By my calendar we are currently in day 15 of a government shutdown and although you may not be affected in your day-to-day life, this crisis will be affecting you in some manner down the line.

Boston Magazine’s Steve Annear reported Friday on how the House delegates from Massachusetts wrote a letter to Speak Boehner urging him to bring a clean resolution to the floor to end the freeze on federal funding.  While this may seem several steps removed from Boston, Annear also reported the following:

State Undersecretary of Housing and Economic Development Aaron Gornstein, during a Boston Foundation forum on housing issues, said if the shutdown continues into the start of next month, the state will not be able to cover the costs of heating assistance for 200,000 households, won’t be able to make rent payments for 20,000 low-income households, and 35 home projects with 1,500 units of affordable housing will be delayed. He called November 1, the “turning point” in the government shutdown for resident of Massachusetts.

In short, if this halt continues for much longer, some Bostonians will begin to immediately being to see the effects, while for others it won’t come for six to nine months down the line.

In some cases, residents and families will struggle to pay for heat as the temperature slowly falls, affecting their daily quality of life. On the other hand, being in the electrical contracting business, there are likely a number of building or development projects waiting to get permits, some of which could have been paying project jobs in the near future, which now will possibly be delayed for an unknown period of time. These could be potential business opportunities that now might be pushed off, or even worse, cancelled due to tight capital requirements that could not absorb the delay.

We suggest these articles for more information on the Government shutdown:

·         Huffington Post: The Government Shutdown Trickle-Down: 50 Effects Of The Budget Standstill

·         NBC Washington: 10 Ways a Government Shutdown Might Affect You – Even If You’re Not a Federal Worker

 ·         USA Today: 66 questions and answers about the government shutdown