As Rhode Island continues to search for ways to increase its housing stock, a new law in Massachusetts is requiring cities and towns across the state to change their zoning regulations to allow more multi-family housing.
The MBTA Communities Act, which was signed into law in 2021 but goes into effect this year, requires communities served by the MBTA to pass new zoning laws. The communities must have at least one zoning district where the construction of multi-family housing is allowed “by right,” meaning no special permit is necessary. The law also imposes minimum levels of allowable housing units, which are based on the characteristics of each individual town.
Some towns are fighting back, notably the town of Milton, which the state is now suing for noncompliance. And some experts doubt that the law will make serious inroads toward solving the state’s housing affordability problems.
For our series Zoned Out: How local zoning hurts efforts to solve Rhode Island’s decades-long housing shortage, The Public’s Radio’s Dave Fallon interviewed Andrew Brinker, a Boston Globe reporter who covers housing.
Interview Highlights
On how some towns appear to be effectively getting around the new zoning requirements
Andrew Brinker: What these towns are doing is they’re creating these parameters that on paper look like they could create all this new housing. If you just read the regulations, they say you can build up to 3 or 4 stories by right, meaning without special permit. Or, you only need very few parking spaces, that sort of thing.
But what they’re doing is they’re also drawing these zones around places where housing already exists. Or they’re drawing these zones in places that have — maybe an owner owns a property or a lot that they know is never going to sell, or is not interested in selling that property. And so no new housing is going to be built.
They’re being very strategic about this. It all fits within the state’s guidelines, technically. So they’re technically complying with the law and they can say, ‘Look, we did our part for new housing.’ But, when you sit down and look at it and you do the math and you talk to developers, there’s very little actual opportunity for new housing to be built in those situations.
This story is part of our series Zoned Out: How local zoning hurts efforts to solve Rhode Island’s decades-long housing shortage. Click here to see more stories from this series.
On resistance to the MBTA Communities Act
Brinker: I think the arguments that the town of Milton is making are very similar — I mean, you know, they’re dressed up in legalese — but they’re very similar to sort of the principled arguments that a lot of towns and a lot of residents of these towns make against state-mandated zoning reform.
Which is: That the state doesn’t know best, the towns know best.
Maybe they have a bunch of different reasons that they don’t want new housing, like their roads can’t handle more people, they can’t handle more cars that would come with more apartment buildings, or that sort of thing.
But, a lot of it I have found comes back to this very sort of New England idea of local control and self governance: the state saying staying out of local affairs. It’s a principled argument, but I think behind the principled argument is kind of this allergy to the idea of new housing and seeing their communities change.
