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Court rules state can so tell towns with train stops to rezone for some higher density development
By adamg on Wed, 01/08/2025 - 11:17am
In a defeat for Milton and other communities aghast at the idea of the teeming masses moving in, the Supreme Judicial Court today ruled a state regulation that requires towns served by the MBTA to add at least one zone that theoretically could support more housing is entirely constitutional - and that the state can even sue towns that resist.
However, the state's highest court also ruled that because state regulators failed to formally file a notice of the new rule - along with a statement detailing its impact on small businesses - as required, Attorney General Andrea Campbell has to hold off on suing such towns until the state actually files those documents.
The goal of the law, enacted under the Baker administration, is to try to increase the overall amount of housing in the Boston area, which has some of the nation's highest housing prices.
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Comments
Cause for celebration!
Needed on this frigid day where many are not able to stay warm due to being unhoused.
Yes!
Because the unhoused can afford a $3,450 a month studio in Hingham! Right?
You are a blockhead if you think someone is going to get housing because Plympton is going to have to build 60 apartments.
Tide raises all ships
I'm not as YIMBY as some people but the more housing options that are available at all price points, the easier it will be for everyone to find housing.
Only If The Market Demands It
This is only a zoning workaround.
No one is being forced to build housing. Developers will only do it if there is profit in it.
Don't expect the rent on a three bed in JP to fall to $1,500 tomorrow or next week or in 2035 because Middleton put up some more market units.
Then why regulate?
Why do towns need to have regulations banning multifamily housing is there is no demand?
No one is expecting that
At least no one who can think more then 5 minutes into the future.
Think in a 15-25+ year time frame and with institutional investors. There will be more units built in the region over time as a result of this law. In aggregate, that stops housing prices for rising as quickly.
For someone currently renting or looking to buy in the next few years, this law won't do squat. There are no quick fixes.
You’re making sense.
Which is likely to lead to a full out rant from Costello so I’m getting out my ear plugs.
How is residents and
How is residents and developers having more choices a bad thing? You know how to get out of a housing shortage? Build more housing!
I live in JP. If, in theory, I want to move to the suburbs, having more options in the suburbs makes it more likely I will move and free up a unit of housing in JP, thus adding to the supply of housing.
Zoning Reform
Without it, the market can't do its work. This is an important elimination of artificial obstacles.
If you say so…
… Debbie Downer.
This is a good explainer
About how a $3450 studio in Hingham actually does help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQW4W1_SJmc
By the way, one bedrooms in Hingham start around 2400 for 700-900sf depending on the layout. There aren't studios and they aren't $3500. There are studios in Weymouth for $1900. (Source: a tiny bit googling.)
Good
We desperately need more housing, not just in Boston, but within the whole state of Massachusetts. Allowing NIMBYs to override state law for the sake of keeping people out of their communities is, at best, pulling the ladder up after you've climbed it. I think we can all agree that there's an undercurrent of racism and classism beneath the arguments of "Community Preservation".
As a homeowner in Boston, I really don't care if my property value stagnates or goes down slightly. The price of homes in MA is obscene, and its not fair for an entire generation to be locked out of a stable place to live in one of the best states in this country. We have the land, we have the trains, we're building the infrastructure, so lets welcome new people into our communities that will help them grow and become lively, people-centered places.
MA desperately needs to follow NYs lead and implement congestion pricing. For far too long, Boston has borne the brunt of the burden of people commuting by car from the 'burbs, wrecking our roads, causing gridlock, committing traffic violence, and impacting air quality. Suburbs and towns need to step up and start paying their fair share, whether that's building more housing near train stations or paying to use the roads within Boston.
New housing getting built
New housing getting built nearby will most likely increase your property values anyway; it usually does.
Honestly, housing is a great start, but the cute little town squares and intersections with restaurants and convenience stores it creates are small fry. What we need is for more parts of the state to become at least minor centers of commerce and industry, so the people who live there wouldn't need to come in and out of Boston at all. Of course that would require us to figure out what kinds of industry and commerce are actually viable in this state other than "most famous university in the country," "most famous hospital in the country," and "using university research to design hospital robots," so maybe it's a bridge too far.
Thanks for your solidarity as
Thanks for your solidarity as a homeowner. If you aren’t already, it would be great for you to attend community meetings or offer testimony as a homeowner who supports more housing. The NIMBY homeowners show up to things the most and drown out other voices.
Community meetings really are something
❤️ I do my best to attend. There's always pushback, but my community has been pretty good at getting projects built.
Nah, it's all about money
Money for schools, specifically.
Denser multi-family housing tends to bring in families with kids, and it costs more to educate those kids than the incremental property tax revenue generated. Most of the suburban towns are heavily-dependent on residential property taxes to cover municipal/school budgets, so this ultimately leads to higher taxes on people who are already there. This can be burdensome to some folks (like the elderly) who might have bought decades ago and don't want to be forced out of their homes by increasing property taxes.
Congestion pricing is just a money grab. If $40 daily parking downtown doesn't deter people from driving, another $10/day won't change things much. And people commuting from the suburbs do contribute to Boston's municipal revenue since the property tax revenue from commercial property downtown is linked to the economic activity in those buildings. Plus those people don't consume all that much in the way of Boston city services beyond roads -- no kids being educated, for example.
revamp the school funding system too
i thought the Fair Share Amendment/Millionaires' Tax was supposed to help with school funding, but so far lots of towns are having overrides and many of those overrides are failing. If I recall correctly, those new funds are not being put toward operational funding for education, but rather for capital needs. If the state found a way to supplement operational funding so that towns, which are heavily reliant on property taxes under the current system, have greater support from other financial sources, it would take a big bite out of the NIMBY arguments and make it easier for housing supporters to gain broader support.
