Affordable Housing Applications

The Massachusetts housing market remains extremely tight, with affordability and accessibility posing persistent barriers, especially for low-income households and households of color. While CHAPA monitors nearly 3,000 permanently affordable homes across the Commonwealth, the application and resale processes raise questions about who is applying, where they are applying from, and what systemic barriers shape these patterns. Last semester’s team provided a broad descriptive analysis of CHAPA’s applicant datasets, producing detailed visualizations of age, race/ethnicity, income, assets, household composition, and marketing channels across applicants. Their work highlighted important findings, such as the impact of simplifying the application process (which increased diversity in applicants), differences in how households of color and white households applied across towns, and disparities in income and asset levels by race. (Please look at the final report from Summer work folder for more details) However, many key questions remain unanswered, particularly around applicant movement patterns, portfolio bias, and the effects of age-restricted housing. Additionally, CHAPA’s data represents only a slice of the affordable homeownership landscape (suburban, predominantly white communities), which limits the ability to generalize findings without partnerships from other monitoring agencies. The goal of this semester is to analyze and provide insights into these unexplored questions, with a focus on geographic trends, demographic representation, and access disparities. Primary goals being: • Understanding where applicants currently live compared to where they apply, the geographic radius of their search, and how these patterns differ between families, seniors, race, and other demographic groups. • Identifying whether marketing strategies, listing sources, or application complexity impact applicant diversity and equity of access. The project will leverage CHAPA’s recent application data (including four additional months of data with large lotteries) and may expand its scope by integrating datasets from other monitoring agents and municipalities, particularly Boston, whose affordable homes are managed by the city.