An aide arranges rows of campaign buttons advertising Gov. Maura Healey's "Affordable Homes Act" on top of the governor's desk on Jan. 29, 2024. Photo by Sam Doran | State House News Service

Nearly 18 months after legislative leaders kicked off the two-year term by identifying sky-high housing costs as one of their chief areas of focus, the Massachusetts House stamped its approval on a $6.5 billion plan that top Democrats believe will begin to unwind decades of sluggish production.

The House voted 145-13 to approve a housing bond bill Wednesday, sending to the Senate a rewrite of Gov. Maura Healey’s proposal that throws heaps more money at the affordability crisis but omits some policies she backed, such as allowing cities and towns to tax certain real estate sales and steer the revenue toward housing.

Representatives made some sizable changes to the five-year bond bill (H.4707) Wednesday, packing in nearly $300 million in additional borrowing, a new local option giving tenants the chance to purchase a building when the landlord wants to sell, and additional guardrails around accessory dwelling units.

Top Democrats have not been able to say how many units of housing they expect to result from the suite of funding and policy reforms in their bill, but the needs are massive. Home sale prices and rents continue to smash records, pushing some Bay Staters to leave for lower-cost alternatives and countless more to scrimp and save to make ends meet.

Administration officials estimate the state needs 200,000 more units in the coming years to keep up with demand.

“The rents are high, the availability of stock is decreasing, there’s very few homes on the market. So we recognize there’s a problem and the governor spoke well, when she got inaugurated, about the competitiveness issue that she felt we were losing,” House Speaker Ron Mariano told reporters before the vote. “And I’m a firm believer that when you talk to folks and they say they don’t want to locate here because they can’t find homes for their staff or their employees, it’s a real problem.”

Two Democrats, Milton Rep. William Driscoll and Tewksbury Rep. David Robertson, voted against the bill, as did 11 Republicans.

Housing Committee Co-chair Rep. James Arciero of Westford described the bill as “the largest housing investment in the history of the commonwealth.” Its bottom line is more than three and a half times larger than the last housing bond bill, a $1.8 billion plan former Gov. Charlie Baker signed in 2018.

“The residents and citizens of Massachusetts face an unprecedented housing crisis,” Arciero said. “Young families struggle to purchase a home and plant roots in the towns that they love and grew up in. Our vulnerable loved ones look to age in place and live healthy, safe lives with dignity. Workers are struggling with rent, and communities from Boston to Hyannis, Lawrence, Worcester and Pittsfield are in need of major revitalization for our aging housing stock.”

Senate Democrats will now face some tricky decisions, such as whether to embrace the controversial transfer fee proposal that Healey endorsed, with only eight weeks remaining to draft, debate and approve a rewrite, then agree to a compromise with the House. The transfer fee proposal was absent from House leaders’ redraft of Healey’s bill, and amendments seeking to add it back in, even in a more geographically limited form, were unsuccessful.

ADU Legalization Largely Unscathed

Representatives moved Wednesday to place some additional restrictions on the embrace of accessory dwelling units, which are smaller additions often placed on the same property as larger single-family homes.

The original bill would have allowed ADUs by right in single-family zones across the state with no limit on how many could be constructed. But the House voted to change that to allow only one ADU by right per property, and to require owners to seek special municipal permits for any units beyond that.

No one spoke in opposition to the change, which representatives approved 130-28.

Arciero said while introducing the amendment that the overall accessory dwelling unit policy could generate about 8,000 units of new housing in the next five years.

That’s a lower estimate than Healey’s: when the administration rolled out the original housing bond bill, officials estimated the ADU measure would lead to 10,000 new units over five years.

But the most drastic changes proposed in representatives’ amendments filed before debate began, like removing a prohibition on local owner-occupancy requirements, that housing advocates called “poison pills” never made it into the final bill.

Owner-occupancy requirements, activists and housing experts say, have generally served to hobble ADU construction in Massachusetts communities and elsewhere in the nation.

Advocacy group Abundant Housing MA issued an “action alert” to its members earlier this week rallying supporters of the Healey administration’s ADU proposal to fill representatives’ voicemail and email inboxes with messages urging its passage without “poison pill” amendments.

“Advocates from across the state have spoken of the need for standardization and less barriers to building ADUs. This meaningful piece of legislation allows homeowners to generate additional income or house loved ones with disabilities, aging family members, or young adults who might not otherwise be able to afford to live in the community where they were raised. ADUs are a gentle yet effective tool in the Massachusetts toolbox to address our severe housing storage,” Jesse Kanson-Benanav, the group’s executive director, said in a statement released Thursday afternoon.

MBTA Communities Changes Rejected

Several representatives, mostly Republicans, sought to use the housing bond bill to alter the contours of the MBTA Communities Act. That law received little fanfare when it was enacted in 2021, but it has since morphed into a pressure point as some cities and towns bristle at the burden of zoning for more multifamily housing.

“Talking with many of my colleagues in this chamber, I know it is not what we thought it was, and the impact on communities is severe,” Rep. Marc Lombardo, a Billerica Republican, said of the MBTA Communities Act. He added, “Our communities are already struggling, and the MBTA Communities implementation will devastate many communities, including mine.”

Lombardo offered an amendment that he said would have exempted any MBTA community from the requirement to allow multifamily housing by right in at least one district if it already has enough affordable housing stock under another law known as Chapter 40B.

Representatives rejected that measure 27-131. They also shot down another proposal with a 32-126 vote that would have created an appeals process by which municipalities could request relief from the law’s zoning requirements if they are unable to meet infrastructure needs, are worried about environmental impacts or have concerns about harm to historical properties.

Minority Leader Brad Jones of North Reading, who filed the latter amendment, said he wanted to “create the narrowest flexibility for communities that are trying to deal with this zoning reform.”

But Democrats contended that adding an appeals process to the existing system would, as Rep. Meghan Kilcoyne of Clinton put it, “go against the spirit of the MBTA Communities Law.”

“We have been talking for months about the critical juncture that we’re at in this state, about the critical need for housing, and the restrictions proposed in this amendment run the risk of potentially muzzling our ability to produce housing at one of the most critical points where we need it most,” Kilcoyne said.

Banker & Tradesman staff writer James Sanna contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with comment from Abundant Housing MA.

Advocates Beat Back ADU ‘Poison Pills’ as Housing Bill Advances

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