A “for sale” sign hangs in front of a house in Walpole last year. The Metropolitan Area Planning Council reported Greater Boston will need up to 435,000 new housing units by 2040 to keep pace with expected population growth. AP FILE PHOTO
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By Michael Norton
State House News Service
BOSTON — Massachusetts must significantly boost its housing supply to attract the younger workers needed to increase its labor force and help drive economic growth in the next 25 years, according to a new report.
The Metropolitan Area Planning Council report found the metro Boston area will need 435,000 new housing units by 2040 to attract younger workers while also accommodating the state’s growing senior population. The report suggests the new units would mostly be situated in multifamily settings and in urban areas.
Under a slow-growth scenario, the region’s population would grow 6.6 percent over three decades, with its 65-and-older population increasing 82 percent and its working-age population essentially unchanged. Without an influx of younger workers, jobs in the region could grow by less than 1 percent from 2010 to 2040, the report said.
The report’s stronger growth scenario envisions a population increase of 12.6 percent, with the population between 25 and 64 years old increasing 7 percent and adding 175,000 new workers to the labor force.
The report said 435,000 new housing units would be needed from 2010 to 2040 under the stronger scenario and 305,000 under the slow-growth, “status quo” scenario, which would still represent a 17 percent increase. Demand exists for new housing, including apartments and condominiums, even though a “senior sell-off” may provide most of the single-family homes needed by younger families.
“Which scenario is more likely to occur depends on decisions yet to be made,” the report said. “Individual households will make their own choices about where to live, but they will do so in a context influenced by public-sector actions and investments. Policies to promote housing construction will facilitate the higher in-migration rates that characterize the Stronger Region scenario. Conversely, continued widespread opposition to new housing will likely result in less.”
In the report, the council said it favors the stronger approach for municipalities and said that approach is already the basis behind the state Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development’s multifamily housing-production goals.
“More than a million of the region’s workers will be retired by the year 2030,” Marc Draisen, the council’s executive director, said in a statement. “To fill those jobs and grow the economy we need to reverse the trends that see so many young workers leaving Metro Boston.”
The report, which includes projections by municipality, said the number of school-age children in the region peaked in 2000 and is likely to decline in coming decades. It warns that without an effort to increase housing production, one of the state’s biggest assets — a skilled and educated workforce — is in jeopardy.