A Letter to the People Who Can Fix Boston’s Housing Crisis

We have the tools. The question is whether we have the will to use them at scale.

From John Tocci, CEO

Over the past 52 years, I’ve built tens of thousands of units of housing across New England. I’ve watched employees and friends’ kids move away because buying a home here has become so unattainable. This is personal for me.

Right now, there’s a rare alignment of opportunity I haven’t seen in my career: a HUD-funded regional study (GB ROCS), a bipartisan federal housing bill, and—perhaps most tellingly—Canada’s newly launched $13 billion modular housing agency. Let’s talk about Canada for a second. They are not funding another study. They are not waiting. They have committed to building 50,000 units of factory-built housing per year. They looked at the same housing crisis we’re looking at, decided modular was the answer, and acted. The question for Greater Boston is whether we aim high enough to do the same.

Modular construction’s promise—housing that’s 20% cheaper, faster to deliver, and more sustainable—is real, but it only materializes at scale. You need local factories. Local factories only make economic sense with sustained, substantial volume. That volume doesn’t come from duplexes alone. I’m part of a working group with MAPC exploring how Greater Boston can accelerate housing production through offsite construction. I’m encouraged by the people in the room and the seriousness of the effort. My ask to my colleagues there—and to anyone working on housing policy in this region—is this: let’s make sure our recommendations match the scale of the problem.

Greater Boston could be the first metro in the country to actually deliver on the potential of modular construction. Canada is already showing us it can be done. I’d love to hear from others thinking about this—developers, municipalities, fabricators, advocates. What’s in the way, and what would it take to move?