To date, only a few Greater Boston suburbs have kept pace with housing demand by permitting new developments.

Housing experts, developers and business leaders have high hopes that the recently passed Housing Choice zoning reforms will boost housing construction in Massachusetts, reversing a decades-long decline in the number of units built each year in the Bay State. 

But there’s a catch: It may take years to determine if the act, signed into law in January by Gov. Charlie Baker, is effective in producing badly needed housing units of all types. 

The consensus among industry experts is that, at minimum, the act could lead to hundreds of newly constructed units per year – and, ideally, thousands of new units per year – in its first few years. 

“It’s going to be years before we see the benefits of Housing Choice,” said Callie Clark, director of policy at the Massachusetts Housing Partnership’s Center for Housing Data. “It’s going to be a long time before we can measure the results. We’re definitely on the right track. It absolutely could lead to more housing, but we’ll have to see.” 

Restrictive local zoning rules have been widely blamed for contributing to the Bay State’s housing unaffordability crisis. Median single-family home prices have topped $500,000 for three consecutive months, according to data compiled by The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. Median condominium prices hit $489,000 in June, the 11th consecutive month in which they topped $400,000. 

Statewide housing completions have plummeted in recent decades, partly due to restrictive suburban zoning, and demand has outstripped supply amid a strong post-recession job recovery. 

According to data provided by Clark, there were 882,145 housing units, as measured by building permits, proposed in Massachusetts between 1960 and 1990, but that number fell sharply to only 469,094 units between 1990 and 2019, the most recent year for which data was available, representing a nearly 47 percent decline. 

Urban Core Carries the Freight 

Meanwhile, only a handful of “inner core” cities and towns – including Boston, Cambridge, Medford, Watertown and Weymouth, among others – account for the bulk of new multifamily housing units built between 2010 and 2020, according to data from the Boston Foundation’s recent Greater Boston Housing Report Card.  

New multifamily units, particularly apartment units, are considered key to producing much-needed affordable housing in Massachusetts, according to industry executives. 

Some suburban towns, such as Concord, have actually kept pace when it comes to construction of new multifamily units. Concord boosted its multifamily housing by 747 units, or by 10.5 percent, between 2010 and 2020, according to the Boston Foundation report. 

By comparison, the city of Boston produced far more actual units during the same time period, or 31,385 units, but its percentage increase of multifamily units was 10.7 percent, similar to Concord’s rate of increase. 

But towns like Concord are outside the norm when it comes to construction of new housing units, with many suburban communities seeing only 1 percent or 2 percent increases in new units over the past 10 years, according to the data. 

Enter Housing Choice, first proposed late last decade by Baker, a former Swampscott selectman who’s seen his share of development battles at the local level. 

The main component of the Housing Choice Act, passed by lawmakers within a larger economic development bill, makes it easier for cities and towns to change their zoning laws, via lowering the threshold to approve many zoning votes from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority vote. 

“The Housing Choice law is a step in the right direction,” said Robert Korff, chief executive of Wellesley-based Mark Development, which has been developing a series of projects along the Washington Street corridor in Newton. “It gives developers more confidence that hyper-local NIMBY voices will not have an undue weight in the review of housing projects and that there can be a path to approval, which will likely result in more housing proposals at higher density.” 

The same economic development bill contains other key housing provisions, including a requirement that cities and towns served by the MBTA have at least one zoning district for housing near transit stations – or they risk losing various state grants. That provision is now effectively on hold until the state Department of Housing and Community Development issues new guidelines later this year. 

The first 110-unit phase of The Val apartment complex opened this summer at 164 Lexington Road in Billerica. A partnership between Alliance Residential and GID Real Estate Investments and was built under the Chapter 40B affordable housing law. Image courtesy of Alliance Residential

156 Units Blocked by One Vote 

As for eliminating the two-thirds vote threshold, John Iredale, president of Karstens Development in Weymouth, said he wishes the Housing Choice Act was the law of the land last year. 

Iredale said his company had worked for two years – and spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” – trying to get a mixed-use project next to the Abington commuter rail station approved by town officials. The proposed project started out with 300 housing units, but it was whittled down to 156 units amid opposition. 

But that still wasn’t enough – and the plan was pulled last November when it became clear the project didn’t have the then necessary two-thirds vote on the Abington Planning Board.  

“We had a majority, but we were one vote short of the two-thirds majority,” he said. “One lone vote blocked it. It was very frustrating.” 

Iredale said the Housing Choice law “definitely would have helped us” get the development approved if was in place late last year.  

Korff said his firm has never officially had a project rejected due to a two-thirds threshold requirement. But he has little doubt the super-majority requirement imposed by numerous towns may have contributed to many developments not being proposed in the first place. 

“Two-thirds is an incredibly high bar and takes perseverance, creativity, strong relationships and capacity to compromise to achieve,” Korff said. “And, quite frankly, those compromises often come at the cost of additional housing units.” 

Housing Choice law will force town officials to work more cooperatively with developers, predicts Peter Forman, president of the South Shore Chamber of Commerce. 

“There’s still a lot of opposition to new housing out there,” Forman said. 

Small Signs of Progress in Salem 

There have already been some small victories as a result of Housing Choice. Salem, for instance, recently passed a zoning reform measure allowing small permitted rental units in single-family homes. Such units – officially referred to as “accessory dwelling units” (ADUs) or, colloquially, as “in-law apartments” – had previously been rejected in Salem, but passed with a simple majority vote this spring due to the Housing Choice Act. 

Many housing proponents hope even larger projects, such as those similar to Iredale’s proposal in Abington, are approved as a result of Housing Choice. 

But Greg Reibman, president of the Newton-Needham Regional Chamber, said he thinks a lot of progress toward constructing additional housing will be achieved via small projects with only eight or so proposed units.  

“There will be some big housing projects,” he said. “But it’s also about smart use of small parcels. We’ve previously seen over and over again projects, big and small, rejected or significantly scaled back.” 

As for the future impact of the Housing Choice Act, Reibman warned “it’s still going to be a hard process” to get projects approved. “But at least it’s going to be more manageable now. You’ll be able to have good, honest conversations about developments.” 

Stephanie Cronin, executive director of the Middlesex 3 Coalition, a regional economic development organization located in the Route 3 corridor of Middlesex County, said she’s optimistic that the Housing Choice law will help relieve the current housing shortage. The question is how many units will be proposed and built, she said. 

“There’s no silver bullet” to the state’s housing woes, she said. “Housing Choice is not going to solve everything, but it’s significant. It’s a big step forward.”