Over five months, in partnership with the Massachusetts' Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC), our research team conducted one of the most comprehensive state-level housing studies we've undertaken, speaking with over 200 stakeholders across Massachusetts. What we discovered reshaped our understanding of how affordable housing systems work at scale.

The Challenge

The Issue: Massachusetts needed a unified approach to affordable housing applications, but the state's housing landscape is currently quite fragmented. With 351 cities and towns, multiple Regional Administering Agencies (RAAs) covering ground throughout the state, and a complex web of federal, state, and local programs, designing a single system that works for everyone required extensive research.

Traditional discovery approaches focus on individual jurisdictions or specific user groups. For Massachusetts, we needed to understand not just what people needed, but how those needs varied across geographic regions, funding sources, and administrative structures.

Our Approach

The Intervention: Instead of trying to capture every municipality, we organized our research around three Massachusetts regions: Western, Central, and the Boston metropolitan area. This regional lens proved crucial—while political boundaries often divide communities with similar challenges, regional approaches revealed shared patterns and needs.

We structured our research to capture multiple perspectives simultaneously:

• 31 property staff interviews across different regions and property types

• 176 housing seeker survey responses representing diverse demographics and geographic areas

• 35 resident interviews providing deep qualitative insights

• Stakeholder interviews with 4 different EOHLC teams, 3 quasi-public agencies, and 27 external partners

By working closely with EOHLC's internal teams, we also partnered with existing state and federal experience research initiatives. This collaboration allowed us to build on previous work while ensuring our findings would integrate with broader policy efforts.

What Made This Different: Scale and Complexity

The scale of this project created unique challenges we hadn't encountered in city-level research:

Geographic Diversity: Housing needs in Western Massachusetts' rural communities differ dramatically from those in Boston's urban core. What works in Cambridge might fail in Springfield. Our regional approach helped us identify patterns that transcended individual community boundaries while respecting local differences.

Administrative Complexity: Unlike single-jurisdiction projects, we had to understand how RAAs function as intermediaries between state policy and local implementation. These regional administrators don't just enforce rules—they interpret and adapt state programs to meet local needs.

Multiple Funding Streams: State-level housing involves layered compliance requirements from federal, state, and local sources. Property managers juggle HUD requirements, state preferences, and local ordinances—all while trying to fill units efficiently and equitably.

Key Discoveries

Regional Patterns: While every community is unique, clear regional patterns emerged. Western Massachusetts showed higher reliance on voucher programs and longer waitlists. The Boston area had more complex lottery systems but faster turnover between units. People everywhere apply broadly trying to increase their odds of securing housing, and in Boston this meant more frequent moves as better opportunities opened up. Central Massachusetts fell somewhere between, with hybrid approaches that borrowed from both extremes.

The RAA Factor: Regional Administering Agencies emerged as critical players. In addition to processing applications, they serve as translators between state policy and local reality. Property managers in different regions had vastly different relationships with their RAAs, affecting everything from waitlist management to compliance interpretation.

Applicant Navigation Challenges: At the state level, housing seekers face an array of options. Unlike city-specific portals where users understand the local context, state-level applicants must navigate multiple municipalities, each with different preferences, timelines, and requirements. This can be dizzying and difficult to navigate.

The Impact

What Our Research Enabled: Our findings directly shaped Massachusetts' phased approach to designing their Common Application system:

1. Start with Pre-Applications: Rather than trying to standardize everything at once, focus on the pre-application process that's consistent across opportunity types

2. Regional Customization: Build flexibility into the system to accommodate regional differences while maintaining statewide consistency

3. RAA Integration: Design workflows that enhance rather than replace RAA functions, recognizing their crucial intermediary role

Research-Driven Product Decisions: Our user journey mapping revealed that the biggest pain points for housing seekers weren't in individual applications, but in the transitions between stages and the lack of transparency about status. This led to recommending the prioritization of applicant communication features and status tracking over complex application logic.

Policy Implications: The research surfaced the need for a comprehensive policy roadmap alongside technical development. State-level systems require coordination between multiple agencies and funding sources—something that can't be solved through technology alone. The policy roadmap included timelines for making program rule changes, engaging with third party funding agencies, and consulting with state legal offices over Fair Housing implications.

Lessons for State-Level Discovery

Think Regionally, Not Municipally: Political boundaries don't always align with user needs or system requirements. Regional approaches can reveal patterns that municipal analysis misses.

Embrace Intermediary Organizations: State systems often work through intermediaries like RAAs, who provide important individualized services like in-person application help and case workers. Understanding these organizations' roles and needs is crucial for system success.

Plan for Complexity: State-level projects involve more stakeholders, more funding sources, and more compliance requirements than local projects. Build extra time for stakeholder alignment and policy coordination.

Start with Commonalities: While every community is unique, focusing on shared processes and pain points can create a foundation for more complex, customized features later.

In closing

The Massachusetts project demonstrated that state-level discovery, while complex, can yield insights hard to achieve through smaller-scale research. By respecting local differences while identifying statewide patterns, we helped EOHLC envision a system that has the potential to serve the entire Commonwealth's diverse housing needs.

When housing affects every community, research must be equally comprehensive—and equally committed to understanding the full spectrum of user experiences that make up our housing ecosystem.