Photo courtesy of Amy Dain
Amy Dain
Senior Fellow, Boston Indicators
Age: 50
Industry experience: 25
If you follow housing policy, you know Amy Dain. Now, after years as a freelance public policy researcher she’s joined The Boston Foundation’s Boston Indicators think tank to build on her extensive research into the state’s housing struggles. Her work at TBF will include continuing her year-old Upzone Update newsletter explaining the ins and outs of MBTA Communities Act implementation. More broadly, she’ll be tracking how state and local housing and zoning policies are – or aren’t – closing gaps in the region’s disparities or building prosperous and equitable communities. Prior to TBF, Dain authored a number of reports that were foundational to mapping zoning around Greater Boston and the history of how area towns and cities came to effectively outlaw new multifamily construction.
Q: Four years after MBTA Communities passed, what does the zoning landscape look like? What share of towns embraced housing production?
A: It’s a little hard to fully and qualify that, because a lot of the zoning was just adopted and, really, what’s important is how much housing gets built in the next few years. My sense is some communities went the route of on-paper compliance and some communities opened up their zoning incrementally, to allow a little bit more housing. But this did not solve the housing crisis or the fundamental issues that are holding us back from building the housing we need in the places where it should go in order to make prosperous and equitable communities.
There are so many heroes out there who’ve been working on this, but it’s an incredibly slow process that yields really gradual reform. So, when you have a housing crisis, it’s just hard to comprehend how that kind of slow, municipality-by-municipality process will yield the kinds of reform we need in order to allow enough housing to meet demand in places where we can see growth.
In cases of more direct state action, like the recent ADU law and Chapter 40B from 1969, you can use the democratic process to the state level, as opposed to the local level, to address a statewide issue.
Q: Should we have more of that democratic process the state level, instead of having nearly all of it in town and city halls?
A: Yes. And I think that it goes with investment. Zoning is just where we allow housing to be built, but that should be matched by planning for sewers, and sidewalks, and transit and other infrastructure and school capacity so that Massachusetts continues to be an incredible, prosperous and equitable place to live. It’s not just about, “Oh, let’s allow more housing anywhere and everywhere” and let that be it. I think it takes planning and investment.
Q: If that’s if that’s a key missing piece for generating more housing, how good is Massachusetts at doing that right now?
A: These are really long-term things that we’re building towards, and if we hold up allowing the housing near transit, then we’re going to build sprawl housing and lock in a settlement pattern that isn’t supportive of the walkable communities everyone wants. This is a way-understudied and underinvested area, but as an example, sewer maintenance and sewer planning needs to be strategic statewide. Nobody sees it, but that’s a critical piece of the puzzle for how we grow. We should be planning intensively and having a vision for what makes for a livable, thriving, equitable Greater Boston, and standing up and seeing that vision through.
Q: Last year’s debate around using MWRA expansion to unlock more housing at the Union Point site in Weymouth seems like an example of what you’re talking about. House Speaker Ron Mariano’s idea would have been a surprise to anyone who hasn’t been following that real estate development closely.
A: This came up recently in Framingham, where people were saying don’t have enough sewer capacity. Well, what’s the situation with the sewer capacity? Can we harness the value created through development to upgrade the sewer capacity? But what’s the big picture so that we’re not erratically or haphazardly making investments? A lot of our growth strategy as a region has been, “Let’s just wait and see what gets proposed where, and respond to it.” There are reasons why our system is like that, but I think we can do better and have a growth agenda.
Q: When it comes to that transit-oriented development, what things should policymakers, advocates or developers be thinking about next?
A: We should be thinking about a state policy – that gets adopted by the Legislature – to allow much greater densities directly on MBTA properties using certain criteria and thoughtful planning. It doesn’t have to be that on every MBTA property you’re allowed to build a skyscraper, but some proactive thinking and planning: coming up with criteria, coming up with some standards. The policy so far has been that whoever is doing the development works through the local process, which in some places takes decades. You can get approvals after the market has hit a downturn, and then the project goes under. Look at Riverside in Newton, where the state has been trying for so long to develop that site.
Q: You’re also a Newton Planning Board member. Has that experience influenced how you think about the state’s housing problems?
A: It’s been an incredible learning experience, and I find it so important for understanding these issues to be involved in the local level. There was one development where I was transparent in meetings that I’m coming for a background of supporting more housing development. And the Planning Board is not the key decision-maker in Newton – we make recommendations to City Council – but something like four letters came into the Planning Department, about me as an individual, from neighbors upset about what I said. It’s very stressful to be involved in this work.
I don’t know that there’s any one thing that’s happened in Newton that’s changed my whole orientation to the issue, but it’s given me a feeling in my gut about how hard it is. It just raises my level of admiration and gratitude for planners, and planning board chairs, and city councilors and other people who are engaging in it to improve the world.
Dain’s Five Favorite Songs to Run To
- “Yorktown,” from “Hamilton” by Lin Manuel Miranda
- “Break My Stride” by Mathew Wilder
- “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush
- “Breathe” by The Prodigy
- “Ready to Start” by Arcade Fire
