> market-rate housing (i.e., luxury housing)

"New" housing is not the same as "luxury" housing. By this logic every new car is a luxury car.

> 1. Why are many of you against rent control?

It is at best flawed, at worst actively harmful to the goal of letting more people afford to live in a given place

> 2. Are you aware that building luxury housing, especially in communities with marginalized or disadvantaged populations (e.g., Malden, Chelsea, Revere), is gentrification? Ultimately, the luxury housing will raise the prices of nearby properties and lots. It will also bring businesses that cater to those in luxury apartments and, subsequently, are not as affordable as neighborhood grocery stores, hardware stores, etc.)?

Neighborhoods change over time, whether or not housing is built in them. There are ways to support the people negatively impacted by gentrification, but "build no market rate housing anywhere" is not one of them. Note that a big driver of negative impact on the poor is that often poor neighborhoods are the only ones in which NIMBY's allow ANY housing to be built

> 2. Ultimately, the luxury housing will raise the prices of nearby properties and lots

And this specific bit ^ is at best hugely misleading. Building more housing reduces the cost of surrounding housing. The literature on this is clear. While the value of land and of existing commercial structures may go up as a neighborhood becomes more desirable, building more housing is going to lower the cost of surrounding housing

> 3. Would you be open to luxury housing that is initially rent-controlled for some years before it can become market-rate? This would be similar to 421-A in NYC.

> 4. Would you be open to luxury housing that is initially rent-controlled that can be sold to the renters there for a below-market-rate price? Essentially, the renters would get priority and could decide if they wanted to continue living there (buy) when the hypothetical rent-control period ends? The renters would then be on the path to homeownership, which has numerous benefits that I will not get into here.

I'm open to anything that increases the housing supply, but why complicate ourselves? Building just affordable housing ignores the majority of the housing scarcity problem, since most people don't qualify for it, whereas just building market rate housing drives down costs for everyone.

> Do you have another idea on how our state can build new housing to increase our stock while allowing for low-income - and really, middle-income - households to become homeowners (ideally) or be able to afford better housing? Better meaning closer to transit, no slumlord, no roaches, closer to parks, in better school districts.

Yes. Make it legal to build more housing. Lots of it. In every city, and every suburb. Current zoning rules make it illegal to build things that aren't single family homes in the vast majority of residential neighborhoods. This needs to end.

This country had about a four-decade run in which market-rate housing was affordable for everyone but the very poor. We've just zoned-away the market's capacity to balance supply and demand, and we're dealing with the fallout...