And I know some of the MBTA Act studies said they'd generate new revenue exceeding that created by new students, but the assumptions on the number of kids living in these new units were very low, and the studies didn't account (at all) on the families moving into the houses that we are told empty nesters would move out of if we only created more housing units. If we are going to overhaul the housing system, we should also overhaul how we fund municipalities.
Just keep people off the side roads
Commuters don't spend money in town, other than for parking.
can you support that or are you just going off vibes?
can you support that or are you just going off vibes?
Single family homes are what
New single family homes are what drives school enrollment, not apartments.
School enrollment is DECLINING in many suburbs (Brookline is an exception). The schools are going to lose funding because they have fewer students.
The argument that apartments and condos bring too many students is simply false, yet drives NIMBYism and makes housing unattainable to our fellow (or aspiring) Massachusetts residents.
This has been debunked nine ways to sunday
School enrollment statewide is declining, and there is no correlation between housing growth and enrollment growth". (https://www.mapc.org/learn/research-analysis/enrollment/) Most families and kids moving into a town are moving into a home that already exists. Even if new housing does attract some families or allow downsizing and freeing up of single family homes, that could be a positive fiscal benefit: The fastest growing portion of local school budgets are fixed costs, and increases (or slower decreases) in enrollment means higher Chapter 70 funding from the state. Most of these "net fiscal impact of housing" concerns were marginally relevant back in the 90's when all the Boomers were having kids, enrollment was going up everywhere, and some towns thought they could shirk their civic duty and save a few nickels by discouraging housing production, but times have changed.
Sure doesn’t feel
Sure doesn’t feel Constitutional. Feels more like a blow to self-determination and our unique New England character and sets the ratchet in motion to densify, densify, densify…profit over posterity.
The country already has dense metropoles, but only one New England. The entire country loses out as we grind down our country’s diversity of regional characteristics by making every place the same.
Whose “self determination”?
“Our” character?
The Self Determination
For me to determine for myself what other people are allowed to build on their property
Character isn’t just what a
Character isn’t just what a place looks like. You could lock down all new buildings but that wouldn’t keep things the same. Communities are made of the residents too, and if they are displaced due to rising costs then the character slowly goes away.
Plus the traditional medium-density NE downtown area is another part of the character of many town and we can apply this design in more places.
Please explain
Please explain what part of the constitution you believe this contradicts.
Also, its very clearly not profit over posterity, it's very much the opposite.
How does building more
How does building more housing in the Boston area lead to the area becoming the same as everywhere else?
Not Consitutional? What?
We all voted for people to represent us in our state government. The state government then made a law on our behalf, which is exactly what a representative democracy does. A democratically elected governor then signed it into law. How is that, in any way, shape, or form, unconstitutional?
It may be time for a civics lesson. Just because you don't like a law doesn't make it unconstitutional.
Oh no, someone might turn an
Oh no, someone might turn an empty parking lot into much needed housing!!!
You are literally valuing unused property over people. Pretty gross.
zoning blocks self determination
The taxpayers built these stations. Rich towns should not be able to avoid taking responsibility for the housing crisis.
Huh?
The Constitution puts planning and zoning matters squarely in the hands of the Commonwealth. The legislature has delegated that responsibility to the cities and towns (which themselves are subdivisions of the Commonwealth). Cities and towns do not have the right under the Massachusetts Constitution to make up their own planning and zoning policy outside of what has been delegated to them under statute. This ruling just affirms that.
Not according to "Nightside with Dan Rea" on WBZ Radio
He had guests on last night that argued the exact opposite of the lede here becasue of this part:
However, the state's highest court also ruled that because state regulators failed to formally file a notice of the new rule - along with a statement detailing its impact on small businesses - as required, Attorney General Andrea Campbell has to hold off on suing such towns until the state actually files those documents.
They also argued that zoning has always been the responsibility of the towns and that the state has no right to determine what can be built where. One of my favorite lines:
The state can't require towns to build liquor stores and bowling alleys, nor should they.
MA has a Constitutional Amendment explicitly granting this power
Amendment LX of the State Constitution was passed by referendum in 1918 and reads in its entirety: "The General Court [the technical term for the legislature] shall have power to limit buildings according to their use or construction to specified districts of cities and towns."
Sounds like the MBTA
Sounds like the MBTA Communities diktat is the opposite of a “limit.”
If it’s so cut and dry why the clarification?
Oh how I wish Andrea Campbell
Oh how I wish Andrea Campbell was the mayor of Boston and making a serious effort to get new housing built here, rather than whatever community process Michelle Wu has going on at any given minute that gets next to nothing actually built.
Time for
Milton and Weston to start withholding taxes. That would be a lot of tax dollars lost for the state….
Milton and Weston have bills to pay
Neither town paid for the stations. Boston can't afford to provide shelter and medical to the junkies from Milton and Weston.
Weston
The average adjusted gross income in Weston, Massachusetts is $860,400 per year, making it one of the wealthiest places in the United States. They have two train stations. They’re providing so much more in income tax than they’ll ever see back and indirectly paid for their stations before they were even built.
Lol at junkies from Weston being in Boston. Ya, dad makes over a million a year and they let their son live on the streets vs some five star rehab retreat.