The site plan for Oaktree Development’s proposed development in Arlington.

Here’s more evidence that the humble apartment building is now the most hated and feared form of new development in Massachusetts (barring any future proposal to stash spent nuclear fuel in the Blue Hills, that is).

You would think someone was proposing clear-cutting Walden Woods the way Arlington town officials have gone bonkers over a proposal to build badly need housing on a patch of poison ivy-infested trees and wetlands off Route 2.

A large crowd turned out recently at Arlington Town Hall to blast a proposal by Oaktree Development to build 219 apartments and townhomes on a small portion of the 17-acre site.

It was a group that included Arlington selectmen, state representatives, neighbors and, tellingly, the leader of a past statewide effort to scuttle the state’s main affordable housing law.

No matter that the developers have proposed preserving the vast majority of the acreage as open space, with plans to make the forest accessible to the public, which, in its derelict state, it hardly is now.

Scott Van Voorhis

The site is not completely unused – it has become a crash pad for the desperate and homeless. But apparently Arlington would rather see the site remain in is current, pathetic state than see new apartments – including affordable units aimed at cash-strapped families struggling to stay off the street, or out of the woods, as it were – take shape there.

“It’s a wild tangle,” said Gwen Noyes, a partner at Cambridge-based Oaktree. “It’s undeveloped right now, but it’s not exactly a natural asset to the community.”

Arlington is hardly alone in pushing back against new housing at a time when prices and rents are soaring, with opposition now the norm in Greater Boston. Newton, another liberal bastion, has gone to great lengths to stymie plans for new apartments. Still, in their opposition to Oaktree Development’s proposal for along Route 2, housing opponents are throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the plan.

“I volunteered to have a community meeting, which turned into kind of a bash,” Noyes noted. “They brought out people to beat the drums and tambourines and all that to save the wetlands. We want to save the wetlands as well.”

The proposed Thorndike Place, which would take shape in a triangular patch of woods off Route 2, would feature 207 apartments, screened from the road by six, two-family town homes.

The new housing would take up less than a third of the site, which is owned by the Mugar family and has had a tortured history over the years of unsuccessful development proposals.

Fighting 40B

As for need, you would have to be living on another planet to think the housing isn’t needed in Arlington, which like a number of coveted Boston-area communities has become one of the most expensive places on the planet to live.

Just 5.6 percent of Arlington’s housing stock is affordable – well below the 10 percent state minimum – while housing prices have steadily mounted in town, with barely a breather during the Great Recession.

On top of that, Arlington has seen only a handful of new condos and apartments built over the past years, almost all expensive, market-rate units.

So what’s driving the opposition?

There’s a vague desire to preserve the woods as open space, as well as more practical concerns; neighborhood residents who live near this patch of scraggly woods say they already have flooding problems and fear construction will only worsen those issues.

There are also predictable complaints about additional traffic and the potential, God forbid, that families with children might move into the new apartments and add to school rolls.

These are hardly show-stoppers.

A traffic analysis commissioned by Oaktree estimates that development would add roughly one additional car a minute to nearby Route 2.

That said, one of the big attractions of the new development would be its access to public transportation – it would be just a 10-minute walk to the Alewife T station.

The flooding issues can also be addressed, with the construction of the new apartments potentially providing a catalyst for fixing the area’s long-standing drainage problems.

Harder to address, though, is the irrational hatred of new housing, exemplified by the almost irrational opposition among a small but vocal group of NIMBY-types to Chapter 40B, the state’s affordable housing law.

In a red flag for housing opponents, Oaktree wants to build the new development under Chapter 40B, which prevents local officials from blocking a new housing development if a quarter of the units are affordable to moderate and low income renters and buyers.

With suburbs and small towns across the state having erected a byzantine tangle of zoning regulations aimed at keeping out all housing except McMansions, the 1960s-era law has become by default the main vehicle used by developers to build new condos and apartments.

However, mentioning 40B to some of the housing haters is akin to shouting “Kenya” to a crowd of wild-eyed birthers – you’ll wind up with an earful of ranting.

In this alternative universe, the Boston area is being overrun by greedy housing developers and with their dastardly 40B plans, which is simply the root of all evil. Forget about trying to argue supply and demand, and the fact that years of underbuilding have left the state, especially Eastern Massachusetts, with not enough housing, especially multifamily, to keep rents and prices in check.

In fact, Arlington has been a capital of sorts for the anti-40Bers, home to the head of a group that tried unsuccessfully a couple years ago to repeal the law at the ballot box in an unsuccessful statewide referendum. In fact, he was there in the crowd during the recent public bashing Oaktree took for its proposed apartment complex.

Of course, maybe all the hue and cry really is about preserving nature and not about a fear of new housing, especially the affordable kind, and just who it might bring to town. Yet the NIMBY types often conflate sizeable apartment buildings, with a mix of market rate and subsidized units, with public housing projects, whether out of ignorance or just fear-mongering, it’s not clear.

In an op-ed piece railing against Oaktree’s proposed new Arlington apartment and townhome development, most of which would be market rate, one opponent pointed to a large and rather blah-looking public housing tower in town as an example of what would be built.

Maybe it’s all about the saving that scraggly patch of woods for posterity, but count me as skeptical.