Fall River Needs a Balanced Housing Strategy

Fall River is riding a wave of exciting changes including the long awaited arrival of the South Coast Rail and a massive waterfront redevelopment. While working class and low income city residents welcome the city’s revitalization, they also need protections from rising rents, eviction and displacement. As the mayors of Salem and Lynn warned: Our current residents are being pushed from our cities, and we are having a harder and harder time being a welcoming place to new residents.

After hearing concerns from local organizations and individuals, the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI) reviewed a wide range of public records to understand Fall River’s housing strategies and issued a​ new report, Fall River Needs a Balanced Housing Strategy.  While half of the city’s renters struggle with housing costs, the city champions market rate and luxury projects, allows the affordable inventory to shrink, and fails to develop an affordable housing pipeline.

Although several Fall River officials and leaders have argued that the city has enough—if not more than enough—affordable rental housing, the facts tell a different story. Unlike several other Gateway Cities, Fall River has:

• Ignored the shortage of affordable housing  including  an extremely low rental vacancy rate(1.2%), exploding rents, high housing cost burdens, increasing evictions and fears of displacement.
• Allowed the city’s affordable housing inventory to shrink by about 100 units since 2013, despite access to millions of dollars that could be used to preserve and grow the supply; 
• Prioritized upscale developments— adding more than 600 market rate and luxury units since 2017 and giving zoning approval to over 2,000 market rate units;
• Allocated only a small share of millions of dollars that could be used to preserve and increase  the supply of affordable housing. The city used NONE of the $85.6 million in federal ARPA funds; NONE of the recent $14.9 million in Community Development Block Grants (CDBG);  and only 5% of its $12.8 million in CPA funds through 2023 although a minimum of 10% is required.

The MLRI report urges Fall River to re-balance its approach and recommends action steps to provide both market rate and affordable housing opportunities so that all residents will benefit from the city’s renewal.

For more information please contact Judith Liben, housing attorney and Access to Justice Fellow at MLRI (jliben@mlri.org).