MARC DRAISEN
Demand will rise

After years of depending on anecdotal evidence to determine the reasons behind Massachusetts’ high housing costs and difficulties developing new affordable housing, new studies are helping housing and smart-growth groups back up their stories with numbers.

“We have a lot of data now that show us the things we’ve known for a long time,” said Kristina Egan, director of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance.

Representatives from three organizations that conducted studies on housing prices, land-use planning and lot size presented their findings last week at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s winter meeting in Boston.

Local zoning is at the center of the issues surrounding the need for new development in the Bay State. Although recent statistics showed the population of the state has declined, executives at the MAPC say they believe the state will grow slowly. Over the next 30 years, the MAPC expects a population increase of 10 percent. That increase, along with the ongoing historical decline in the number of people per household, will lead to a tremendous demand for new housing, according to MAPC Executive Director Marc Draisen.

“In many parts of the region, current zoning can not possibly accommodate the [need for new housing],” he said.

With the current state of zoning bylaws in many suburbs, new development would hurt the potential for open space. In the cities, development would have to be on contaminated sites or in redeveloped commercial space.

So the studies – which analyze topics like how large lot sizes in towns result in fewer overall permits – are doing a great service to the organizations working toward better zoning laws, according to Egan.

A study from Harvard University’s Rappaport Institute analyzed 187 communities around Boston, and found that all 187 have zoning bylaws, 181 have subdivision bylaws, 131 have wetlands bylaws that exceed the state’s Wetlands Protection Act and 109 have septic regulations that exceed the state’s.

Some are confusing, said David Luberoff, executive director of the Rappaport Institute, and some are worse than confusing.

“In many cases, they are virtually incomprehensible,” he said.

The study also looked at lot size, and found that 10 percent of communities, which house less than 5 percent of the population of the area studied, have an average lot size of more than 70,000 square feet. The study found that any extra acre in lot size is associated with 33 percent fewer permits. Each additional form of regulation is associated with a 10 percent reduction in permitting.

‘A Serious Problem’
Large-lot zoning also affects affordable housing in a community, according to Luberoff. The more acres that communities have on an average lot, the less affordable housing there is in the town. And that, in turn, has an impact on the economy. High housing costs equal higher wages, and the need for higher wages make it more difficult for businesses to operate in Greater Boston.

“We see this in spades,” Luberoff said. “We are starting to have a serious problem attracting top-level talent.”

Zoning laws in many localities represent a significant challenge to new development. And there are several incentives and opportunities for localities to restrict new development, Luberoff said, and with home rule and some creativity, can often subvert state policies.

The current system also has too much uncertainty.

“A reasonably well-financed opponent of any development can wreak havoc for years,” Luberoff said.

There are some policy approaches that could help spur necessary development, however. The state could use broad incentives to encourage communities to allow more development, and override local zoning through state standards embedded in statutes like Chapter 40B. Reforms to the legal environment – particularly the drawn-out appeals process – would also help, Luberoff said.

Another presenter, Christina Rosan, a Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presented her study called “Land Use Planning in the Doldrums: Case Studies of Growth Management in the I-495 Region,” which focused on town planners’ opinions on how they balance the needs and desires of NIMBYs with those of developers.

MAPC members also heard about the growing lot size of new Massachusetts homes. Clark Ziegler, executive director of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, presented the study “Large-Lot Housing Construction in the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area.” The study found that newly constructed homes in Greater Boston are taking up more land, with half of the region’s new single-family houses built on nearly an acre of land or more, according to a recent study.

The study, done by the Massachusetts Housing Partnership and MIT Center for Real Estate, found that the median lot size for single-family homes built between 1998 and 2002 in the metropolitan region was nine-tenths of an acre – twice as large as the lot sizes of homes built in the 1970s and 1980s.

The analysis examined all new single-family homes and condos and apartments constructed during the five-year period in 154 cities and towns within or close to Interstate 495, and compared it to existing housing density.

Such studies do a great service by pinpointing the areas that need to be changed, Egan said. She emphasized that cities and towns in Massachusetts feel like they have little control, but land use is an area they can control. The result is not enough housing and not enough diversity in housing stock. And with modest population growth likely on the way, the state and localities need to pay more attention to the need for new housing.

“These are things we have to deal with,” Egan said. “We have to look at more than housing production.”

The necessary solutions must be far-reaching, she said. Communities and regional planning groups need to be strategic about where development should be allowed and – more controversially – where it should not. Land that needs to be kept open to preserve clean drinking water and for other environmental reasons should be identified, according to Egan.

“We need to look for solutions that are economically viable for the state,” she said.

Proponents of more affordable housing also cite a need to look deeper into the reasons why localities want to restrict housing. Laws like Chapter 40S are a step forward, but the state needs to make sure that communities are not losing money when new homes are built.

The carrot-and-stick approach can be effective, Egan said. The state should encourage redevelopment by making laws like Chapter 40R and Chapter 40S work better. Historic tax credits and expedited permitting also can help bring about more redevelopment.

Egan also suggested that a regional authority with enforcement powers could help spur development.