Amy Dain

A hundred housing developments in the MBTA Communities pipeline demonstrate that as-of-right zoning reform can unlock housing opportunities, reduce permitting costs and enable development in walkable, transit-served areas.

Yet the scale of change under the MBTA Communities zoning law has fallen short of what is needed to address Massachusetts’ housing shortage and car-reliant patterns.

But by normalizing as-of-right zoning for multifamily housing, sparking new thinking about where the region should grow and spurring civic engagement for a pro-housing agenda on an unprecedented scale, the law has set the stage for further reform.

Law Had Pressure Valve

The law’s flexibility allowed communities to comply without committing to substantial growth. Some municipalities, such as Lexington, Lowell and Westford, went above and beyond the requirements. Communities like Arlington, Bedford, Newton and Walpole voted to allow missing-middle homes in their walkable, transit-served historic centers. Some communities used the opportunity to plan for redevelopment of office and industrial parks. And some passed reforms that will not yield new housing.

Now there are approximately 7,000 homes in the permitting and construction pipeline. Without MBTA Communities, local zoning would have blocked most of these homes.  Yet 7,000 homes represents a small fraction of a single percent of the nearly 2 million homes in the 177 MBTA Communities. The ongoing rate of growth enabled by the law will likely remain modest. MBTA Communities legalized housing at moderate densities, across quite limited areas.

With the law’s flexible design and the message that “You just have to zone, you don’t have to build,” the commonwealth was navigating the polarized politics of housing policy. In theory, the state has the authority to mandate dramatic local zoning reform. In practice, there’s still a local vote. Ask for too much, and an initiative could collapse under the weight of opposition. Ask for too little, and accomplish little.

Thus, the initiative was designed with a pressure valve that let communities create compliant districts where little new homebuilding will happen. The hope was still that many communities would create districts for substantial homebuilding. The initiative aimed at a middle ground where something gets done, at least in some places.

Should Next Reforms Be Incremental?

There’s another important truth embedded in the distinction between zoning and building. Local governments can control zoning (to the extent the state gives them the authority); they have some agency to shut down growth in their borders. But local governments do not control the market. It is hard to predict how much housing will result from a substantial liberalization of zoning, and on what timeline.

Many of Lexington’s voters did not expect so much housing to enter the pipeline so fast. Still, only four of the 12 projects in Lexington’s MBTA Communities pipeline are actually under construction. Given today’s market constraints, such as the high costs of construction materials, labor, and borrowing, it could be years before the 12 projects are built.

Zoning reform provides an opportunity; zoning reform is not destiny. Pro-housing advocates argued for a beyond-the-minimum approach in Lexington because the larger the total area rezoned, the more likely it is to see a meaningful number of homes built.

Lexington’s experience in reforming zoning to gain actual homes raises the question of what expectations we should set for individual communities. MBTA Communities was designed as an incremental step – but incrementalism has been Greater Boston’s growth policy for decades.

The outcome has been a housing shortage, unaffordability and car-dependence.

Mass. Needs Growth Agenda

What should Massachusetts’ growth agenda be?

What types of areas and what specific areas should be prioritized for zoning reform and public investment? Places in need of industrial clean-up, office parks in need of new life, strip malls drowning in parking, the vast residential rental deserts of suburbia, the resilient old walkable centers?

Different types of places require different strategies for planning, investment and zoning reform. When we take an approach of wait-and-see where projects will be proposed, we miss opportunities to shape them effectively and knit them into the urban fabric.

To meet the region’s housing needs, a growth agenda must find places for multifamily housing of different scales, from skyscrapers to triplexes. Small projects should be legalized across broad areas. And while high-rise housing can meet demand on less land than the missing middle can, the region still needs to identify more areas for high-rise development. In walkable, amenity-rich centers across Greater Boston, few properties are zoned for more than five stories.

Indeed, Massachusetts needs a comprehensive growth agenda, and not just for housing. Ideally, the intention of zoning reform would be housing abundance, well planned. MBTA Communities got thousands of people collaborating on zoning reform; the next step is to align zoning, investment, and political will around a shared vision of housing abundance.

Amy Dain is a senior fellow at Boston Indicators, the think-tank affiliated with The Boston Foundation, and the author of a new report, “An Early Look at the MBTA Communities Permitting Pipeline.”