Aaron Gornstein, G84, undersecretary of Massachusetts’ Department of Housing and Community Development. Photo: Richard Pasley

PEACE AND LIGHT

Give Them Shelter

It’s the numbers that keep Aaron Gornstein, G84, awake at night: 100,000 Massachusetts families waiting for affordable housing; 19,029 homeless in January 2014; 4,400 families in the shelter system.

Gornstein, Massachusetts’ undersecretary of housing and community development, had only been on the job for eighteen months when the crisis that gave rise to such statistics hit, and there was no easy fix. The state, despite a relatively strong social safety net, has the sixth-highest rents in the nation, the fourth-widest income gap between rich and poor, and a paucity of affordable housing relative to need. The financial crisis of 2008 had only exacerbated deep inequities. Then came federal budget sequestration in 2013, freezing funds for Section 8 vouchers, which subsidize housing expenses for those in need. The result of these combined pressures was an unexpected seventy-percent spike in homelessness last summer and fall.

But after twenty-two years as executive director of the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association—and prior experience as a neighborhood planner in Cambridge and director of housing for the Tri-City Community Action Program in Malden—the undersecretary was equal to the challenge. “I was familiar with all the programs,” he says. “In fact, I advocated for a lot of the programs I’m now administering.”

Gornstein puts great stock in preventing homelessness in the first place. To this end, his department recently increased funding for a program that provides education, job training, child-care vouchers, and short-term financial assistance for families at risk of losing their homes.

The department also helps municipalities hold on to affordable housing stock that could revert to market rate. Gornstein and his colleagues plan to streamline the application process for affordable housing as well. Currently, people must fill out a separate application for each town in which they might live, but the new system would let them apply once for housing anywhere in the state. With the well-being of so many people at stake, Gornstein describes his job as “an honor and an awesome responsibility.” —KIM SIEBERT MACPHAIL