by Jacob Love | Jul 10, 2026 | Featured News, Housing News
Governor Maura Healey signed the FY2027 budget this week, approving the version the Legislature sent to her desk without any vetoes. CHAPA advocated for that outcome to preserve key housing priorities contained in the $63.4 billion appropriations package. And we thank both the Governor and the Legislature for their continued work to preserve and expand critical housing programs, even in a very difficult budget year.
This year’s budget increases funding for key state rental assistance and supportive housing initiatives like MRVP, Public Housing, RAFT, and HomeBASE, and maintains level funding for many other beneficial efforts such as first time home buyer counselling. Additionally, the outside sections codify several targeted changes to Chapter 40A, the Commonwealth’s Zoning Act, designed to reduce local obstacles to development and expand housing production. A separate outside section streamlines the disposition of vacant public housing, helping housing authorities more quickly clear and repurpose long-vacant units so they can be returned to safe use for residents who need them.
CHAPA published a detailed analysis of the housing pieces in this budget earlier this month, which you can find here. We have also produced a budget tracker, which provides a side-by-side housing comparison between this year’s budget and last year’s.
by Jordan Stocker | Jul 10, 2026 | Featured News, Housing News
The Massachusetts House has passed its 2026 economic development bill (H.5562), building on legislation Governor Healey originally filed as “Mass Wins.” CHAPA is thrilled that the bill contains several of its priority housing policies for this session, including Yes in God’s Backyard (“YIGBY”) and a statewide framework for site plan review. We applaud the House—particularly Speaker Mariano, Chair Michlewitz, Representative Vargas, and Representative Kassner—for recognizing the urgency of our housing challenges and leading the charge on bold policy solutions.
Housing and economic development go hand in hand. Rising housing costs drive residents and workers out of state and make it harder for employers to hire and retain talent. By adopting policies that pave the way for more housing production, this bill will boost housing affordability, help families stay in their communities, and bolster the economy for everyone.
Next Steps
H.5562 now heads to the Senate, which will debate and approve its own version of the bill. The two chambers will then form a conference committee to negotiate and reconcile any differences between their respective versions, before sending a final bill to the Governor for her signature. As this process plays out between now and the end of the formal legislative session on July 31st, CHAPA will keep working with partners to protect these housing gains and to advance priorities not yet included.
Thank you to the House for passing a robust economic development bill that advances meaningful housing investments and policies.
Key Housing Provisions in the Bill:
- YIGBY: Allows faith-based organizations across Massachusetts to build multifamily housing by right on land they already own, significantly reducing local barriers to development while also requiring meaningful affordability for people with low incomes.
- Site plan review: Codifies a statewide framework for site plan review, replacing a fragmented system in which site plan review rules and processes vary significantly by municipality. It allows cities and towns to maintain local oversight while also creating a set of uniform rules to facilitate development, like mandating objective standards and establishing reasonable review timelines.
- Commercial conversions: Supports the conversion of commercial properties into new multifamily and mixed-use housing.
- $120 million in housing grants, including $50 million to help municipalities convert commercial properties into homes, $50 million to remediate former state-owned buildings for housing, and $20 million for a veterans housing initiative.
- Ending Housing Discrimination (Amendment #544, Rep. Madaro): Strengthens fair housing enforcement in real estate. It requires adjudicatory bodies, like the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, to refer findings of housing discrimination against real estate brokers to the state licensing board. Additionally, it mandates license suspension based on such violations (60 days for 1st violation, 180 days for subsequent violations within a 2 year period), adds fair housing and diversity training to licensing and continuing-education requirements, and requires annual public reporting of complaints and disciplinary actions.
Other Significant Housing Measures
The bill advances several other significant Housing Provisions
- Tenant Opportunity to Purchase (Amendment #71, Rep. Livingstone): Gives cities and towns a local option to establish a tenant opportunity to purchase, so tenants, or their designee, have a chance to buy their home when it’s offered for sale, with parallel rights in short-sale and foreclosure situations.
- Local Housing Tax Increment Financing (TIF) (Amendment #644, Rep. Vargas): Creates a local-option housing TIF framework that enables municipalities to encourage new residential and mixed-use growth.
- Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP) (Amendment #347, Rep. Cabral) : Expands this Gateway Cities market-rate housing production tool, raising the annual program cap to $40 million and allowing awards of up to $5 million per project.
by Jacob Love | Jul 6, 2026 | Featured News, Housing News
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“LGBT”) people across the U.S. have long suffered from high rates of housing discrimination and homelessness. Recognizing these issues, the federal agency in charge of national housing law—the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”)—has adopted protections for LGBT people to ensure they have equal access to HUD programs and HUD-funded housing. These protections, collectively known as the Equal Access Rule (“EAR”), have been in place for over a decade.
