Jonathan Berk speaks at The Boston Foundation on Sept. 15, 2026. Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff
Advocates and elected officials should look beyond zoning reform as they try to get more “missing middle” housing built, a new report argues.
The recent push to open the door for more multifamily housing in local zoning rules won’t automatically generate more construction, lawyer and placemaking consultant Jonathan Berk wrote in a new report published Tuesday by The Boston Foundation.
Instead, even well-intentioned communities can still find their housing production stuck in slow gear thanks to a lack of state guardrails governing site plan reviews, rules that give too many local boards veto power over individual projects, or a process that doesn’t streamline municipal officials’ feedback.
The report analyzed six recent, small multifamily developments in Boston suburbs to find lessons for further reforms.
A development proposed for a former auto body site in downtown Salem shows a worst-case scenario for how permitting processes can kill a development through delays. Developer Kinvarra Capital first proposed a 6-story, 32-unit development that complied with parcel’s zoning in 2021, but was told by city administrators that the neighbors wouldn’t support a building taller than 4 stories.
Kinvarra complied, filing a 4-story, 20-unit proposal, but one that still needed a variance for providing 25 units of parking, rather than the 30 stipulated in city rules. It also needed to go through site plan review, triggered by projects six units and larger in Salem. This triggered over 200 days of review by various city boards, and then opened the door to an almost year-long abutter lawsuit, Berk wrote, that wasn’t dismissed until mid-2023.
“Financial markets between 2021 and 2023 changed. Interest rates skyrocketed. Construction costs skyrocketed,” Berk said at a presentation at The Boston Foundation’s offices in the Back Bay on Tuesday. “You went from a project that was budgeted for $7 million at 20 units to a project that was now over $10 million in those two years. The project was not viable – financially viable – at the end of this process.”
Berk contrasted that approvals process with the one that led to a 25-unit building in Lexington in late 2024 and early 2025, on a site upzoned under the town’s MBTA Communities Act plan.
Lexington officials consolidated feedback from local department heads into a single, 62-day per-application review process before being formally proposed to the town Planning Board. That board’s own review was bound by a 150-day shot clock Town Meeting imposed on local site plan reviews, Berk’s report said, although review by the Planning Board and four advisory boards took only a little more than 80 days.
Berk said Tuesday that some of the issues identified in his report would be addressed by guardrails on site plan review processes included in both the House and Senate versions of an economic development bill currently being negotiated on Beacon Hill.
But towns and cities still need to streamline project review by local boards and department heads, and pay attention to veto points from actors like local historic district commissions. Many communities also need more planning staffers to handle projects expeditiously, Berk said citing Lexington’s experience where speedy review of MBTA Communities projects totaling around 1,000 proposed units relied on adding extra staff. And a permanent state-level ombudsman position would help sort out problems at the local level that might otherwise fly under the radar.
“If you’re a board that doesn’t want to see housing in a community, you can still find ways to block it,” Berk said.
