Mass. Plan to ease housing crunch stuck in limbo

The Boston Globe reports:

A program to sell state land to developers to ease Massachusetts' housing crunch has not sold a single property over the past year, a state government official said yesterday.


In the prior two years, the state had agreed to sell 30 parcels of land to developers for a total of more than $35 million, slating the majority of the land for 600 market-rate and affordable-housing units.

The sales were completed under a two-year bill that sped up sales by eliminating a requirement that the state Legislature approve each individual transaction. That temporary measure expired June 30, 2005, and no sales have been approved by lawmakers since then, said Peter Norstrand, deputy commissioner of the state's Division of Capital Asset Management, which managed the program.

Some states aren't interested in a middle class lifestyle.