Recently, however, HUD issued a proposal that would eliminate the EAR. The proposal is not yet finalized because, under federal law, HUD is required to solicit and review public feedback before implementing changes. With that in mind, CHAPA has spent months advocating for Massachusetts organizations to oppose HUD’s proposal, and it has also submitted its own comment letter urging HUD to reverse course.
HUD’s deadline for the submission of public comments has now passed. Over the coming weeks, as HUD reviews public feedback and works toward finalizing the proposal, it is critical to spread the word about how harmful the proposal would be for the LGBT community. CHAPA will continue doing so alongside its partners and, as part of those efforts, is now publishing the full text of its comment letter.
A PDF of the letter, including footnotes, is available here. You can also read the text of the letter below:
I. Interests of CHAPA
CHAPA is a Massachusetts non-profit advocacy organization with over 1,200 members. Our mission is to encourage the production and preservation of housing that is affordable to low and moderate-income households and foster diverse and sustainable communities through planning and community development. CHAPA’s membership is comprised of people and entities from across Massachusetts housing community, including developers and owners, community development corporations, tenants, tenant organizations, civil rights groups, lenders, investors, and community finance institutions
II. Introduction
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“LGBT”) people in America experience disproportionately high rates of homelessness and widespread discrimination that limits their access to housing. These issues are acute in the trans community, which also faces heightened barriers to shelter access. Historically, many single sex shelters have excluded trans people; and, due to risk of mistreatment, trans people often avoid shelters designated for their sex assigned at birth.
HUD’s Equal Access Rule (“EAR”) is tailored to address these well-documented issues. To ensure the vulnerable LGBT population has equal opportunity to benefit from HUD resources, the EAR requires that: (1) HUD-assisted housing be available “without regard” to “sexual orientation” or “gender identity”; and (2) facilities funded by the Office of Community Planning and Development (“CPD”) provide “access … benefits, services, and accommodations … in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.” In short, these provisions prohibit gender- and sexuality-based discrimination in HUD-funded housing and require CPD supported shelters to place and serve people based on their gender identity.
However, the Proposed Rule operates to eliminate these LGBT protections. It does so by removing all references to “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in the relevant provisions and replacing them with the word “sex,” defined as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.” Thus, if finalized, the Proposed Rule would transform the EAR into a fundamentally different policy—one that is silent on LGBT discrimination and access.
In attempting to rationalize this change, HUD neither disputes the existence of the LGBT housing challenges underlying the EAR, nor claims the EAR is ineffective in addressing those challenges. Instead, HUD asserts the Proposed Rule is necessary to address three primary problems with the EAR, namely that it: (1) compromises privacy and safety for cisgender women; (2) imposes an “unacceptable burden” on the religious exercise of “many” faith-based shelters; and (3) conflicts with the policy and directive of Executive Order 14158.
This explanation is woefully insufficient to justify HUD’s wholesale abandonment of the EAR’s LGBT protections. Those safeguards have formed a longstanding bulwark against LGBT housing discrimination and are necessary to facilitate meaningful shelter access for the trans community. Any decision to rescind them will not only create an enforcement vacuum that facilitates unfair treatment against the LGBT population, but also—especially for trans people—exacerbate homelessness levels that have already reached a crisis point.
As discussed in more detail below, the Proposed Rule: lacks support in its threadbare record for key factual assumptions; ignores a mountain of publicly available evidence undermining its claims; and fails to show how its sweeping policy reversal is a remotely rational response to existing circumstances.
III. The EAR is a Targeted Solution to Two Real Problems: LGBT Homelessness and Anti-LGBT Discrimination
A. LGBT Homelessness
Research across the country has repeatedly found that LGBT people suffer from elevated rates of homelessness compared to cisgender straight people. For example, one study of adults by UCLA’s Williams Institute found higher rates of recent homelessness—i.e., homelessness in the past year—for both trans people (8%) and non-trans sexual minorities (3%) relative to cisgender straight people (1%).1 It also examined the proportion of non-trans sexual minorities who have been homeless at any time in their life (“lifetime homelessness”), finding that 17% had homelessness experience vs. only 6% of the general population.
While this research lacked data on the prevalence of lifetime homelessness among transgender people, other studies support that it’s very high. One point of reference is the 2015 National Transgender Survey. In that survey’s sample, which included over 27,000 transgender people from all 50 states, 30% of respondents reported having been homeless at least once.
