A Message from CHAPA’s Executive Director Regarding the Defeat of Question 2 - November 4, 2010

Dear CHAPA Members:

On behalf of the board and staff, I want to offer my sincere thanks to everyone who worked on the Campaign to Protect the Affordable Housing Law. With your help, we were able to achieve a decisive victory of 58% to 42%, which was the largest margin of any ballot campaign. Over 1.2 million voters and 80% of cities and towns affirmed their support for protecting the affordable housing law for seniors and working families in urban, suburban, and rural communities all across the state. If you'd like to see how your town voted, click here.

We are very proud of the unprecedented grassroots coalition of diverse groups and individuals that rallied together with the affordable housing community. This included representatives from civic, business, labor, religious, municipal, academic, human services, environmental, residents living in affordable housing, civil rights, and many others.

We not only protected the primary tool to create affordable housing in Massachusetts, but we also helped to increase public awareness about who affordable housing helps, what it looks like, and how it contributes to our overall economy.

I look forward to working with everyone to help build on this momentum to achieve new policy gains in affordable housing and community development in the near future.

Thanks once again for all of your support and commitment.

Aaron Gornstein
Executive Director