Commission Membership
| Name | Organization |
|---|---|
| Secretary Ed Augustus (Chair) | Secretary, Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities |
| Bran Shim | Executive Director, Massachusetts Architectural Access Board |
| Emily Cooper | Executive Office of Health and Human Services (HHS) |
| Megan Mulcahy | Massachusetts Housing Partnership (MHP) |
| Libby Hayes | MassHousing |
| Roberta Rubin | Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation (CEDAC) |
| Moddie Turay | Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation (MHIC) |
| Representative Adrianne Ramos | House Vice Chair, Joint Committee on Housing House Housing Chair designee |
| Brian Bickford | Eliot Community Human Services Senate Housing Chair designee |
| Michael Smith | Office of Housing Minority Leader Bradley Jones |
| Andrew DeFranza | Harborlight Homes Senate Minority Leader designee |
| Rachel Heller | Citizens Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA) |
| Emily Haber | Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC) |
| Ann Jochnick | Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI) |
| Sarah Byrnes | Massachusetts Union of Public Housing Tenants |
| Bill Grogan | Planning Office of Urban Affairs (POUA) |
| Chris Norris | Metro Housing|Boston Regional Housing Network of Massachusetts designee |
| John Yazwinski | Father Bill’s & Mainspring |
Commission Charge
The Commission’s charge is to study and make recommendations on:
- expanding the supply of housing available and affordable to tenants with a household income of not more than 30 per cent of the area median income, 6 adjusted for household size, as periodically determined by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
To accomplish this task, the Affordable Homes Act directs the Commission to:
- review and evaluate federal, state and local subsidies that support the creation of housing for such tenants and make recommendations to increase the supply of housing that is available and affordable to households earning not more than 30 per cent of the area median income.
The Affordable Homes Act further directs the Commission to examine:
(i) the number of deeply subsidized rental units targeted at families with incomes at or below 30 per cent of the area median income and the percentage of those units that are accessible to persons with disabilities;
(ii) the number of families with such incomes per deeply subsidized rental unit;
(iii) the gap between median rents and the rent affordable to families with such incomes and an analysis of whether existing housing subsidies are sufficient to bridge such gap;
(iv) the ratio of households with such incomes to unsubsidized units available at rents up to 50 per cent of such income;
(v) housing market factors such as vacancy rates, rate of rent increases and conversion of rental housing to homeownership units;
(vi) the impact of non-housing subsidies, including, but not limited to, the earned income tax credit on cost burdens for working families;
(vii) barriers to accessing available housing, including racial and ethnic disparities in housing access; and
(viii) any other factors that the commission deems relevant.
Timeline & Methods
Commission appointments were confirmed in February 2025, and the Commission first convened on March 26, 2025, and met each month through December 2025, both as a full body and in smaller, informal working group discussions. The Commission also met twice jointly with the Special Commissions on Accessible Housing and Senior Housing. At these meetings, commissioners worked to identify pressing challenges in preserving and expanding the supply of housing affordable to households with extremely low incomes (ELIs) and develop proposals for administrative, regulatory and legislative actions which could help to mitigate or overcome these challenges. Throughout its work, the Commission consulted with experts from across the Commonwealth and the United States who develop and maintain housing affordable to households with extremely low incomes and provide the services and support which these households need to thrive.
The recommendations included in this report represent the consensus reached by members of the Special Commission on Extremely Low-Income Housing. They do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the Healey-Driscoll Administration, its constituent agencies, nor those of each individual commission members. Rather, they are recommendations submitted to the Administration and the Legislature by the Special Commission as an independent advisory body for consideration and potential future action.