Scott Van Voorhis
An unlikely coalition of housing activists and business leaders fought tooth and nail to save the state’s controversial affordable housing law when it was challenged in a referendum a few years back.
But Chapter 40B, the law that affordable housing haters across Massachusetts love to loathe, once again faces an uncertain future.
This time, though, it’s not angry blockheads that are the biggest danger to a law that ensures that at least some new condominium and apartment construction takes place in our NIMBY suburbs.
Under the law, towns where less than 10 percent of the housing stock is affordable to those of more modest means are effectively barred by the state from blocking new condo and apartment projects. The key provision is that at least 20 percent of the units in these new projects have to be offered at below market rents or prices. However, a growing number of suburbs are reaching the point where they meet the requirements of the now decades-old law; some legitimately, some through more dubious, legalistic maneuvers.
It’s a big deal and this is why: Once they’ve met the requirements of 40B, suburbs across the Boston area can go back to do what they have always done: blocking new housing with reams of small-town red tape, including onerous zoning rules.
Once that happens, you can say goodbye to any remaining check on home prices and rents in much of Greater Boston, which are already some of the highest in the country.
Unfortunately, we are closer to that unhappy day than you would think.
Certainly the number of towns and cities that have met the law’s requirements – or at least claim to have – is steadily growing. Twenty-six communities across the state have met the 10 percent requirement. This list includes ultra-pricey Cambridge as well as a number of upscale suburbs where rents and home prices would hardly be mistaken as affordable, including Lexington, Concord, Bedford, Carlisle, Cohasset and Manchester.
Newton, Norwood, Braintree and Arlington, among others, are trying to claim that 1.5 percent of their developable land area is used for affordable housing, which would also release them from the requirements of 40B.
But there’s some twisted accounting going on as these communities look for ways to meet the requirements of the state’s affordable housing law without actually letting more affordable apartments and condos get built.
Save The Golf Courses!
Newton and Norwood, in particular, have tried to game the system in order to get to that 1.5 percent. Newton has argued that golf courses should count as conservation land, thereby reducing the overall amount of developable land and making it easier to reach that 1.5 percent.
Norwood was just as blatant, buying land and declaring it conservation property in order to clear the threshold.
Such cynical hijinks are rather sad given the shortage of housing of all types across Greater Boston and the ever growing cost burden, especially for middle- and working-class families.
“You are not creating any more affordable housing by counting differently,” noted Clark Ziegler, executive director of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, when I caught up with him the other day.
But the bigger picture here is that many communities are legitimately nearing that 10 percent mark as developers, especially over the last few years, have aggressively used 40B to build new suburban apartment developments.
While more housing is clearly a good thing, it also means that more towns and cities will meet those affordable housing targets and will no longer have to pay heed to 40B.
That day of reckoning is approaching fast.
Just 21,000 more affordable apartments and condo are needed before all 101 towns and cities in the Boston metro area finally reach the 10 percent mark, Ziegler noted. While that sounds like a lot, the Boston area by 2040 will need 435,000 new housing units just to keep pace with demand, a report by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council has found.
Once 40B finally winds down, it’s not clear how we will ever get to that number, given the challenges developers will face in building new housing without support of the affordable housing law.
“As more communities get to 10 percent, 40B becomes less effective, but we will still have a housing problem,” Ziegler said.
Various proposals are being debated on Beacon Hill that would require suburbs, towns and cities to open up at least some of their land for new apartment and condo projects. Unfortunately, none looks like it has the support to pass.
With time running out on 40B, we must figure out what will be needed to ensure that developers can build desperately needed new housing. Otherwise you can say goodbye to any hope that supply will ever catch up with – let alone surpass – demand in Greater Boston’s perpetually drum-tight housing market.
