Restoring Prosperity Conference

Regional Leaders Hear Recovery Strategies at HAPHousing Conference

This fall, HAPHousing convened a half-day conference to provide leadership and begin reframing the regional discussion of housing policy at a time of dynamic change in every sector of the housing market.

As hoped, Restoring Prosperity: Housing’s Role in a Western Massachusetts Economic Recovery attracted a diverse group of participants, from municipal and state housing development partners to regional leaders in economic development.

Judging from post-conference calls and emails, key attendees felt privy to a rare and valuable glimpse of housing priorities and perspectives through the lens of policy wonks from the national level down.

The conference was introduced by our own Congressman John Olver, who not only sits as a senior member of the House appropriations committee, but chairs the subcommittee on housing, transit and urban development. His message was clear that housing issues can no longer be divorced from other imperatives such as climate change and energy sustainability. National policy, he said, is trending toward linking housing dollars to reduced energy use, transportation efficiencies and other key issues.

“The uniquely American dream of single family homes on double housing lots as far as the eye can see is over . . . My charge to you is this: I believe all affordable housing should have affordable transport integrated into its process and energy conservation and efficiencies built into their development. The poor should not be saddled with poor design, poor building materials and poor choice of appliances. Retrofitting after the fact is always more costly than doing it right in the first place.”

Ben Forman from MassInc., which has championed the Gateway Cities program, previewed the results of a recent MassInc. benchmarking research study tracking Springfield against other weak market cities with influence over the health of their regions. He made a strong case for strategic reinvestment into transforming distressed neighborhoods, and stressed the inextricable link between strong gateway cities and the general health and successful development of the region. “There are four themes that will give us more bang for our buck,” he said. “Our efforts must be targeted, coordinated, differentiated and capacity-building. They also must look not just at housing stock, but at assets such as schools and transportation (and at issues) such as the leakage of local dollars out of the region.” »Click here for the Republican article on the MassInc. study results

The influential team of panelists that followed included James Stergios, Executive Director of the Pioneer Institute, Richard Walker, Vice President and Community Affairs Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Eric Nakajima, Senior Policy Advisor for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development and Geri McCafferty, Acting Director of Housing for the City of Springfield. The depth of informed commentary from such wide-ranging perspectives is more than can be summarized here. It will form the basis for future communications and posted video on our website, and will inform a policy paper HAPHousing is producing as an outcome of the conference.

Keynote speaker for the conference was Bruce Katz from the Brookings Institution, who was also interviewed by MassLive. He too made the case for “metropolitan-based recovery” and encouraged regional planners to reframe the usual discussion of city revitalization (focused on poverty, crime and crumbling infrastructure) to follow President Barak Obama’s vision of our cities as potential “engines of economic vitality.”

A special thanks to all of our sponsors who made this event possible:

Gold Sponsor

Bank of America

Silver Sponsors

Keith Construction, Inc.
MassHousing
MassMutual Financial Group
PeoplesBank

Supporters

Affordable Home Inspections
Caring Health Center
Chicopee Savings Charitable Foundation
Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation
Doherty, Wallace, Pillsbury & Murphy, P.C.
Holyoke Credit Union
NeighborWorks America®
NewAlliance Bank