LGBT people also make up an outsized share of homeless youth. In 2022, the Trevor Project cited considerable data showing that “LGBTQ youth are overrepresented among young people experiencing homelessness.” This builds on reports from many other organizations, like the Center for American Progress (“CAP”), which have outlined support for this point.5 According to a 2013 CAP report, LGBT people make up only 5-7% of all American youth, but estimates suggest that they represent 9-45% of homeless youth.
B. Anti-LGBT Discrimination and Mistreatment
The LGBT population is also subject to pervasive housing discrimination and mistreatment in the United States. HUD itself has generated strong empirical evidence, through large-scale paired testing, that same-sex couples experience less favorable treatment than heterosexual couples in the private rental market.7 Moreover, as part of the EAR rulemaking process, HUD cited a similar testing study conducted by Michigan fair housing centers. That study uncovered disparate treatment of gay and lesbian home seekers on a variety of issues.
Trans people encounter similar prejudice when they pursue rental housing. For example, a matched pair testing study of the Boston, Massachusetts rental market found that transgender and gender non-conforming people received “discriminatory differential mistreatment 61% of the time.”
The trans community also faces a unique set of barriers to shelter access. Trans individuals, by their nature, have an internal gender identity that differs from their sex assigned at birth. Many trans people choose to live in accordance with that identity, including by changing their pronouns and aligning their external appearance to match how they feel. This sense of self is deeply held. Thus, when trans people are misgendered—that is, have their identity invalidated, often through words or actions—many feel stigma and psychological stress.
Prior to the current version of the EAR, this kind of misgendering, and other forms of mistreatment based on gender identity, were common for trans shelter seekers. According to the 2015 US Transgender Survey, of the respondents who experienced homelessness and sought shelter: “almost 30% reported being denied shelter due to being transgender or due to their gender expression,” and 44% experienced some form of mistreatment at a shelter, including harassment, assault, or requirements to dress or present as the wrong gender.”
C. The EAR is Narrowly Tailored to Address Those Problems
The current version of the EAR, amended in 2016 to require that CPD-funded shelters place, serve and accommodate transgender people based on their gender identity, is finely tuned to address the housing challenges faced by the LGBT community. In particular, through the rule’s current structure, HUD is proactively seeking to address the discrimination, mistreatment, and unequal housing access that have long plagued LGBT people in the United States.
Notably, the final rule is clear that, to the extent anyone in shelter needs an accommodation based on privacy concerns, such accommodations should be made available to the extent they are not discriminatory.
IV. HUD Has Failed to Justify Its Sweeping Policy Reversal
A. Privacy and Safety Rationale
HUD initially attempts to justify the Proposed Rule as somehow necessary to protect the safety and privacy of cisgender women. Regarding safety, the Proposed Rule notes that “Homeless women are at increased risk of sexual assault by biological males” and that requiring admission of trans women into “shared sleeping, bathroom, and other intimate settings continues to place [cisgender homeless] women at risk of sexual harassment and assault.”
But neither of these claims are borne out by the facts. The reality is that, in jurisdictions that permit trans people to access sex segregated spaces, crime rates do not increase. One empirical analysis of Massachusetts municipalities provides compelling evidence. Specifically, the study compared crime data between jurisdictions with and without gender identity inclusive public accommodations laws, finding that “the passage of such laws is not related to the number or frequency of criminal incidents in these spaces.”
The Proposed Rule also contends that allowing trans women, who it refers to as “biological men,” into women’s only shelters will expose cisgender women to “trauma” and fear. This is pure speculation. And even if it wasn’t, HUD’s proposed solution to this problem is paradoxical. If its Proposed Rule goes into effect, it will mandate that transgender men—including those that have undergone hormone therapy, gender conforming surgery, grown beards, etc.—can only stay in single sex shelters designated for women. This would mean that cisgender women would continue to be exposed to people who look like men.
Ultimately, if this kind of fear was even a problem, HUD does not explain why the current rule’s allowance for privacy accommodations would not solve it in individual cases raised by shelter residents.
B. HUD’s Other Assertions
None of HUD’s other assertions justify abandoning its longstanding EAR. Not only does the LGBT community rely on it, but so do the many shelter providers whose policies reflect the longstanding rules. Additionally, HUD only cites to one shelter in Alaska that raises religious objections. One shelter provider’s objections cannot justify the recission of an entire policy, especially when there are narrower alternatives available within the ambit of the current rule.
V. Conclusion
Thank you for your consideration of these comments. Again, we oppose implementation of the Proposed Rule and urge HUD to rescind it immediately.
by Jenna Connolly | May 5, 2026 | Featured News, Housing News
Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA) today announced the selection of Eric Shupin as its next chief executive officer.
