Scott Van Voorhis

There is talk galore once again about the Bay State’s long-simmering housing crisis as prices and rents rise ever skyward, but, as they say, talk is cheap.

Soon we will find out if there is actually any real political will to do something about the problem, or whether we will just kick the can down the road once again.

A trio of proposals is coming up for debate at the State House this spring that could help put the brakes on runaway home and condo prices.

Real estate executives and affordable housing activists alike are pushing a proposal that would bar towns and communities from zoning out new apartment and condo projects, currently a popular practice in some suburbs.

And Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is pushing a pair of bills that would provide crucial support to his plans to spur construction of tens of thousands of new homes, condos and apartments over the next two decades.

If things go as they usually do, our state lawmakers will beg off and punt these proposals off to next year, as they have done year after year, especially with controversial zoning reform, which is hotly opposed by many suburban and small town leaders.

But that would be a big mistake. The runaway train of soaring home prices only gets harder to catch up with as the years and decades roll by and the gap between housing demand and supply widens into a chasm.

“It’s not getting any cheaper,” notes Greg Vasil, chief executive of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board. “The cost of [construction] materials keeps going up.”

The most important – and likely the most contentious proposal – is the one that would force cities and towns to give a fair shot to proposals for new apartments and condos.

As it stands now, some still suburbs don’t even allow multifamily construction in their zoning codes. That means if you want to build an apartment or condo building, you have run the gauntlet of the special permit process, scrutinized as if you were trying to bring a toxic waste dump to town.

The bill, put forth Rep. Kevin Honan, chair of the housing committee in the House, would require that all towns have at least 1.5 percent of their developable land zoned for multi-family housing. Developers, in turn, would be allowed to build at least 20 units per acre in those areas.

The Greater Boston Real Estate Board and the Massachusetts Association of Realtors are both going to bat for the bill.

I am sure some will beg to differ – I remember a note I recently received from one local official in an upscale Metrowest suburb arguing that apartment and condo projects belong in Boston in Cambridge, not in leafy Weston or Wayland.

There is likely to be some strong pushback from local officials, who too often see new housing solely through the prism of school costs, even though studies by the UMass Donahue Institute and others have shown that new apartment buildings typically aren’t the cause of school overcrowding.

We live in one of the most economically dynamic regions in the country, with a steady inflow of talent from across the country interested in coming to Greater Boston and Massachusetts to pursue their dreams and work.

The idea that any community in the modern age can be allowed to wall itself off from something as basic as new apartment construction really seems unbelievable – and has certainly played a role in shortage of new apartments that have made Massachusetts rents some of the highest in the country.

“There are many communities in Massachusetts that don’t have by right multi-family zoning,” Vasil said. “That is crazy. You can’t look to the cities to carry the water for all these communities.”

By contrast, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is embracing growth.

In fact, the new mayor is scrambling to find ways to get the tens of thousands of new homes, condos and apartments needed to accommodate all the new Bostonians who are expected to push the city’s population over the 700,000 in the coming decades.

But Walsh is seeking a helping hand from the Legislature in order to meet those big goals – 53,000 new housing units over the next two decades, to be exact.

Working with Honan, the Walsh Administration has filed two new bills,
The first would give City Hall the ability to offer tax breaks to new apartment, condo and townhome developers who commit to building new housing affordable to middle-class families.

The second would allow state transportation officials to sell off land near T stations and T lines at below market rates to developers with plans for middle-class housing.

There’s a reason why gold-plated condos and apartments and condos account for most of what’s getting built in Boston right now, and that’s because the cost of building in the city is high.
Both proposals won’t solve that problem, but they could certainly help.

But whether any of these housing proposals has a shot at passing this year – or of even getting more than cursory media attention – is an open question.

Issues like zoning and housing construction have a double whammy working against them: They aren’t sexy and they are also highly controversial to a small number of vocal and politically influential interest groups.

The cop-out line that legislators have a used in blowing off zoning reform proposals over the past years was that it was simply too complicated and that more time was needed to study the issue.

This time, supporters have kept it simple, filing a 469-word proposal – surely a record when most bills drone on for pages – that targets the issue of suburbs and small towns across the state shutting their doors to new apartment and condo construction.

So lawmakers can forget the bogus ‘it’s just too complicated’ whining they often use to avoid taking action.
The time has long since come and gone where we can punt meaningful housing reform down the road and not expect to pay a stiff price.
The issue of soaring housing costs has been with us for decades and first came to a head way back in the early 2000s, when the real estate market shifted into overdrive.
After taking a short breather during the Great Recession, all those crazy home and condo prices are back, driven to new heights by chronic lack of supply as years of anemic residential construction numbers takes its toll.
The latest estimate – by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council – is that we need 400,000 new housing units in the Boston area alone over the coming decades. That’s right, nearly half a million new homes and apartments, and that’s just to keep up with demand.
There’s still time to catch that runaway train of escalating home prices and rents, but the clock is ticking.