Lt. Governor Kim Driscoll recently addressed the members of the Home Builders and Remodelers Association at its Annual Installation and Awards Banquet held at the Sea Crest Beach Resort in North Falmouth.
In her remarks, Driscoll spoke about the Healey-Driscoll Administration’s commitment to tackling the Commonwealth’s high cost of housing. She told of the creation of the first housing secretariate in decades, the filing of a historic housing bond bill to create and preserve thousands of units of housing, and the issuance of two executive orders to create a Housing Advisory Council and a Commission on Unlocking Housing Production. She emphasized the importance of increasing the production of homes and apartments to the state’s competitiveness, quality of life and to check the out-migration of young persons to other parts of the country where housing is more affordable.
Driscoll is the 73rd Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She was sworn in on January 5, 2023, joining Governor Maura Healey as the first all-women executive team to lead Massachusetts.
Driscoll was elected the City of Salem’s first woman Mayor in 2006, taking office at a time when the community was struggling with record deficits, poor financial management, and a declining bond rating. As Mayor, she turned deficits into record surpluses and saved taxpayers’ money by strengthening city services, revitalizing Salem’s downtown, leading a vast improvement in Salem’s k-12 schools, reforming city pensions and health insurance programs to protect employee benefits, bidding public contracts, and bringing transparency to City Hall.
A proud mother of three children, Driscoll is married to a second-generation union bricklayer. The daughter of a Navy chef from Lynn and an accountant’s assistant from Trinidad, Driscoll spent her childhood in a number of states, before attending Salem State University where she studied government and became a stand-out athlete on the women’s basketball team.
Before becoming the Mayor of Salem, Driscoll served as the City of Chelsea’s Chief Legal Counsel and Deputy City Manager, and also served on the Salem City Council.
Together with Ed Augustus, the Secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, Lt. Governor Driscoll is the administration’s point person on housing. She closed her remarks by asking for the association’s help in lobbying for passage of the housing bond bill and assured the assembled that the HBRAMA is an indispensible partner in solving the housing crisis.
