Local leaders tell Healey Berkshires housing crisis “affecting residents at all levels of the economy”

The discussion took place inside the First Methodist Church in the heart of downtown Pittsfield — soon to be transformed into the city’s newest emergency shelter facility.

“Well, I think it’s really essential to emphasize to any candidate who’s running for state office that we have a housing crisis here in Pittsfield and in the Berkshires, that is affecting the residents at all levels of the economy,” said Pittsfield Mayor Linda Tyer. “So, people who struggle with housing insecurity all the way up to young professionals who are looking for job opportunities that General Dynamics or Berkshire Health Systems. We have a lack of inventory at every level, and so we really need the state’s help to address those housing issues so that we can have a safe community that works for everybody.”

With no remaining challengers in the Democratic primary, polls indicate that Healey faces little resistance from Republicans in November’s contest as of now.

“We were trying to let her know about the issues in Pittsfield and what it’s like living in the Berkshires, in a rural community, and how it’s not the same as other places in the state,” said Pittsfield Community Development Director Justine Dodds, who had a punch list ready of housing issues the city could use help with. “The age of our housing stock, focusing on programs that help rehab properties, existing housing, create housing units, preventing properties from becoming vacant and dilapidated and demolished, and just making sure that we’re providing housing options for all of our residents.”

She says the state could do more to support Pittsfield.

“We need more affordable housing,” Dodds told WAMC. “Particularly, we need more vouchers and more access to those. Continuing to fund programs that really work, like the RAFT program, and like the receivership program that the AG’s office runs that helps properties from falling into disrepair, working with homeowners in the legal system to do that.”

Housing issues hit harder for certain groups within the city.

“We have seen that a lot of our residents in our core urban areas are paying more than, over 50% of their income goes towards rent or housing expenses,” Dodds said. “And then also substandard housing, living in housing units that are not as safe and healthy as they could be. So those are the struggles that a lot of people have. We’ve responded to that with some of our rehab programs. The At Home In Pittsfield program has helped to preserve that, and then continuing to work with our partners like Berkshire Housing and the Regional Housing Authority to help preserve that housing, the existing housing that we do have.”

“There is a shift happening here in the Berkshires around housing. We’ve had a housing problem for a long time. But it really, you know, got significantly worse in the past couple of years,” said Berkshire Housing Development Corporation President and CEO Eileen Peltier. “I personally don’t believe that we are going to reset down these prices by 20%. So what does that mean for the Berkshires? Does that mean that we’re going to become the next Cape Cod, where my staff- I have 75 staff living and working in the Berkshires. Are they going to be living in New York? I think long term that, 10 years from now, I don’t want the message not to have gotten to Boston that we need to be thinking about this. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that the indicators are that and it’s very concerning to me.”

When it comes to what the state could do to better address the county’s housing concerns, Peltier says many of the tools are already in place.

“Funding for affordable housing, funding for rehab of existing portfolio in the Berkshires, many of the different programs that we have, but it’s the amount of money and it’s the flexibility of the money, being able to use it in smaller projects,” she explained. “So sometimes the complexity of the funds can make it too difficult to apply in a smaller community. So, that is part of the challenge we see here. So it’s the mainly those types of things. I think that Massachusetts actually does a pretty good job of offerings. We offer a lot of different programs, but more money- It’s highly competitive, highly, highly competitive. It can take two to five years from a concept of a project to getting it funded. So certainly, more money is always good.”

WAMC’s extended interview with Healey is available here.