How to Block Multi-Family Housing, Boston-Style

Many Massachusetts cities and towns are using zoning to block new multi-family housing as enthusiastically as anyplace in equally blue California. The Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance recently released the results of their two-year research project into how well the Boston area was faring in its efforts to keep up with housing demand. “The State of Zoning for Multi-Family Housing in Greater Boston” finds that that communities in the Commonwealth effectively erected a “paper wall” of zoning restrictions to discourage development.

“The local zoning approval processes for multifamily housing have been evolving to be more flexible, political, ad hoc, unpredictable, time consuming, and discretionary,” reads the study, by researcher Amy Dain of the nonprofit policy center MassINC, of bylaws, ordinances, and plans of 100 cities and towns around Boston. “The current processes are unlikely to yield enough housing in the coming years.”

Like many other metros nationwide, Boston’s housing production lags far behind what is needed to keep housing costs reasonable. From 2010 to 2017, Greater Boston added 245,000 new jobs, but only permitted 71,600 new homes. As a result, the Smart Growth Alliance says, one quarter of all renters in Massachusetts now spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing. Housing costs in the Commonwealth continue to rise faster than New York or California.