer, and areas with expected future users. 

That sewer system, which covers about 60 percent of the island, is now actively endangered by erosion and in need of quick remedial action.  

Similarly, the question of resilience often turns onto a question of “who is this for?”  

Nantucket’s resiliency plan lays out about $1 billion of investments to help the town weather the changing climate, and voters at the annual town meeting approved splitting the island into resiliency districts based on their unique challenges. Town officials have mulled – to residents’ chagrin – imposing fees on property owners who stand to benefit the most from the resilience projects. 

Dittbrenner, the vice president of natural resources for The Trustees, said the communal stakes of preventing climate impacts are rising.  

“We haven’t necessarily had conflicts, but we’ve needed to work more with our adjacent landowners, because some of the impacts of climate change and increased flooding and erosion, of course, extend beyond our boundaries,” she said. 

Property owners can have strong aesthetic feelings that sometimes conflict with conservation interests, Dittbrenner noted. Natural brush can hold a beach in place but look untidy, netting to protect sea bird habitats can seem visually disruptive, and sometimes the solid appearance of a sea wall is more comforting than a natural wetlands barrier that might be more appropriate.  

Given the cost of some erosion interventions, like beach nourishment, groups like The Trustees are trying to find a balance for municipalities when there are overlapping property interests. 

The Trustees co-owns the Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge, some 1,117 acres of rapidly thinning barrier beach that stretches around to create Nantucket Harbor, with the Nantucket Conservation Foundation. 

“We can’t afford to spend millions of dollars to come and place a bunch of sand on the beach just to shore it up in that way, because that is really transient and would only last for a few years and costs a lot of money,” said Dittbrenner. “So the cost benefit isn’t there. But if there are nature-based ways that we can improve the resilience of that buffer and increase the habitat, then that’s a mutual benefit that makes sense.” 

For that sort of project, groups can usually go to the state and federal government. Dittbrenner expects the cost will now fall more to the state given the pullback of many federal funds.  

A state grant will cover the last permitting phase of raising Argilla Road in Ipswich, which is the only road with access to interstate tourist draw Crane Estate and Crane Beach. The road has been flooding frequently on the king tide, which are exceptionally high tides tied to moon cycles. Dittbrenner said The Trustees and the city are partnering to nail down a design for the project, but have secured funding from the state. 

Town budgets are tight, Fee noted, and municipalities with areas of sparse but vulnerable housing can be stuck paying for outdated obligations. 

“The state rules have to catch up with the reality of climate change,” he said. “A town road can’t be abandoned if someone’s [living] on it, but what happens when the road goes into the ocean?”   

Don Vaccaro, a businessman and philanthropist who co-founded Ticketnetwork Inc., had owned a Sheep Pond Road property on an-erosion threatened stretch of Nantucket since 2014 and purchased the house and lot next door a decade later for $200,000, putting about the same amount into renovating and eventually demolishing the property. He demolished the second house at the town’s request just six months after buying it, for a $400,000 loss. 

“I was able to use it one week with my family and kids in both houses, which was a priceless experience, so it was worth it in the end,” he told the Nantucket Current in January. 

Housing dynamics are involved in an awkward push-and-pull with climate and open space interests. Protected coastline and green space are desirable to nearby buyers and renters, but also drive up housing costs by limiting available land. And when the impacts of climate change get too pronounced, the land value tanks. 

The former owners of the small Sheep Pond Road house bought it for $2 million in 1988 and held on for decades as the shoreline receded, imperiling the structure. Even local housing nonprofits weren’t interested after three storms carved out the little remaining beach. When they sold it to Vacarro, they got back just 10 percent of their initial investment.  

“Most of these properties that you see that have this dramatic erosion loss,” Cyr said, pointing as an example to a house that had to be relocated at Ballston Beach in Truro two years ago, “these are seasonal homes. These are second homes. I think I hear much more from concerned constituents who may not be living at the water’s edge, but whose homeowners insurance rates have gone up astronomically, or they can’t get homeowners insurance.” 

The state should be able to step in and offer assistance, said Cyr, who supports efforts to establish a flood insurance market and has filed legislation to offer incentives and encouragement to make home investments that would be more resilient to a changing climate. 

