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Stephen Medeiros
The housing market, a key economic driver, is influenced by a matrix of complex and evolving factors. Public policy-making at every level plays a major role in shaping the market, as its consequences can promote or restrict much-needed housing development in varied and long-lasting ways. While there are many venues in which it is critically important to engage and advocate for favorable policy outcomes for housing and home ownership, it is squarely at the local level where many of us can have a direct say in the policymaking process.
Town meeting, held once or twice a year in the spring and sometimes in the fall in communities across Massachusetts, is a thoroughly unique venue where both policy and budget decisions are made for a town by the residents themselves. In most towns, this traditional exercise in democratic self-governance is open to any registered voter (a small number of towns instead have a representative town meetings of residents elected to participate as members).
Meeting participants vote on items, one by one, as they appear on the town meeting warrant, or agenda. Warrant items may originate from a town board or committee, or via a citizen’s petition, and often are accompanied by an issue summary and the recommendation of the relevant town board or committee as well as the board of selectman. The votes taken here at that time solely determine passage or failure of the policy and budget proposals under consideration.
Why Your Role Is Special
Why does individual participation at a town meeting matter? When local policy is decided at a town meeting around housing, land use, zoning and infrastructure, among other issues, it shapes the community far into the future. It determines whether new homes may be built, where they may be built, the conditions under which they may be built and whether the necessary infrastructure will be available to support them. These collective local governance decisions, though made only by the people in the room at the town meeting, determine for all residents a community’s priorities and its blueprint for the future.
Earlier this year, town meeting became an even better venue in which to shape the housing future of a community with the enactment of the state’s new “Housing Choice” zoning reform law.
One of MAR’s biggest recent legislative priorities, the law has already begun to spur housing development in cities and towns across the commonwealth. It does this by lowering the required voting threshold for some key zoning proposals that support housing production, from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority. Lowering a voting threshold makes the zoning change easier to pass, creating new opportunities for housing development.
With this law in place and with any of these items on a warrant, a simple majority of town meeting participants can affirmatively decide to allow as-of-right multi-family or mixed-use development, accessory dwelling units or a particular type of project called an “open space and residential development,” for example. With the same majority, they can also approve a smart growth zoning district, a starter home zoning district, transfer of development rights, natural resource protection zoning and changes to dimensional standards in exchange for additional units of housing. These measured zoning changes will have the cumulative effect of creating conditions favorable for the creation of new homes for Massachusetts residents, very much needed across all price points as we move towards pandemic recovery.
To shape the communities in which we live, and to build a foundation for future housing development, strong civic engagement through town meeting participation is both necessary and appropriate. By sharing experience and expertise around relevant policy proposals, we can elevate the quality of public discussion and we can favorably influence outcomes. If your town is having a fall town meeting, please take this opportunity to participate, whether it is your first time or your 50th time. Our collective engagement in this local government process can yield the policy changes we need for continued vibrancy, inclusiveness and growth across Massachusetts.
Steve Medeiros is the 2021 president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors and a broker-associate with Keller Williams Realty in Dartmouth.
