6.4 Adequate Housing Production

In a region burdened with increasingly high living costs—from health care to energy to transportation—an inadequate rate of housing production only exacerbates the situation, fueling an increase in home and rental prices.  To reduce the tremendous pressure of demand on the current housing supply, production would have to increase dramatically.  According to the Greater Boston Housing Report Card, housing production should be occurring at a pace that would keep rental vacancy rates at their current acceptable levels, lower owner-occupied housing vacancy rates sufficient to stabilize price increases, and provide enough housing to accommodate the expected number of new households.  For Greater Boston (an area larger than the Boston PMSA), this would require annual housing production to increase to 18,000 per year—well in excess of the 2002 production level of 9,520 new units—for each of the next 10 years.