New report urges state to think small on housing crisis

 

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New report urges state to think small on housing crisis   June 18, 2026 By Jennifer Smith

Massachusetts is not building enough homes to keep up with demand or address existing overcrowding, but a new report finds that the state is specifically lagging in building the type of houses particularly suited to young families and elder residents: small ones.

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The Pioneer Institute report released Wednesday describes a dramatic mismatch between the size of homes people need for their household size and the homes actually being built.

Household sizes are shrinking – from an average Massachusetts household size of 3.23 people in 1970 to 2.52 in 2024 – while small home construction nationally has hit a wall. In 2024, 63 percent of Massachusetts households had one or two people, but just 44 percent of occupied housing units had two or fewer bedrooms, according to the report.

In part because of the trend toward knocking down smaller houses and replacing them with larger ones, there are 8,000 fewer single-family homes with two or fewer bedrooms in the state since 2010, according to Andrew Mikula, the report's author.

Massachusetts has become "a victim of our own affluence," said Mikula. "It's like we forgot how to build smaller homes that can be more affordable for folks."

The real obstacles, he said, are a “cornucopia of regulations, and bureaucratic processes, and land values rising, and other trends that make it very difficult to build new homes that are small and low-cost in the same way that a ranch style home or bungalow would have been 50 years ago,” he said.

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More Context OPINION: Kerry Healey was right: We should talk about ‘overhoused’ seniors (April 2025)  Local complexity stymies ADU push (May 2026) Dueling housing ballot measures collide with frustrated lawmakers (March 2026)

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