Boston Mayor Kim Janey meets with Mayor-elect Michelle Wu at Boston City Hall on Nov. 3 to begin the two-week transition period before Wu takes office on Nov. 16. Photo by Isabel Leon | Boston Mayor’s Office

Faced with spiraling home prices, progressive hotspots around the country are blowing up old and restrictive zoning rules in hopes of spurring construction of condos and apartments.

California is the latest to take the leap. Following in the footsteps of Seattle and Minneapolis, the Golden State passed series of zoning reforms open the door for new condominiums and apartments to take shape on around 700,000 single-family lots.

Enter Michelle Wu, Boston’s newly elected mayor, whose historic victory – the first woman and first person of color elected to lead one of our country’s oldest cities – was a rare bright spot nationally Tuesday night for otherwise shellshocked progressives.

Wu has pledged to rezone the entire city, with new rules of the road for developers, set by people who live in the Boston’s many neighborhoods. Rules that, as she put it in an interview with a neighborhood newspaper, will be “transparent, accountable and equitable.”

That’s wonderful campaign trail fodder. But as with many of her proposals, Boston’s incoming mayor has been ambiguous and arguably even evasive on what exactly she is thinking of when it comes to rezoning and what she hopes to achieve.

Wu Could Launch a Revolution

I can see two ways a soup-to-nuts rezoning of Boston could go.

The first would provide a major boost to badly needed housing construction in the city, opening the door wider to more condos and apartments and hopefully stabilizing prices and rents.

Under his scenario, Wu takes a page from Seattle, Minneapolis and California and uses her sizable popular mandate to eliminate single-family zoning from Mattapan to East Boston.

While the proposal would surely rev up the anti-housing grumps, Wu would take a firm stand against NIMBYism, explaining the only way to get a grip on rising prices in a growing city is through more units, especially in largely single-family neighborhoods like West Roxbury that could use more density.

With Wu’s leadership, the Hub’s example would reverberate across the state, potentially even leading to the dismantling of single-family zoning in the suburbs of Greater Boston, where the minimum price for a newly construction single-family home is now at least $1 million.

But the second way Wu could approach rezoning the city – and the one I worry she is more inclined to do – would lead to more restrictions on housing development that could send already crazy prices and rents even higher by preventing the construction of enough homes to meet demand.

Rezoning Offers NIMBYs an Opening

Under this scenario, the anti-development grumps and NIMBYs, the folks who rail about any new proposal, whatever it is, will seize the opportunity presented by Wu’s rezoning plan.

Touted as a community-led process, the result will be a zoning code that heaps new restrictions on density and new housing, especially rental housing, which, sadly, is particularly unpopular in both city and suburbs.

Sure, there might be some nice window-dressing attached to the new zoning rules, and lots of lofty talk about equity and inclusion.

But the end result will be even more formidable barriers to development that encourage endless debate in a fruitless effort to achieve a perfect project.

The few plans that make through the gauntlet of new restrictions on height and density – and added affordability requirements as well – prove to be unbuildable, with the developers unable to make enough money to satisfy lenders or investors.

It’s the progressive version of NIMBYism: insisting on perfection on paper at the expense of actual, tangible progress and, this case, construction of housing.

Which Path Will Wu Take?

There are reasons to believe Wu may be more likely to take the second approach than the first.

While Wu has paid lip service to the need to keep the construction of new housing rolling, she has shown the most passion for proposals that would like lead to disruption and restrictions in residential construction.

Boston’s mayor-elect has vowed to dismantle the Boston Planning & Development Agency, the combined development and planning arm of City Hall.

Scott Van Voorhis

This is a crowd-pleaser for a certain segment of the electorate in Boston that believes the city is overrun with projects of dubious value pushed by “greedy” developers.

But Wu has not been able to clearly explain how she will be able to dismantle an agency that has overseen major projects in Boston for more than 60 years without causing major disruptions to the pace of permitting and ultimately construction.

Then there is Wu’s support of rent control, another feel-good proposal that, along with requiring state approval and being of dubious effectiveness, would also likely lead to a sharp reduction in the construction in rental housing.

So, it would be a relief if Wu were to push for a major overhaul of Boston zoning that would open the way for more apartments, accessory dwelling units and more condos instead of caving to cries of “overdevelopment.”

But I’m not holding breath.

Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.