The Healey administration wants to give cities and towns like Boston the power to impose a new fee on high-price real estate transactions and steer the revenue into affordable housing development, pitching a local-option transfer tax alongside more than two dozen other measures in a sweeping new housing legislation.
"The cost of housing is the biggest challenge facing the people of Massachusetts. We said from day one of our administration that we were going to prioritize building more housing to make it more affordable across the state," Healey, who plans to roll out the bill at a 9:30 a.m. event in Chelsea, said in a statement.
The seller of the property would owe the tax, and proceeds would be deployed toward affordable housing development. Administration officials said that because the money is earmarked specifically for housing, they do not believe the additional fee would hamstring new production. ADUs, which are smaller buildings or apartments on the same property as a single-family home, offer additional housing often viable for larger families with adult children or older parents, but they can be difficult to get permitted in some communities.