How Long Is the Wait for Senior Housing in Massachusetts, and Is Building an ADU Faster?
Watch: They Didn't Want to Wait for a Crisis to Bring Mom Home
You did the responsible thing and got your mother onto a housing authority list. You filed the paperwork, and now you just have to wait. But you don't hear from anybody for months. There's no way to find out where you are on the list and there's no way you can speed it up either. In the meantime she's still in the house that just doesn't work for her anymore. Then a builder gives you a quote on an ADU that gives you sticker shock and makes that waiting list start to look really good.
My name is Buz Artiano, founder of BuildX. We have built dozens of ADUs all over Massachusetts, but most of our projects have been on the South Shore and in Plymouth County. We do everything ourselves, including design, permitting, and of course construction. So we're very familiar with issues like lot coverage limits, septic constraints, and zoning reviews because we deal with them on every job. We know how long our side of things takes because we are the ones who schedule it.
Charlie Morse, Debbie Morse, and Sandra Stevenson are BuildX clients. We are building a 750-square-foot detached ADU, one bedroom and one and a half baths, in the Morse backyard for Sandy Stevenson, who is 89 and currently lives about 1,500 miles away. Before the family started calling builders, they discussed all the alternatives. Options included renting, seasonal living, and housing authority lists.
We love to share stories about all of our happy customers, but we're talking about this one because the Morses did the waiting first, and they did not like what was at the end of it. Their story will be more useful to you than anything we could say about ourselves.
Quick Answer: Nobody can tell you how long a Massachusetts senior housing waitlist will take, because your place in line is determined by the local housing authority and its preferences, not by you. Our clients, the Morse family, put their father on a list and received the letter saying he had reached the top roughly two months before we spoke with them, which was six years after he died. They call it a 12-year wait. Their 750-square-foot ADU would be ready in 100 days. An ADU costs a lot more than a subsidized apartment. But you get to control the timeline.
In This Article
How Long Will I Actually Wait for Each One?
On the housing side, no one can tell you when it will be available. Here is what the Morse family had to say:
"We talked about renting seasonal living, these housing authorities as Sandy mentioned, and the list can be really long. My dad was on the list for a very long time. Long enough in fact that we just got a letter about two months ago saying that his name had risen to the top of the list, which is dynamite, except that he passed away six years ago, so nobody can wait 12 years for a solution."
That 12-year number is the Morse's own account of how long their father was waiting for his housing. It is not a published statistic, and it doesn't reflect what the wait might be at your housing authority. List length moves with the authority, the unit type, and the preferences the applicant has. You'll have to personally check with the authority that holds your application to see where you are on the list.
The ADU has an actual date and timeline associated with it. The Morses have their plan in place and in a hundred days, Sandy will be occupying her own home. 100 days is a construction schedule. You're not on a list, and nothing changes because someone ahead of you declined an offer.
Why Nobody Can Tell You Your Place on the List
State-funded public housing in Massachusetts is owned and operated by local housing authorities in more than 230 cities and towns, and you get to all of them the same way, through the state application. To be eligible you have to be under 80 percent of area median income, and rent is about 30 percent of household income. Federally funded public housing is a separate application handled directly by the local authority. You can review how the state program works at mass.gov.
You can't control any of these things. The authority sets the preferences. The authority decides when a unit will be available. The authority decides who gets that unit. There's nothing you can do to move up on the list. That's the cost of waiting for housing. The rent isn't the problem. It's that you never know when something will become available and the need for a place for your loved one only increases every day.
If you have a parent who is independent today and you're counting on there being housing available before they aren't so independent anymore, you are taking a gamble just like the Morse family did. One of them spoke about Sandy saying that she is getting older, and even though she can still take care of herself now, what happens when she can't?
What Moves the ADU Timeline Up or Down?
