Multi-Family Zoning Requirements for MBTA Communities

[jklo]

The real fix involves shifting zoning from the municipal level to the regional level.

As I've said before, people don't want that. What they want is housing to be cheaper where they want to live. And if they are going to stick to this idea that building shitty condos in Hudson will bring lower rents in Davis Square, then nothing is going to change.

 

[ritchiew]

My biggest beef with the law is that it is justified because, you know... MBTA, but it will actually put many more people in cars. It seems like 200,000 units would create at least 200,000 parking spaces.

I hear you, but I don't think that's quite the right way to look at it, for a couple of reasons.

First, this is so much better than the alternative, which is to keep allowing (or encouraging) low-density suburban sprawl. In that case, those households might need two or even three cars for people to get around. Those 200,000 new units might require 400,000-600,000 new parking spaces. Encouraging dense development around transit lets many families get by with one few cars, and that's a huge win.

Second, the goal here isn't to create tons of new car-free households. I mean, that would be great, and it might create some. But the real goal is to let people live lives where they have to drive much, much less. Building around transit at least gets rid of a bunch of high VMT car commutes to work. Building densely lets people have some social life without having to get in car. Many towns put their MBTA Act zones close to town centers, so people have access to some shopping, groceries restaurants, theaters, etc. People may still own cars, but hopefully need to use them much less.

 

[Scott]

I wasn't talking about developments reasonably near the T. I should have also said that the law encourages large apartment buildings along 128 with a huge number of spaces. These people are going to drive to work

 

[DZH22]

Article on Boston.com. I feel like this is the type of result that the MBTA Law is leading us to, more often than not. Basically the demand SHOULD be in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville but instead Boston in particular is underbuilding to the extent that we expect suburbs to pick up the slack. But then, despite the ridiculous "hope" that more people will use public transit, most people in the suburbs default to driving. So the roads continue to get choked up worse to the point where sleepy suburbs 45 minutes from Boston are experiencing traffic nightmares, while Boston is approving its lowest housing totals in years. This state really is backwards. This is why I personally applaud every town that pushes back against the overreach of this law. The area is expensive because of Boston, so let more people live where they want to live by actually building more IN BOSTON!

https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2025/11/14/georgetown-traffic/

Instead we take a decade to build a 10 story residential RIGHT ON THE BLEEPING GREENWAY but yeah, it's Milton's fault we're in a housing crisis, not gross underbuilding and arduous requirements in the "hub of the universe" economic engine for a 5 1/2 state region. Let's blame it all on the Miltons of the world.

 

[Blackbird]

So the roads continue to get choked up worse to the point where sleepy suburbs 45 minutes from Boston….Let's blame it all on the Miltons of the world.

Ah yes, Milton - famously 45min from Boston proper.

If Saugus builds to the point where it is as dense as Dorchester, then I’ll happily allow it to start “under building”. The fact of the matter is that these “sleepy suburbs” have been ignoring their responsibility to add housing for decades in hopes of keeping the undesirables out. This law is the state’s attempt at forcing them to catch up, though it clearly wasn’t forceful enough.

A 10 story building in the greenway will be bought up by investors, foreigners, corporations, etc. This is about housing for regular people and a few dozen homes in Reading will go way farther to help the average Joe than one building in the Financial District.

 

[KCasiglio]

it's Milton's fault we're in a housing crisis

It's every town within 128 (primarily), not just Milton, but also not just Boston.

I live in a duplex within a half mile of a red line station. If I owned my property I could not build more than 4 units on it, even after the MBTA communities act. Across the street from me is a single family home.

 

[jklo]

It's every town within 128 (primarily), not just Milton, but also not just Boston.

I live within a half mile of a red line station. If I owned my property I could not build more than 4 units on it, even after the MBTA communities act. Across the street from me is a single family home.

Live in Braintree, eh?

See that's the fundamental problem with the bill, if you were to assume it was on the up and up. If you were going to build something, it'd be 600k/unit. So between that and being in the Burbs, you'd have a hard time attracting market rate tenants.

The only people who would live there are Section 8ers and others getting it paid by the Government.

 

[themissinglink]

But then, despite the ridiculous "hope" that more people will use public transit, most people in the suburbs default to driving.

I live in the suburbs, and almost everyone I know uses public transit to get into the city when they go (especially Gen Z and Millennials). Not to mention, micromobility in the suburbs is surging with the advent of electric bicycles and scooters. I'm going car-free within the next year or so because I have an ebike, and I know a few people who have already done the same or plan to (in the suburbs!). It's not a "ridiculous hope" that lots of people will switch to public transit and micromobility, it's something that's already (albeit gradually) happening. Perhaps only Millennials, Gen Z, and eventually Gen Alpha will live this way, but those generations are the future.

 

[KCasiglio]

Live in Braintree, eh?

Quincy.

If you were going to build something, it'd be 600k/unit. So between that and being in the Burbs, you'd have a hard time attracting market rate tenants.

