To be honest, I expected more concerted pushback against this law than there has been. The fact only 4 towns failed to submit the required action plan is honestly fewer than I expected.

I'm sure we will see some towns not follow through with their action plans fully, but I was concerned we'd see a refusal to comply at all by a number of towns. The overall reaction has been better than I expected.

Tolls exist in many states. They are not the reason MA is expensive, that's primarily housing costs.

Have you driven around NYC? The tolls on the bridges and tunnels there are insane and far beyond anything in MA. A lot of the bridges and tunnels between various boroughs cost $7 each way. And that's with EZ Pass, if you pay by mail it's more like $11 each way. By contrast, the Tobin Bridge in and out of Boston is only $1.25 each way.

Right. Roads cost money. Is it really that crazy that funding their maintenance comes partially from charging a toll for people using those roads?

The money would just have to come from somewhere else if you got rid of the tolls, I don't see why people get so bent out of shape about it. If they'd prefer other forms of taxation play for the portion of road maintenance paid for by tolls, then fine, but I get the sense some of the people who complain about this stuff just want the government to magically pay for things without having the revenue to do so. State governments can't run a deficit the way the Feds can, so that's not an option.

I mean the roads in NY state are significantly worse in my experience, and it's also a high income state.

Sorry, I shouldn’t have taken it seriously, my bad!

How many? The numbers must be very small.

I've met a couple people that live in southern Maine and commute to Boston, doesn't mean southern Maine is the Boston metro, because 99% of people there don't commute to Boston.

Either way, I don't get the E. MA/W. MA rivalry thing. I like both and there's no need for some weird tribalism between them IMO.

Metro Boston is far, far away from encroaching on Western MA so I don't really get the rivalry. I like Western MA and want it to remain it's own thing, but it's way too far away for commuter condos to Boston so I don't really get the concern about metro Boston somehow encroaching on it. It's not like Easthampton is Worcester.

There are no Walmarts in Boston and honestly very few in the Boston area compared to most large metros in the US.

The issue is that the state has a housing shortage of ~108,000 units. The amount we are building isn't enough to put a meaningful dent in that, so rent keeps rising. If we actually built enough to erase that deficit, rent would indeed stabilize as the supply of housing would accurately reflect the demand.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't build what we are already building simply because it's not enough. If we stopped building what we are currently building, the deficit would get even worse and the rate of rent increase would be even worse than it already is.

> I thought those were all carved up for crappy apartments we can’t afford.

If you want housing prices to stop increasing, or even decline, you have to support building much more housing, and realistically that means building much more multi-family housing as that's the most efficient way to increase the number of housing units.

You can't complain about building the "wrong type of housing" and also complain about high housing costs at the same time. Especially if what you want is a single-family home, as SFHs are the least efficient way to build more housing to satisfy demand. It's fine to want a SFH, but if you want SFHs to not be really expensive, you need to be willing to support the building of much more housing, even if it's apartments.

Look at their username, they are doing a bit.

I would say yes. It's on the commuter rail and a reasonable number of people commute from RI to Boston. Same thing for much of southern New Hampshire.

Both Worcester and Providence are part of the Boston-Worcester-Providence Combined Statistical Area.

Eh, this one goes way beyond many of those maps. Something like Blue Line to Lynn realistically won't happen but it's arguably possible.

Green Line to Brockton would never happen, the distance is incredibly long for a light rail line (17 miles from the city center). But OP is fully admitting that it's extremely unrealistic.

I’m in my 30s and I don’t want to live in western MA. It’s nice, but I like density and walkability, and I like the ocean. I don’t think I’m the only person over 30 who feels the same way.

By all means, transit to western MA would be great. But not everyone wants to be a 2 hour train ride from the coast.

Also, since when do people over 30 not care about bars and restaurants? We might not care at all about being out until 2am, but we still like to get dinner or hang out with friends.

There are plenty of places in the Boston metro where we could build more densely and address the issue. I'd support rail access between Boston and western MA myself, but it's hard to see western MA being the real solution to the Boston area's housing crisis. It's not really close enough and there are places much closer that could add denser housing anyways.

