Is Beacon Hill finally waking up to the fact there is a serious housing crisis here in Massachusetts? Maybe, but don’t bet the house on it.
House and Senate lawmakers are pushing proposals this spring to boost new construction in hopes of reining in runaway home prices, but it remains to be seen whether our fearless leaders have the fortitude for the painful changes needed to actually get more homes and apartments built. After all, that’s really the only way we will ever be able to put dent in our crazy prices.
The key to this question will depend on what happens with the most ambitious of a bevy of new proposals at the State House, which would reform notoriously NIMBY local zoning rules.
The bill would stop suburbs and towns across the state from effectively banning the new construction of apartments and condos, a common practice in Massachusetts.
It comes with a growing chorus of experts, advocates and some enlightened public officials pointing to the perils of an increasingly hyper-expensive housing market.
“There is much more public concern being expressed about housing supply and what it means for young people living and staying here,” said Clark Ziegler, head of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership. “It is light-years from a year or two ago – we are in a much different place in terms of recognition of the problem.”
The Massachusetts Housing Partnership and other housing activists are lining up behind the zoning reform bill, which takes aim at one of the biggest problems facing the overpriced Massachusetts housing market.
Some towns, amazingly, outright bar new apartment development. But dozens of towns and suburbs in the Boston area and across the state simply don’t have zoning rules for new apartment and condo development. As a result, developers who want to build new market-rate units have to jump through multiple layers of local red tape, with the ultimate goal of getting a zoning variance.
Given that apartments are greeted with as much enthusiasm as proposals for new landfills by suburban NIMBYies, that can present an almost insurmountable obstacle.
The zoning reform bill would level the playing field, requiring towns and cities across the state to designate “districts” in which new condos and apartments can be built.
It’s not entirely without restrictions – it pretty much limits those areas to sites near commuter rail and transit hubs and local downtowns. But it’s a major step forward compared to the frankly discriminatory web of local zoning barriers we have now, too often aimed at keeping out families with children, especially if they are of more modest means.
The proposal would also require towns and cities to open their doors to cluster-style developments in which a number of single-family homes are grouped together on smaller lots, freeing up land to be preserved as open space.
This is an important alternative to the rules to be found in the vast majority of towns and suburbs across the state, which insist on 1- and 2-acre lots, effectively ensuring that only high-end homes and McMansions get built.
Sticks And Carrots
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the zoning reform bill faces by far the most uphill battle of the current crop of housing proposals at the State House.
Local officials across the state are opposed to any statewide mandate that would require them to rewrite how they vet new housing. Frankly, concerns about local school costs – often overblown – carry far more weight with this group than worries about rising home prices.
There are other signs of trouble as well.
The zoning reform bill actually includes a number of financial incentives aimed at enticing communities to accept more multifamily housing. That could make the proposal more palatable.
But one plan being considered by House lawmakers would create two bills, one with the core of the zoning reform proposal, the other with the financial incentives.
In what could be a first step, there is now a separate bill focused solely on the zoning reform, stripped of the enticements. That could make the zoning reform bill a harder sell, while ensuring the second proposal with all the carrots has a much easier path to passage.
However, that second bill, if passed, would have only a relatively modest impact on the market, spurring the construction of, at most, a few thousand new units when tens of thousands of new homes, condos and apartments are needed.
It’s always possible that lawmakers will simply push through the more modest bill and claim a major victory where none exists, leaving zoning reform to languish in obscurity. Still, given the challenges families across the state face trying to find anything remotely affordable, this would be obscene.
Maybe zoning reform doesn’t really stand a chance of passing this year, but legislative leaders should summon some political courage and ensure that zoning reform – and all the ridiculous, local rules designed to keep out apartments and condos – at least gets to the House or Senate floor for debate.
If we can’t even have a debate over how to change our state’s anti-housing, NIMBY culture, then you can forget ever finding a way to get home prices under control.
