Sun reflecting off the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House

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The compromise housing bond bill that emerged from the state legislature during overtime Thursday morning doesn’t just pump potentially billions of dollars into affordable housing production.

It’s got a lot of important policy measures, too – not all of which are to the real estate industry’s liking.

On the money front, the conference committee’s compromise housing bill left out a billion-dollar allocation to expand infrastructure for the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority – the sewer and water system for much of metro Boston – to parts of the South Shore. House Speaker Ron Mariano had proposed the idea as a way to unlock development at the huge but benighted Southfield development site in Weymouth, where new housing construction has been hobbled by a lack utility capacity.

In total, the bill allocates $5.16 billion to a variety of bonding-funded housing grant and loan programs over the next five years, largely for affordable and mixed-income projects.

However, an analysis by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation last month suggests the state won’t actually wind up issuing bonds for the full amount authorized, even if the bill’s extra headroom will mean more projects get fun

Other notable pots of money that didn’t make it: a Senate-backed grant program worth $50 million for “seasonal communities” like Cape Cod, and a House proposal for a $150 million fund for turning vacant offices and other commercial properties into homes.

What’s In

Real estate investors and city officials wanting help for office-to-residential conversions weren’t left high and dry, however.

Developer trade group NAIOP claimed a win with the inclusion of language it wrote authorizing what it called a “first-in-the-nation” tax credit to support the development of market-rate office-to-residential conversions.

Another industry win: Judicial reforms sought by the real estate industry to deter frivolous abutter lawsuits related to zoning board decisions. Barring a line-item veto from Gov. Maura Healey, courts will be able to set bonds of up to $250,000 for anyone appealing the approval of a special permit, variance or site plan.

Housing advocates’ biggest policy win was the inclusion of language legalizing accessory dwelling units on all single-family-zoned lots statewide.

Towns and cities will still be allowed to enact dimensional regulations and force ADU projects to undergo site plan review, but administration officials have said they believe the change could create thousands of new homes statewide in the next five years.

What’s Out

Legislators opted to dodge a range of hot-button policy items

  • Tenant opportunity to purchase – also known as TOPA – that had been included in the House’s bill;
  • A “crumbling concrete assistance fund” from the Senate’s bill to fix homes built with pyrrhotite-contaminated concrete;
  • Letting any town or city vote by a simple majority, instead of the current two-thirds majority, to require housing developments make up to 13 percent of their units affordable housing.

Both the House and Senate had earlier declined to include Healey’s proposal to allow towns and cities to charge a sales tax on high-dollar real estate sales to fund affordable housing, amid opposition from the real estate industry.

The real estate industry appeared to lose one policy fight, however: Eviction sealing, a key tenants’ rights priority, was included in the compromise bill, albeit in a more moderate version than was originally proposed. The measure would let renters who were the subject of a no-fault eviction petition a judge to have that court record sealed.

Tenants evicted for failure to pay rent more than four years before can also apply, provided they can prove that non-payment of rent “was due to an economic hardship,” as can tenants with a fault eviction on their record older than seven years and no subsequent evictions on their record.

Breaking Down the Housing Bond Bill

by James Sanna time to read: 2 min
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