The majority of residents are not scrambling to save million-dollar homes, but demand for housing has made even risky bets seem like a good option if the buyer doesn’t mind a short use window or taking a loss that costs as much as buying a studio apartment in Boston. 

And as in the case of the former owner of the demolished Sheep Pond Road house, buying a home in 1988 with a wide stretch between the house and the beach is no guarantee of safety. When the ocean comes, if it’s every homeowner for themself, the options are demolition or a fire sale. 

The post ‘Water doesn’t know property lines’: Where Massachusetts’s climate and housing crises meet appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

PARENTS AND TEACHERS have always had to fight to hold and direct teenagers’ attention—to get them to engage in conversation at family dinner, to encourage them to put down the video game controller and pick up a book, to make sure they do their homework instead of gossiping all night with friends. Teenagers themselves have long fought to avoid distractions and focus their attention where they needed or wanted it to be.

But something has changed in the last decade or so. It’s no longer a fair fight. That’s because social media companies have developed highly sophisticated methods of capturing and maintaining our attention. As their brains develop, teenagers are especially vulnerable to those techniques, which also pose significant risks to their mental health.

Some might say we’ve heard this story before. Wasn’t television supposed to rot children’s brains in the 20^th century? But the attentional pull of social media isn’t the same as the draw of television. It’s far stronger, more akin to addiction than simple distraction.

A teenager in 1998 might have blown off math homework to watch “Dawson’s Creek” at 9 p.m. on Tuesday night, but the networks could only hold their attention for so long. They were broadcasting to a general audience, and the 10 p.m. offering might not have captured their interest.

In 2025, social media companies know exactly how to hold a teenager’s interest. It’s as if every show in the Tuesday night lineup was written and produced just for them, along with the daytime schedule and the lineup on every other weeknight. At any moment of any day, social media companies can direct today’s teenager to content that’s just as captivating as Dawson’s Creek was in 1998.

Social media companies track how long a teenager spends looking at each post, which posts they like and comment on, when they’re most likely to come online, and more. From all this data, they’re able to target content to adolescents that is individually tailored to their interests and behavioral profile.

When young people encounter this endless stream of bespoke content, they get a series of dopamine hits that keep them on the app—and social media companies get to sell more ads.

Some researchers and commentators have started referring to these data and algorithm-fueled practices as “human fracking”—a high-tech way of extracting more attention from a limited supply, just as oil and gas companies have developed innovative ways to extract more fossil fuels from sources that were thought to be exhausted.

And just as fossil fuel fracking has wreaked havoc on the environment, the “fracking” of teenagers’ attention may wreak havoc on their minds. Last year, the US Surgeon General issued an alarming Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. It noted that frequent social media use is associated with changes in parts of the developing brain that are connected to impulse control, emotional regulation, and moderating social behavior. It also explained that social media has been linked to depression, anxiety, loneliness, sleep problems, and attentional issues in teenagers.

The advisory cited research indicating that minors who spend more than three hours a day on social media face twice the risk of serious mental health problems. Given that teenagers spend an average of almost five hours per day on social media, those negative consequences may be widespread in the adolescent population.

Fortunately, Massachusetts is not powerless in the face of these harms to our children. In January, we filed legislation that would prohibit social media companies from directing content at minors through algorithms that are capable of hijacking their attention. The bill would also prohibit social media companies from interfering with minors’ sleep by sending them notifications overnight.

By prohibiting addictive algorithmic feeds for minors, we can limit the addictive power of social media and help adolescents establish more balanced relationships with technology.

Teens would still be able to use social media if the bill became law. They’d see posts from friends, posts they searched for, and posts from accounts they chose to follow, but they wouldn’t see an infinite scroll of algorithmically targeted content from accounts to which they never even subscribed. The world of social media would become more finite, and it wouldn’t be so hard for teenagers to pull themselves away.

The prohibition on algorithmic feeds would also protect teens from being steered toward potentially harmful content. These feeds have pushed children experiencing body image issues toward videos promoting eating disorders, and directed depressed teenagers to videos demonstrating how to commit suicide—often with tragic consequences. Without addictive feeds, struggling teenagers wouldn’t be able to spiral so easily into further isolation and distress.

