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wbjournal.com | February 21, 2022 | Worcester Business Journal 21 Affordable housing key to city's future V I E W P O I N T E D I T O R I A L H ousing is the cornerstone of our communities, our lives, our economy. e housing deficit our commonwealth faces, along with increasing construction costs and exclusionary zoning practices, has driven the price of new homes to record highs. Over the course of the two decades I have spent in public office, I have seen the issue of housing change dramatically. I saw the implosion of the housing market in 2008 and the wave of foreclosures and evictions that followed. I have seen the increasing attention paid to density as we seek to create more livable and walkable communities in our cities and our suburbs. More recently, I have seen new residents flock to Worcester's historic housing market. e coronavirus pandemic put our housing crisis in stark relief. Our state delegation responded by passing the RAFT program and eviction moratorium to keep people in their homes while our world was turned upside down. Affordable housing is an indefinite term. Sometimes it's purpose-built housing, like the new developments being undertaken by the Worcester Housing Authority. Some- times it is a housing voucher for a working mother in a rented apartment. Sometimes it means simply housing that is affordable for a working family. Affordable housing too oen is a pejorative term. For me, affordable housing means senior housing, veteran housing, workforce housing, homes for those living with HIV and AIDS. Affordable housing means jobs. Not just for the developers, engineers, and architects who create the plans, but for the inspectors and the carpenters and roofers who build the homes. As we look at the size and scope of federal investment in our state through the historic ARPA program, we need to look to create a variety of offerings in the affordable housing space even as we invest in our existing housing stock. is funding is allowing greater flexibility in how it can be used. For example, we're investing an additional $1.5 million into lead abatement to create more units that can be rented to families with children. We are fortunate to have a strong legislative delega- tion. rough their efforts to pass the housing bond bill, we started a first-in-the-commonwealth revolving loan program to encourage reinvestment in our three-deckers, bringing them up to health and safety codes. Many of these have unrented units due to aging owners, physical plant issues, and sometimes roofs needing to be replaced. is program is intended to bring those units back online. We need to create a variety of affordable and workforce offerings. is will allow seniors to move into more ap- propriate units as they seek to downsize and free up larger units and single-family homes for growing families. rough smart planning and investing in our historic multi-family homes, we can build density around transit hubs and create the energy- and resource-efficient com- munities to last for the next century. Joseph M. Petty is the mayor of the City of Worcester. BY JOSEPH M. PETTY Special to the WBJ The above Editorial is the opinion of the WBJ Editorial Board. The Viewpoint column, the A Thousand Words cartoon, and the Word from the Web commentary represent the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of WBJ or its staff. WBJ welcomes letters to the editor and commentary submissions. Send them to bkane@wbjournal.com. A T H O U SA N D WO R D S B Y R A M Ó N L . S A N D O V A L Colleges are in for a reckoning Joseph M. Petty W hile some industries have thrived, the pandemic certainly hasn't made life any easier for Central Massachusetts colleges and uni- versities. Although the medium- and long-term challenges the industry is facing were already there, they have only accelerated the last two years. As WBJ Staff Writer Katherine Hamilton found out in her "Waiting on students" story on page 8, interest among high schoolers in attending college is waning. For some schools, like Framingham State University, this has a direct impact on the bottom line, as fewer students are now enrolling. But even for the more prestigious schools like Worcester Polytechnic Institute with long waitlists for a select number of spots, this trend should be concerning. A college education is no longer an automatic decision for an increasing number of people. Affordability is at the heart of the decision for students who choose not to attend college. For the growing number of students whose parents cannot come up with the five- to six-figure cost of four years of college tuition, why would they choose to go deeply in debt when a number of career paths offer equal or better salaries and opportunities? Clearly a college education has significant advan- tages, but there remain long-term labor shortages in well-paying industries like manufacturing, con- struction, and health care, where entry-level jobs are available to people from certificate programs or simply those with the right attitude and willingness to learn. While this reorientation of people's career tracts was pushed forward by the start of the pandemic and the Great Resignation as professionals re- thought their work-life balance, it has been in the works for a long time. Over the coming decade, more recent high school grads are considering professional pathways not requiring that four-year college degree. at means colleges, like any indus- try facing headwinds, are having to pivot, finding new ways to attract students. Schools can grasp the significant potential to ex- pand programming and become niche providers of workforce training. While the four-year bachelor's degree will always have its place, the greater focus now is on a student's return on investment for that degree. ere remains a shortage of workers, and a number of fields offering high wages and plenty of demand, necessitating the need for further training. Identifying those niches, partnering with industry to identify key skills and developing programs, and building a pipeline of students is already being done by many schools in the region. And those efforts need to accelerate. Even as people tire of the pandemic and (hope- fully) can see this chapter coming to a close not so far down the road, we are still in a moment of great professional and economic upheaval. Being nimble, innovative, and responsive to the opportunities in the marketplace will serve not only our institutions of higher education, but the Central Massachusetts economy as well. W W