The MBTA Communities Act rezoning maps are drawn, and town boards have weighed in on each iteration’s pros and cons. The town meeting will convene on Nov. 18, and members will then decide which plan Belmont will send to the state for approval.
Previous Coverage
- The MBTA Communities Act Will Face Town Meeting Vote
- Town Submits Two MBTA Rezoning Maps to State for Pre-Compliance Review
- Planning Board Inches Closer to Final MBTA Map, Preps for Pre-Compliance
“I think it was a necessary model, and I thought it struck the right balance of helping make sure that many communities were doing what they could… to help deal with some of the historic barriers that have existed to creating the housing that the state needs as a whole,” said Secretary of Housing and Livable Communities Edward Augustus. “Other strategies haven’t been as successful in terms of getting movement at that local level to remove some of those zoning barriers.”
The MBTA Communities Act was signed by then-Gov. Charlie Baker in 2021. It requires cities and towns the MBTA serves to zone or rezone land, paving the way for the new housing. The requirements include:
- a minimum of 15 units per acre;
- located not more than a half mile from a commuter rail station, subway station, ferry terminal, or bus station;
- no age restrictions, and suitable for families with children.
The act does not mandate the building of housing. Rather, it eliminates the bureaucratic process of rezoning land, which can be an arduous, time-consuming process that can turn away people who might otherwise build housing. Clearing that barrier and others, such as removing various restrictions to multi-family housing, are key hallmarks of the law, according to Augustus.
State Sen. William Brownsberger has been a proponent of the law since its inception. Local zoning, he said, can be an impediment to developing new housing.
“I have a conviction that we need to build a lot more housing and that one of the principal barriers to that is restrictive local zoning across the state. That’s not just a Massachusetts problem,” he said. “That’s a reality. In a whole lot of parts of the country, a whole lot of parts of the country are doing similar things.”
In Massachusetts, 178 towns are required to meet the new MBTA requirements. To date, more than 84 towns have passed rezoning ordinances, of which 36 have been approved by the state.
The law is not universally popular: Milton has been locked in a legal battle over compliance, which is now with the state Supreme Court. In Needham, which passed its rezoning map in late October, a petition is being circulated to overturn the Town Meeting vote.
“(The law) was saying, ‘Hey, we all need more housing in the state.’ That need for housing manifests itself in so many different ways,” Augustus said. “Everybody should be doing something. We’ll leave a lot of the details of that something to each individual community so you could put the zone in various places within the town. And that was one of the vigorous debates in Milton, the particular area they put it in; some folks didn’t think that was the right spot.”
It’s that local control that intends to make the Communities Act work. It requires towns, such as Belmont, to create the rezoned parcels, but gives them broad latitude to place zones in areas that make sense for the individual town, he added.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all state big footing, but it’s a partnership,” Augustus said. “We have this need, not only the state, but every community in the state has a need for more housing. And if we all do a little bit to work together, we can help remove one of the most prominent barriers, I think, which is local zoning.”
Right now, it appears to be making a difference. According to Augustus, thousands of new units of housing are in the works in towns that have already passed the MBTA act. Lexington, for example, has 300 units.
“I guess what we’re trying to do really is to take some of the risk out so that people can be focused on actually building as opposed to trying to navigate a bureaucratic process that may or may not end up resulting in housing,” he said.
According to Noah Bombard, Augustus’ director of communications, 2,800 units of housing, attributable to the MBTA act, are in the works statewide.
Affordability
The MBTA Communities Act does not mandate affordable housing and it does not mandate the actual construction of housing.
In fact, the law is explicit in avoiding the word “affordable.” Both Augustus and Brownsberger believe the affordable component will come with time. According to Brownsberger, there is a need to get market-rate housing built and on the market. With increased supply, the demand should dwindle, allowing the rent or mortgage costs to stabilize or even decline over time.
Both Brownsberger and Augustus believe that with the zoning obstacles removed, construction will happen; it’s a matter of market forces such as supply chain and interest rates.
“The volume of new construction that we get in response to this is going to be partly a function of national conditions as well as the local zoning decisions,” Brownsberger said. “How those are going to interact over the next few years is something that we will just have to see.”
Brownsberger called the bill a good first step. Now, the job is to monitor its effectiveness and determine next steps.
“But I think we’re going to have to, as a practical reality, live into what we’ve done a little bit and see how it goes,” he said. “I personally am going to be looking for things that we can do to support additional housing construction, but I don’t think those things are going to have the scope or impact that the MBTA zoning has.”
The law does not operate in a vacuum. Earlier this year, Gov. Maura Healey created the MBTA catalyst fund to help with infrastructure development. New development requires roads, water and sewer, for example. The catalyst program, he said, helps provide money for those needs.