The Commonwealth wouldn’t be the first state to pass such a law. California and New York passed their own addictive feeds prohibitions last year, overcoming vociferous opposition from Big Tech companies that were unwilling to relinquish their devastating (and profitable) hold on teenagers’ attention.

In New York, opponents led by Meta and Google spent almost $1 million on a “whisper campaign” against the addictive feeds prohibition and another bill creating safeguards related to children’s personal data. We can expect similar opposition here. When it arrives, we should remember that our children are relying on us to have the courage and the wisdom to push back on Big Tech’s self-motivated spin.

Parents and teachers are ready for change. Even teenagers are tired of social media companies robbing them of their time and attention. Let’s come together to ban the destructive fracking of our children’s minds.

Cynthia Creem, a Democrat from Newton, is the majority leader in the Massachusetts Senate. Bill MacGregor is a Democratic state representative from West Roxbury.

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LAST FALL, the Legislature passed a bill mandating a massive purchase of industrial energy storage batteries. I wrote about the staggering cost of this endeavor. However, since this ill-advised effort is proceeding, it is important to minimize its fiscal damage.

Massachusetts ratepayers have a newfound interest in charges on their utility bills since the large price spikes of recent months. With a self-imposed deadline of 2050 for Massachusetts to reach net-zero emissions, costly large-scale battery storage is now a key component of the state’s strategy to keep the lights on, given the intermittency and unreliability of alternative energy.

The bill calls for 5,000 megawatts of battery storage. Assuming this would involve four-hour duration batteries, which make up most grid-scale battery systems, this gives 20,000 megawatt hours of storage, which would power the state for just three and a half hours, on average.

The Department of Energy Resources conducted a public comment period on this costly battery procurement. By law, 1,500 megawatts of the 5,000 megawatt total must be purchased by July 31 of this year, with a forthcoming request for proposals. The cost was a concern when we learned of this massive battery buy, and more questions of cost arose once we looked at the logistics.

First, who will pay? Ratepayers across the state are already feeling the financial burden of energy transition policies like this, and minimizing their impact should be a top priority.

There are both supply charges and delivery charges that make up ratepayers’ bills. Supply charges represent the amount of electricity used and distributed by a supplier, and delivery charges include transmission, transition, distribution, and other charges.

Just because distribution companies are responsible for procuring battery storage does not mean their retail customers should bear the full cost. In fairness, the municipal utilities, co-ops, and electricity retailers should also share the billions in costs, with any rate increases fairly apportioned.

We also question whether the Department of Public Utilities has the authority to set rates for these entities unilaterally, or whether new legislation would be required. This complex issue of rate fairness must be resolved before any battery purchases move forward.

Another major cost concern is the unpredictability of site and facility expenses. Unlike offshore wind projects, where lease costs and site development expenses are known before power purchase agreements are negotiated, the specifics of these battery storage sites remain largely unknown. Without knowing their locations, estimating total costs is nearly impossible, making contract pricing highly problematic.

Additionally, the proposal includes the procurement of “environmental attributes,” which can be loosely defined as benefits from avoiding emissions produced by traditional energy sources, which will ultimately shift costs elsewhere.

While these attributes can reduce contract prices, they still require payment—often by ratepayers. For example, clean peak energy certificates, or CPECs, which are credits earned by renewable generators or storage systems that provide energy during peak demand, are typically funded by ratepayers. The goal of the RFP should be to minimize the total cost to the people of Massachusetts, not just the contract price.

The proposed 30-year contract term raises further concerns. Grid-scale lithium batteries typically last 10-15 years, so they would require full replacement at least once, possibly twice, within the contract period. Depending on usage, this could push costs into the tens of billions of dollars over the 30-year term. Locking into such an expensive commitment today would be reckless and replacement should be handled through separate contracts.

Conversely, some predict that grid battery costs could decline significantly—potentially by as much as 80 percent. If that happens and contract payments remain unchanged, developers could reap enormous windfall profits at the expense of ratepayers. The RFP must be structured to account for potential cost reductions to avoid this scenario.

Considering the recent attention to the spike in utility bills, and particularly the added fees related to climate policies, the new industrial battery mandate should be executed with the tangible costs to ratepayers and taxpayers in mind.

Laurie Belsito is the policy director at Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.

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