People with disabilities are more than twice as likely to be homeless as their nondisabled peers. The Alternative Housing Voucher Program (AHVP) AHVP decreases homelessness and institutionalization in the disability community by creating more accessible and affordable homes with over 1,000 vouchers.

The Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) program is a short-term, emergency funding assistance program that can be used to cover rent, utilities, moving costs, and mortgage payments.RAFT has provided a lifeline to tens of thousands of households facing the loss of their home.

Adequate funding for RAFT is essential to help those in a housing crisis stay in their home or move to a new one, depending on the circumstance. RAFT can help people weather emergencies like eviction, foreclosure, health hazards, utility shut-offs, and more without falling further into debt.

Public Housing Operating Subsidies help keep more than 43,000 deeply affordable homes at public housing authorities throughout Massachusetts afloat while keeping rents for veterans, families, elderly neighbors, and those with disabilities affordable. 

Unfortunately, years of underfunding have left many housing authorities struggling to operate and keep apartments in good repair. CHAPA hopes to double the operating subsidy for public housing to preserve these homes for all current and future residents.

Housing Consumer Education Centers (HCECs) are regional agencies that can help tenants, landlords, prospective homebuyers, and homeowners navigate a range of housing concerns. HCECs deliver housing and homelessness prevention resources, including rental vouchers, RAFT and, HomeBASE, and provide housing search assistance, eviction prevention, homebuyer and foreclosure counseling, and more.

Funding HCECs ensures that they can continue to assist the hundreds of thousands of residents across Massachusetts in need of housing assistance.

Public Housing Reforms funding improves governance and operation of housing authorities by assisting with capital improvements, management, and operating expenses.

Home and Healthy for Good provides deeply affordable homes and support services to individuals experiencing chronic homelessness through a housing first model that is less costly and more effective than managing residents’ homelessness and health problems on the street or in shelter.

Annually, the program saves the state an estimated $11,700 per housed tenant because of a decreased reliance on other expensive public services once an individual is in permanent supportive housing.

HomeBASE helps families with children avoid or exit emergency shelter, including staying at hotels or motels, through stabilization services and up to $10,000 to pay rent, utilities, security deposits, and other expenses that would allow them to stay in their homes or move out of shelter. 

This program, funded through retained revenue from licensing fees for mortgage loan originators, supports foreclosure prevention and housing counseling that assist over 11,000 people across the Commonwealth each year. 

The Tenancy Preservation Program helps prevent homelessness by working with households with disabilities facing eviction. In consultation with the Housing Court, the program works with landlords and tenants to determine if the disability can be reasonably accommodated and the tenancy preserved.

The MassAccess line-item supports the Housing Navigator website, which provides a free online tool that makes it simple to search for affordable and accessible rentals statewide. Working with owners and public sector partners, the site has built a database of income-restricted rentals from all over the state. It shows listings with reliable, actionable information ensuring that renters find details they can trust.

This program helps meet the housing and support service needs of unaccompanied youth and young adults, ages 24 and younger, who are experiencing homelessness. Additional funds will provide much-needed resources to further build up a systematic, effective response to unaccompanied youth and young adult homelessness across Massachusetts through providing affordable homes and support services.

New Lease helps find homes for families living in shelters by implementing a preference for these families in affordable housing developments across the state. Through New Lease, homeless families can live in desirable communities with the supports they need for success. Adequate funding allows New Lease to continue serving the over 300 families it works with to help find and maintain homes.

Tenants facing eviction are overwhelmingly individuals living in poverty, women, and people of color. Evictions have far-reaching consequences beyond housing insecurity and negatively affect people’s physical and mental health. Unfortunately, while 86% of landlords are represented, only 11.5% of tenants have a lawyer. Funding will support a new statewide Access to Counsel program to be administered by the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation to help prevent evictions and achieve housing stability.

A Fair Housing Trust Fund would help eliminate housing discrimination and affirmatively further fair housing by providing resources to organizations, housing authorities, or communities that are working to enforce our fair housing laws, provide education and outreach to residents, and foster inclusive communities free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity for all those protected by our anti-discrimination laws.