Also, you're ignoring that a lot of people do want to live reasonably close to Boston and the ocean. I like the Berkshires but I don't really want to live there personally.

This isn't the same principle as trickle down at all.

It's literally just "if there's more housing, it's easier to get". Which is basic common sense. Luxury buildings can't charge as much if there are too many of them, which means that the smaller landlords have to drop prices too since there is more competition for renters.

Yeah, Driscoll was very big on development in Salem (a good thing IMO).

They certainly aren’t exclusive to MA. MA just has a population almost 7 times that of RI so you’re going to hear about just about anything happening more often in MA than in RI.

They launched an outreach toolkit a couple days ago that indicates they will be doing significant outreach to communicate this information, including door to door outreach, noticing, posters, flyers, emails, etc: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/masshealth-eligibility-redetermination-outreach-toolkit

Keep in mind that MassHealth did not know that the end date for continuous COVID eligibility would be April 1st until a couple weeks ago. This is because that date is not their decision, it is a federal government decision, and the feds have not been clear at all with states on when this COVID eligibility period would end. It was completely up in the air until the feds made the announcement a couple weeks ago, so that's a big part of the reason why communications haven't gone out yet.

In MassHealth’s defense, they didn’t know the date themselves until a couple weeks ago when the Feds finally announced that the continuous eligibility from COVID would end April 1. States have had no idea when the feds were going to change this guidance, originally people thought it might happen a year ago but it kept getting pushed back with no clear timeline. My understanding is that now that they do have a date they are going to be communicating it and have hired people to go door to door in addition to the noticing they will be sending.

Day to day cost of living will be more expensive here but the cost of housing will be by far the biggest difference. TBH I can definitely get a reasonably nice lunch around here for the price you listed if we’re talking take out. Sit down would be a bit more expensive than that though.

Others are correct that depending on how big of an apartment/house you want your mortgage here would be more like $2,000-$3,000 per month as opposed to $900.

Absolutely. Reddit in general is a terrible representation of reality, it is much more male, young, and white than the nation or the world is as a whole.

/r/Boston specifically is also a very negative and cynical place. Not that there aren’t any negative or cynical people in MA IRL, but /r/Boston is way more negative than the people I meet in real life.

I would absolutely support more development in Springfield, but does Springfield itself have a housing crisis? I just checked zillow and there are many houses in the $200,000 to $300,000 range in and around Springfield, it doesn't exactly seem like housing prices there are out of control. The issue seems to be more that there aren't enough good-paying jobs in Springfield, not housing.

Does Springfield need more economic development? Sure. More housing? That's not really clear looking at the current housing availability and prices there.

The fact Worcester already meets the requirements is not "not allowing" Worcester to develop.

I agree that development needs to happen outside of Boston too, but I'm not in agreement that the state government is preventing that development. Local municipal zoning laws and NIMBYs at town meetings are far more likely to be preventing development in individual municipalities than the state is, the state isn't really directly involved in local zoning decisions.

The traffic issues here are hardly just due to tolls, pretty much all of which are automated with EZPass at this point here anyways. Worcester to Springfield is roughly an hour drive as it is 50-55 miles, the issue is more than once you get inside of Worcester the population density goes way up so the traffic goes way up. Getting rid of every toll on the Pike wouldn't change that population density and traffic problem.

Either way, though more development in Springfield would obviously be great, I really don't think it would make much of a difference for metro Boston housing costs. Springfield is 90 miles from Boston, that's too far away to be a viable alternative for people who work in and around Boston and need to commute. Worcester is indeed a viable alternative, not so much Springfield.

I mean, fair, but I just think it's weird to say the state doesn't want to allow Worcester to develop when Worcester is literally one of the municipalities impacted by that law who is being told "you have to allow development."

I'm fine with more development in Springfield too (is the state gov preventing that?), but prioritizing the Boston metro area towns with transit access for more development arguably does make a lot of sense given Boston is where a lot of jobs are and people need to be able to live commuting distance to those jobs. The housing crunch is a problem across MA, but it is much worse closer into Boston than it is in Central or Western MA, the prices are significantly higher in the Boston metro.