Resistance to multifamily development in Boston suburbs like Medford has helped boost segregation and the racial wealth gap in Massachusetts, experts say, by pushing prices out of reach of many renters and first-time homebuyers.

The suburbs of American cities remain highly segregated more than half a century after the 1968 passage of the Fair Housing Act, with Greater Boston sadly one of the worst examples out there.  

It’s a fact of life that has been both blindingly obvious and all but ignored for decades and could be poised to change as America grapples with the long shadow of slavery and decades of injustice against Black people. 

The de facto segregation that has kept the suburbs a predominately white enclave has sparked growing interest and debate over dusty, decades-old zoning rules, the barriers suburban communities in the Boston area and around the country have thrown up over the years to bar construction of apartments and affordable housing. 

But maybe it’s time to take that a step further. For it’s not just the rules that are skewed, but also the makeup of the local elected officials and municipal employees and town and city councils that determine housing policy and decides what, if any, affordable housing gets built in their communities. 

Who Makes Decisions? 

While there are many well-meaning elected planning and select board members in the suburbs, some are clearly intent on keeping out affordable housing and keeping their communities overwhelmingly white, said Andrew DeFranza, executive director of Harborlight Community Partners, which builds affordable housing in suburbs and small cities north of Boston.  

“There are some who represent a more exclusionary, segregationist, NIMBY approach and they apply that approach through their power as a committee member,” DeFranza said. “There is very little diversity of race, period.” 

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In a recently released report, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council found that 84 percent of municipal employees are white, a number that rises to roughly 88 percent when it comes to managerial roles. 

However, the report does not get into the diversity – or lack thereof – on planning, select and health boards that control what, if any, rental and affordable housing gets built outside of Boston. Stats on the demographics of local elected officials in the suburbs are hard to find as well.  

Still, based on the experience of  affordable housing developers like DeFranza who build in the suburbs, the smattering of diversity that exists can on key elected boards in older industrial cities like Lynn, Lowell and Salem dries up almost completely when you hit the suburban towns that make up so much of Greater Boston.  

And that lack of diversity can and does make a difference in the suburbs when it comes to deciding what housing gets built, and what housing doesn’t. 

Greater Boston’s overwhelmingly white suburbs have often proven to be highly antagonistic to rental housing in any form, let alone affordable units that might bring in “outsiders” from urban areas, too often code for people of color. 

Elected leaders from a more diverse group of racial and, for that matter, economic backgrounds would be more likely to bring a different perspective to the table when it comes to new apartment projects, housing advocates say. 

Not Just New Faces 

Yet while more diversity on boards is desperately needed and long, long overdue, systemic changes are needed in order to pave the way for more housing of all types in the suburbs, including and especially affordable apartments, homes and condominiums. 

After all, the big reason there are so few Black elected officials in the suburbs is the de facto system of housing segregation – better known as zoning – that often bars the construction all but expensive single-family homes, whose buyers are mostly white. 

Even more diverse planning and select boards would be limited in their ability to push through additional housing under the current system, in which a small minority of homeowners – also usually overwhelmingly white – are able to block housing projects, noted DeFranza. 

Housing experts and advocates say Gov. Charlie Baker’s Housing Choices proposal, currently being debated by a Beacon Hill conference committee, is a significant step in that direction. 

That would eliminate the two-thirds majority now needed to change zoning rules to allow new housing to move forward – a daunting, and at times, almost impossible standard to meet. 

Scott Van Voorhis

Another needed reform is voting by district or neighborhood instead of a city-wide tally which, as Lowell found, can still result in all-white boards even when a city’s population is significantly more diverse. Boston moved to this system some years ago, said Phil Giffee, executive director of the East Boston-based Neighborhood of Affordable Housing. 

That said, whatever the rules, who’s in the room when the decisions are made matters. 

“When you get other people in the room, it makes the opportunity for them to make the case for diversity and inclusion. They do understand the need for affordable housing because they identify more with the need for it,” Giffee said. 

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