Most Boston-area communities are complying with the MBTA Communities transit-oriented zoning requirement, but political currents in some towns and cities are dovetailing in seemingly unusual ways. iStock illustration

Your die-hard progressive and your friendly neighborhood Trump supporter might not seem to have much in common.

But each is playing their part in gumming up the works when it comes to the Healey administration’s increasingly beleaguered efforts to revive desperately needed housing production in Massachusetts, home to some of the planet’s highest home prices and rents.

And the deleterious impact that the partisans of the political extremes are having on the anemic supply of new housing here in Massachusetts can be seen in the turbulent debate over the implementation of the MBTA Communities Act.

Gov. Maura Healey has made the new law the centerpiece of her drive to boost housing production in Massachusetts, with hopes it could lead to hundreds of thousands of new apartments, condos and townhomes.

Passed in 2021, the new law requires cities and towns across Greater Boston with or near T stations to open their doors to larger-scale apartment and condo development.

But the new law’s very prominence, and the requirement that cities, towns and suburbs comply by submitting MBTA Communities zoning plans to the state for approval, has also made it a target for opponents of new development.

Outright Rebellion and ‘Paper Compliance’

A small, but growing number of communities are simply refusing to play ball, with voters or local officials rejecting efforts to comply with the law, even at the risk of losing state grants or getting sued by State Attorney General Andrea Campbell.

Think: Milton, Marblehead, Wakefield and Norwell, among others.

A larger number of communities are complying, but in ways that could make the new multifamily housing zones required under the law all but unbuildable.

Chelmsford provides a great example of this, with town leaders all but vowing to comply with the law only in ways that would make it difficult to build new housing.

Every case and every community is unique, so it’s risky to ascribe particular political motivations to any one decision.

That said, the outright challenges to the law by some communities dovetail with the intense dislike some conservatives have for the new law, which they see as a government mandate that would foist unwanted multifamily housing on small towns and suburbs, destroying their traditional character.

Hard-Right Turn Against Law

A recent statewide poll by the conservative Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance found 45 percent of those surveyed opposed to the MBTA Communities Law, with just 33 percent supporting it.

Opposition among Republicans was an overwhelming, with nearly 75 percent opposed and just 7 percent in favor.

The irony is the law should be popular among members of the self-avowed party of free enterprise, with the intent of removing government red tape on the local level to free up construction of new housing by private developers.

Then again, the free-market wing of the GOP has been steadily in decline since the emergence of Trump, so skepticism about the new law fits that new, and more reactionary mindset.

Progressives’ Questionable Moves

Such outright opposition, however, may be easier for the Healey administration and housing advocates to deal with than the more subtle NIMBYism of some progressives.

A number of cities and towns are pushing to have heft affordability requirements for new apartment and condominium buildings constructed under the new law.

Cambridge and Somerville are leading the way, with a push to require that 20 percent of all new housing units built be affordable set-asides, rented or sold at below-market rates.

Several other communities have passed or are considering requiring affordability requirements of 15 percent.

The moves come in the teeth of repeated warnings by developers that anything above 10 percent could make a project unbuildable amid high interest rates, high construction costs, and skittish lenders.

After all, the affordable units are subsidized by the developers themselves, who attempt to make up the money lost by higher rents and prices on the remaining, market-rate units.

Scott Van Voorhis

The Biggest Threat of All

Whether those new requirements will become an official part of these communities’ zoning plans is another matter: The Healey administration has to sign off on any plans that require more than 10 percent affordable housing, so we’ll see.

But it is hard to believe that the local officials pushing for these unrealistically high percentages of affordable housing either don’t know or don’t understand that the outcome may be no new housing at all.

My suspicion is that outcome – zero building – isn’t all that objectionable for some local officials in progressive jurisdictions.

For these pols and their supporters, construction of new, market-rate housing, far from being part of the solution, is instead the problem, attracting more affluent buyers and renters and by some strange alchemy driving up rents and prices.

At a time when most housing experts and economists believe that increasing the supply of housing is the only way to come to grips with lowering costs, such pernicious, hard-to-combat attitudes may be the greatest threat of fall.

Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist and publisher of the Contrarian Boston newsletter; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.