Jonathan Berk speaks at The Boston Foundation on Sept. 15, 2026. A report he authored analyzing six developments in Greater Boston argues advocates, planners and political leaders need to look beyond zoning reform to spur “missing middle” housing. Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff

You can pass all the zoning reforms you want, but they still won’t make a dent in the housing crisis.

That’s the bitter reality housing advocates are starting to grasp in the wake of the MBTA Communities Act, hailed as a game changer when the Massachusetts Legislature gave it a green light more than five years ago.

The passage of the MBTA Communities Act in 2021 was touted as a landmark law that would force cities and towns with or near T stops to open their doors to new apartments, condos, and townhomes by creating multifamily zoning districts.

But hopes that the new law would unleash a wave of new rental and condominium construction in Greater Boston have since been dashed as the reality set in.

Local officials still retain a range of regulatory and procedural levers to delay projects they want to stop or extract concessions from.

Enter urbanist Jonathan Berk and think-tank Boston Indicators. Last week, Berk and the research arm of The Boston Foundation issued a new report that details how cities and towns are skewing the project review process to kill projects.

The report certainly doesn’t argue that revamping restrictive zoning laws isn’t important and necessary.

But zoning reform should be just the first step in a larger overhaul of how local officials review and approve housing and development proposals, Berk contends in “Delayed by Design: How Discretionary Permitting Stalls Housing in Massachusetts.”

“Statewide zoning reforms like the MBTA Communities Act have created the opportunity to build more needed ‘missing middle’ housing, but this report reminds us that is just one step in a longer process,” Luc Schuster, executive director of Boston Indicators, said in a statement.

Case in Point: a Salem Autobody Shop

The report dives into the details of six different projects across Eastern Massachusetts to highlight the challenges developers of middle-income housing face in a difficult-to-navigate local review process.

Developers of these projects are particularly vulnerable to costly and unpredictable delays given the more modest price point of the housing they are hoping to build.

One of the key examples?

That would be a proposal to replace a shuttered auto body shop on a corner in downtown Salem with a 20-unit residential building.

On paper, it looked like the project would sail through the North Shore city’s approval process.

It was in Salem’s “most permissive downtown zoning” and the type of project that “many in Massachusetts say they want, on exactly the kind of site the state’s own housing goals highlight,” the report notes.

Yet it took two years for project to get all its approvals and by the time it had finally received a green light, the rise in interest rates and construction costs no longer made it.

Redesign, Lawsuit Leave Project Unviable

So, what gives?

The proposal reached the threshold where site plan review kicks in – in Salem, anything six units or larger.

It took a year for the proposed 4-story multifamily building to make it through Salem’s site plan review process, even though developers

In order to get approval, the developer was forced to redesign the project, driving up the cost.

That was compounded by an earlier decision made before project plans were filed.

The developer – at city officials’ urging, Berk’s report claims – had cut two floors and a dozen apartments from what the zoning allowed to head off potential neighborhood opposition, a move that also reduced the project’s financial cushion.

But even after the project cleared site plan review, it still had another hoop to jump through.

An abutter sued and tied up the project in court for another year, with the delay only ending when the plaintiff became ill and had to drop the challenge.

All the permitting work, as well as making payments on the site itself, added another $600,000 to the project’s total cost, according to the report.

By the time the project was approved, both interest rates and construction costs had surged, forcing the developer to obtain state tax credits and a local tax exemption in a vain attempt to start construction.

Scott Van Voorhis

The Result: Ongoing Blight

Roughly six years after the project was first proposed, the Salem corner with its now empty auto-body shop remains an eyesore.

“The corner remains undeveloped, an ongoing blight on the neighborhood,” the report says.

The project, as originally conceived, is now financially unviable and a filing with the Salem Planning Board last week shows a new developer will be taking their own stab at the property.

The developer, unnamed in Tinti & Navins attorney Scott Grover’s letter to Salem officials, is asking for a one-year extension to the project’s approvals until April 14, 2028.

Berk’s report also cites a long-delayed proposal in Marblehead for an assisted living and memory care facility that took years of hearings and other regulatory rigmarole before construction could start.

While the 87-unit assisted living facility was “exactly the kind of senior housing Marblehead’s own plans said the town desperately needed,” the town Zoning Board initially rejected the project in 2016 before approving it following a court order and a redesign, the report notes.

Abutters then spent three years appealing the project – and losing – in state court before construction could finally begin.

“Nearly three years of litigation pushed another project to the brink of collapse despite the developer winning every round in court,” the report notes.

Some of this mess would be addressed by site plan review guardrails proposed in both the House and Senate versions of the Legislature’s 2026 economic development bill, currently stuck in conference committee on Beacon Hill.

But more legislation is needed to tackle these local permitting bottlenecks, as well as action on the local level, Berk’s report argues. In total, the report offers 18 different recommendations.

“Because each community sets its own rules, the result is hundreds of different standards and timelines,” Berk said in a statement. “The result is slower development and greater friction, even in places where zoning rules would suggest real opportunities for needed housing development.”

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.