Four main things are usually the difference between a fast build and a slow one, but you can figure out every single one of these things before you sign anything:
- Site conditions, including slope, ledge, tree clearing, and whether equipment can get to the build area
- Utility and septic capacity, which determines whether the existing system can accommodate another bedroom or if you have to upgrade the system
- Town review, which sets how long the permitting takes before we can start building
- Plan changes, which send drawings back to the board every time the layout moves
We start everyone out with a published plan and change it from there rather than starting from a blank sheet. That helps keep the schedule on track more than anything else we do. The Morses picked a base package and tweaked it a bit. They wanted a half bath off the kitchen so guests don't have to go through the bedroom. Every time they asked for something, a redrawn package came back with a picture of it. A blank sheet means structural engineering, permit drawings, and code review all start from nothing, and each one of those steps can take weeks. When you start with one of our plans, the changes are the only thing being drawn.
Zoning is the other piece of things, and Massachusetts changed it. The state now allows one ADU by right on single-family lots. By right means you don't need a discretionary special permit hearing. But it still has to be reviewed and building code, health code, and dimensional requirements all still apply. Current requirements are posted at mass.gov.
What Does It Cost Me to Stop Waiting?
A subsidized apartment is the cheapest housing you can get, that's because the rent is capped using your income, not what the current market rates are. A detached ADU is priced like new home construction in Massachusetts, because that's exactly what it is. Foundation, framing, utilities, septic capacity, town review, and finishes are all included in an estimate before any construction even starts. If you're only comparing cost, not time, then you'll want to wait on the list.
Here is our take on the whole thing. Our published plans run $320,000 to $420,000 with everything included that you would need to move in. That is a general range across the plans we have, it's not a quote for your specific lot. The table below outlines pros and cons of each option using five questions so you are comparing them side by side.
| The question | Waiting on a state-aided housing list | Building an ADU on your own lot |
|---|---|---|
| Who controls the date | The local housing authority | You and your builder |
| What it costs | Rent capped near 30 percent of your income | $320,000 to $420,000 all in, across our published plans |
| What the family has at the end | Nothing because their loved one lived in a building that someone else owns | A second home on their land |
| What happens when needs change | A transfer request or a new application | Everybody is in the same place |
| What you can verify this week | Your eligibility and your application status | Whether a unit fits your lot and your zoning |
The cost is the reason families wait, and we get that, money is still money. But this article wasn't written to tell you which option is cheaper. We want you to know which option has a date that you can count on. Sandy Stevenson, who is the one moving in, gave her input. She's 1,500 miles away. Her children hold the papers and the pictures, it is their backyard, and she told them that when she dies it's theirs anyway, so the choices should be theirs to make. At 89, she said, it is time to let family make decisions for her.
When Waiting Is Still the Better Call for Your Family
We build these for a living, and you should take that into consideration when you read this. An ADU is the wrong move in three situations we see all the time:
- When the parent needs skilled nursing or daily clinical care, because an ADU is independent housing and not a care facility
- When the family can't pay for the ADU without putting the main home at risk
- When the family has not decided on who is responsible for what after move-in, because that conversation gets harder once construction is underway
Sandy Stevenson is moving into a house that she can manage herself. The Morses built the ADU for the day that that's not the case anymore. As the family put it, the project was undertaken so they could provide a support system to Sandy as things happen in her life. If your parent already needs more than that, keep the application on file and talk to a care advisor before you talk to a builder.
And if you do build, ask the authority holding your application what happens to your spot in line. We cannot answer that for you.
How Do I Find Out Whether My Backyard Beats the List?
The Morse family weighed both options and went with the one that had an actual date. Their father's letter got there six years too late. Sandy's bedroom has a 100-day target. That's the whole thing.
You can build your own version of it in about a week. The authority holding your application can tell you where you stand and what you qualify for. Your lot can tell you whether an ADU fits and what it costs to put one there. Put those two answers side by side and it's a lot easier to make a decision.
We will measure your lot, confirm whether an accessory dwelling unit fits by right on your property, and give you a construction timeline you can hold up against the list your family is already on.
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