Public Land

Untapped potential for more housing

MHP stands ready to help Governor Maura Healey and her administration realize one of its main priorities – turning unused state and public land into housing.

Using public land for housing is an MHP trademark. We literally wrote the book on how to do it, authoring a guidebook in conjunction with the Attorney General and the Inspector General.

Our community assistance team has led this effort, providing direct technical assistance that has resulted in the transformation of public land into over 4,000 units in over 60 cities and towns. This success encompasses working with communities and housing authorities.

Much of our recent success has been on the Cape, where the unit pipeline includes Wellfleet (46), Provincetown (64), Bourne (36), and Mashpee (36).  Off Cape, our recent successes include helping the New Bedford and Gloucester housing authorities move developments forward.

We are working to achieve the same success with our ongoing work in Barnstable, Brewster, Grafton, Hingham, North Andover, Quincy, Pepperell, Townsend and Yarmouth.

Director of Community Assistance Laura Shufelt said MHP’s success with public land is due to its ability to combine in-house staff support with funds to pay for third-party engineering and lawyers. “We’re hands on and we bring in experts,” she says. For more information, email lshufelt@mhp.net.

One of MHP’s trademarks is figuring out how to turn public and housing authority land into more affordable housing