Shupin brings extensive experience advancing housing policy, organizational strategy, and systems change in Massachusetts. Known for his collaborative leadership style and ability to align diverse stakeholders, he has worked across government, nonprofit, and private-sector partners to expand housing access and affordability.
“I’m honored to return to CHAPA at such an important moment for housing in Massachusetts,” said Shupin. “For decades, CHAPA has brought people together to drive meaningful progress on the Commonwealth’s most pressing housing challenges, and I’m excited to build on that legacy. I look forward to working with the team and our partners statewide to take on the challenges ahead and continue delivering results for residents and communities across the Commonwealth.”
Shupin most recently served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (HLC), where he helped stand up the state’s cabinet-level housing secretariat and led the drafting and implementation of the Affordable Homes Act, a landmark $5.2 billion housing investment and reform package.
“Eric was one of the first staff to join HLC, and over the past three years his knowledge, expertise and positive attitude have helped turn great ideas into impactful policies that are now working to deliver more homes, faster,” said Juana Matias, Secretary of HLC. “We are immensely proud as he steps-up to lead CHAPA and grateful that his voice and vision will continue to guide housing policy here in Massachusetts for years to come.”
Prior to his role at EOHLC, Shupin served as Director of Public Policy at CHAPA, shaping its state and federal advocacy agenda and strengthening its role as a trusted convener across the housing field.
“After a thorough search, we are elated to welcome Eric Shupin back to the CHAPA team,” said Leslie Reid, board president of CHAPA and director of investment programs at Massachusetts Housing and Investment Corporation (MHIC). “His background in housing policy and consensus building and his commitment to creating thriving communities in Massachusetts will bolster CHAPA’s ongoing work to ensure everyone has a safe, affordable, and welcoming place to call home. With Eric at the helm as our next chief executive officer, we are excited to see him further the great work CHAPA is doing to make a better Massachusetts for everyone through housing.”
For nearly 60 years, CHAPA has been at the forefront of housing advocacy, providing policy leadership, coalition-building, and research to expand affordable housing opportunities throughout the Commonwealth. Under Shupin’s leadership, CHAPA aims to deepen its impact and accelerate progress toward housing equity.
“CHAPA has been an incredible partner to our administration. They were instrumental in the development of our Affordable Homes Act and in our continuing efforts to build more housing across Massachusetts,” said Governor Maura Healey. “Eric has been at the helm of those efforts for our administration, advancing our state’s housing policy and driving our commitment to more affordable and more accessible housing. We’re thrilled to support him in this new chapter as CEO of CHAPA.”
“For years, Eric has been an incredible advocate for housing. His leadership at HLC led to the passing of our landmark housing legislation and to thousands of new homes being built across our state,” said Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll. “While we’re sad to see him go, we’re thrilled to work with him in this new role and to continue our administration’s collaboration with CHAPA.”
Shupin will step into the role on June 15, 2026. He will succeed Rachel Heller, who served as chief executive officer of CHAPA for nearly a decade before transitioning to the executive director role at Massachusetts Housing Partnership (MHP).
by Jacob Love | Apr 1, 2026 | Featured News, Housing News
Recently, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) has issued a series of proposed rules that would be harmful to families in federal rental assistance programs. CHAPA has created a Resource Guide designed to help members of the public weigh in on these and future HUD proposals.
HUD is currently in the process of adopting three proposed rules, which are not yet final. The agency is accepting public comments on all three rules and each rule has its own comment deadline in either late April or early May. The proposals would have a huge impact on HUD programs, including by:
- Stopping federal rental assistance from going to families with mixed immigration status;
- Allowing housing authorities and some landlords to impose work requirement rules and time limits on participants in major rental assistance programs; and
- Ending a pre-eviction notice requirement for tenants in certain HUD programs.
If HUD formally adopts these proposals, it will force thousands of families out of rental assistance programs and into housing instability. One thing that people can do to push back on these rules is submit public comments. Not only can anyone submit a public comment, but they can also do so anonymously.
HUD is required to review timely submitted public comments and respond to significant issues raised therein. As a result, even brief, informal comments can make a big difference. For a comment to be impactful, the only thing the commenter needs to do is share their unique perspective.
The aim of CHAPA’s Resource Guide is to help the public: (1) understand the comment process; and (2) write and submit an effective comment. The Guide also includes important information for each pending HUD proposal, like the relevant comment deadline and a link to submit comments.
If you or someone you know is interested in submitting a public comment to HUD, you can access the Resource Guide here: https://bit.ly/CHAPA-HUD-Response.
