| In the last seven years, the state’s population has grown by about 246,000 people, Bay State employers have added 353,000 jobs, and for those seeking a new place to live, 81,000 new housing units have been permitted, according to the Massachusetts Housing Partnership. The relatively slow pace of housing construction has squeezed the market, according to experts, contributing to price surges over the past four decades so that they are now among the highest in the nation.
“That is not sustainable,” Clark Ziegler, executive director of the nonprofit Housing Partnership, told the Housing Committee on Tuesday in a statement.
Nine towns permitted half of all the suburban multifamily units since 2010, according to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC). Those towns are Natick, Canton, Burlington, Easton, Billerica, Braintree, Salisbury, Saugus and Cohasset. Across the state, Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett and Watertown accounted for more than half of the multifamily units permitted since 2010, according to MAPC data.
Lawmakers have weighed bills to boost the state’s housing supply for years, but are often hesitant to interfere with local decision-making in a state that has 351 cities and towns and where rules vary from one community to the next. Lawmakers also seem daunted by the complexity of addressing housing laws.
Senate Assistant Majority Whip Linda Dorcena Forry and Rep. Kevin Honan, a Brighton Democrat and co-chairman of the Housing Committee, have proposed a bill (H 673/ S 723) that would push cities and towns to zone for multifamily housing, exempt certain accessory dwelling units from zoning restrictions, and establish a process for municipalities to team up together on development, sharing infrastructure costs and local tax revenue.
While Boston has made progress toward its goal of building 53,000 new housing units by 2030, and some areas are undergoing rapid redevelopment, housing experts said housing production is at a historic low in the region.
“Today there is less housing production in Greater Boston than at almost any point in the last 50 years,” David Bryant, director of advocacy for the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, said in a statement. “Given our current fragmented system of land-use regulation and zoning ordinances and bylaws, a small determined group of naysayers can delay or block orderly growth and development.”
The state should adopt policies that promote racial and economic diversity, Bryant said, and he said the Bay State has the third highest racial gap in homeownership behind New York and Rhode Island.
Municipal government officials and their representatives have generally favored retaining control over development that takes place in their communities.
The Senate last year passed a land use reform bill designed to spur housing development. Other bills with the same goals of boosting housing production were heard by the Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government last month.
“The fact of the matter is many of our suburban and rural communities engage in exclusionary housing practices in a number of ways that then ends up pitting urban communities that are doing so much against suburban communities, which are not doing their fair share,” Home Builders and Remodelers Association of Massachusetts member Ben Fierro in a statement.
Fierro said that in Ipswich, where he is on the Zoning Board of Appeals, the minimum lot size is 2 acres. “That not only prices out young families, it wastes open space,” Fierro said. “It’s exclusionary in so many ways.”
