We are on track here in Massachusetts to have the best year since the Great Recession hit when it comes to the construction of badly needed new homes, condos and apartments.

By the time New Year’s Day arrives, more new homes and rentals will have been built in 2013 across the state than at any time since 2007, and possibly even 2006, Census figures indicate.

But hold the champagne. In this case, simply doing better is not anywhere near good enough in one of the most housing-starved states in the union. Not by a long shot.

The Bay State still needs to triple the amount of new homes and rentals built each year just to get back to where it was in the 1980s, the last time we had anything approaching a home-building boom.

We could sure use another decade like that again to keep housing prices in check, but don’t bet on it happening.

Despite suddenly soaring demand for homes and apartment of all types, a surge in home building like that may be all but impossible in the super NIMBY Massachusetts of 2013.

“There would have to be a dramatic change in the way things work in this state that I don’t see happening in my lifetime,” said Jeff Rhuda, chief development officer at local builder Symes Assoc., which is working on a new subdivision in Burlington.

So what’s getting built?

Certainly a number of new apartment projects are moving forward, from downtown Boston towers to suburban developments like the 146 apartments now taking shape at the old Symmes Hospital site in Arlington.

Make Room For McMansions

Affluent burbs like Needham and Wellesley are seeing an explosion in tear downs, as builders tear down old ranches and capes and replace them with $1 million-plus McMansions.

Out on 495, as you head into the outer suburbs, some developers are putting up more modestly priced new homes. A few new subdivisions in towns like Plainville and Franklin offer homes in the half million range – a bargain compared to the crazy prices in Needham, Newton, Lexington and other Route 128 towns.

Through the end of October, cities and towns across Massachusetts doled out building permits for more than 12,000 new homes, condos and apartments.

That’s up markedly from 8,190 homes and units permitted in 2012 and the anemic 5,592 built in 2011, when residential construction was skidding along at the bottom.

OK, this is all good stuff, but it’s still a long way from where we need to be.

In fact, we are not even getting close to the 40,000 or more homes and apartments that were built each year in the mid-1980s, the last time the Massachusetts housing market was anything close to normal.

And the way things are going, chances are we may never get there, either, short of some dramatic change anyway.

For starters, the downturn did a number on our state’s already battered home building industry.

The Great Recession spelled doom for many mid- and small-time builders, who found themselves out of work when demand for new homes collapsed.

The builders who managed to survive are taking on smaller projects, from squeezing individual homes on smaller lots to subdivisions of a dozen or so homes.

Today, 40 homes qualifies as a big project, not the 100 or even 200 home subdivisions of decades past.

However, by far the bigger obstacle to any new building boom is the state’s relentlessly anti-housing political environment, both on the local, town and city board level, and in the Legislature as well.

Sure, the Patrick Administration gets it – to a point. It’s all for so-called transit-oriented development – basically big condo and apartment buildings near the railway stations and tracks.

Great for young professionals, not so hot for growing families.

But too many town officials – and for that matter, state reps and senators on Beacon Hill – see any new housing as invasive, a threat to their communities and their constituents, serving mainly to enrich developers.

Saying No

Towns and suburbs across the state have been busy for a year now trying to kill any new project that might attract families and with children and potentially increase school costs.

That means battling to keep apartments two-bedrooms and smaller and encouraging over-55 retirement communities at the expense of traditional subdivisions and home construction.

But on Beacon Hill, it’s just as bad, with a group of narrow-minded lawmakers who seem to be doing a damn good Tea Party imitation.

From suburbs like Norwood and Norwell, these reps are working doggedly to scrap the state’s affordable housing law, which, in a typical Massachusetts twist, has become the primary way for builders to put up market rate apartments. They just have to agree to include some subsidized units in order to use the state’s Chapter 40B law, which trumps local zoning when affordable units are part of the mix.

But let’s be clear here, this is no high-minded fight over affordable housing policy, but rather a backdoor bid to shut down what is often the sole remaining way developers can build new homes and apartments here in Massachusetts.

We need a major game changer, a way to force local towns and cities to ease up on the stifling control they exert over the housing market.

Short of something like that, we are going to be housing starved in Massachusetts for a long time to come.

Scott Van Voorhis can be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.