The only people who would live there are Section 8ers and others getting it paid by the Government.

[citation needed]

New construction could charge 150% of what I'm currently paying ($1750 for a 2bd) and fill up in days. I believe this because the Deco complex between me and the QA station charges about that and is sold out. Your assessments of the market are consistently detached from reality.

 

[DZH22]

Some people here seem to think any housing is good housing, regardless of type or location. I don't want to see Boston turn into the East Coast version of LA, where the suburbs become "mega suburbs" that are technically dense, but still feel suburban. Most of the suburban new builds are the dehumanizing 5-over-1's (or shorter) with giant parking lots, thin walls, haphazard siding (or the exact same monochrome siding for every building in a larger complex), and generally shoddy construction. Just because there's some unbuilt land doesn't mean we need to level every forest to jam in more of these soulless monstrosities.

Jamming in people is what the city is supposed to be for, and Boston/Cambridge/Somerville does it a heck of a lot better than Braintree, Waltham, Burlington, etc. The cities should be incentivizing tall and dense residential near all the major train stations. Instead we have artificially low zoning and overly strict requirements where we end up building 10 stories on the Greenway, or capping North Point at 250' (and making them mostly labs/office!). We could add dozens of 30-60 story residential towers and the overall urban area vitality would absolutely thrive, but instead almost everything is stunted, leave tons of potential units on the table, and the proportions make them ugly.

Gridlocked suburbs are the worst of both worlds yet that's where the trail lead us. I for one don't think that's the optimal future for the Boston area.

 

[jklo]

New construction could charge 150% of what I'm currently paying ($1750 for a 2bd) and fill up in days.

It'd be starting at 3k and up, imo, if you are talking about 2's. Although if you are really paying $1750, even crappy, that's well below market.

 

[KCasiglio]

Gridlocked suburbs are the worst of both worlds yet that's where the trail lead us. I for one don't think that's the optimal future for the Boston area.

Agreed. Ive said this in other threads, Quincy is better than most communities about building housing, and even housing near transit, but its all been super auto oriented. Big complexes with the first two floors being parking garages instead of commercial, or tower-in-the-park(ing lot) style developments. Very bad urbanism. Quincy municipal gov is clinging to the idea of being a suburb instead of embracing being a city.

 

[393b40]

Im pretty in agreement with @DZH22 on this. The state should have written this law to encourage density and height in its core cities. Sprinkling housing randomly over all these little towns and villages is not a good solution to the areas housing crisis.

When I say "core cities" Im also including Worcester, Framingham, Lowell, Salem, Lynn, Brockton etc. All places that could be much denser and more tightly tied to Boston with improved transit.

 

[KCasiglio]

I think its perfectly reasonable to ask the Abingtons of the state to build some housing next to their commuter rail stations, but the "adjacent communities" part is really just asking for the auto-oriented density that is rightly reviled

 

[Blackbird]

Jamming in people is what the city is supposed to be for, and Boston/Cambridge/Somerville does it a heck of a lot better than Braintree, Waltham, Burlington, etc.

Braintree and Waltham ARE cities just as much as Cambridge or Somerville.

And in any other place in the WORLD (not just LA, but England, Japan, Brazil, India. etc) those cities (and yes, Burlington too) would all just be ‘Boston’. We’re the only place I know of where certain communities get away with “well it’s not my responsibility to be dense, because I’m not technically in the city” and be like 10mi as the crow flies from a literal skyscraper.

MA should pull an Ontario and just force an amalgamation at this point.

 

[ritchiew]

Not directly about MBTA Communities Act, but this blog post is related to a bunch of stuff people are talking about here:

On The Tension Between YIMBYism and Strong Towns — Max Dubler

Special thanks to those who gave their thoughtful feedback on this piece. The past couple of months have seen quite a bit of Discourse about the differences between Strong Towns and YIMBYs, particularly their views about the merits of state legislation versus local action. As a policy

www.maxdubler.com

This guy has been working on making ADUs legal in California. The post is about a bunch of stuff, but gives a history of that legal process. It started with a "light touch" state law that said cities had to allow ADUs, but gave municipalities a lot of discretion on how to implement that. Cities, predictably, complied in ways that kept ADUs illegal. Eventually, the state had to just start writing detailed ADU zoning rules that applied state-wide. That was better, but cities still tried to subvert the law. Now, every year, the CA legislature refines the ADU zoning laws to fix whatever cities are intentionally subverting. This is a decades long, process, but it's also working. Tens of thousands of new ADUs per year, now.

It sounds like part of the discussion going on here. We have the MBTA Act that gave municipalities a lot of discretion. I think it's been a net win, but has clear downsides. Now I've seen at least one campaign aiming to start enacting some state-wide zoning rules that are are more non-negotiable.

 

[RandomWalk]

There are a whole bunch of interlocking questions about what level the sorting and selection for e.g. quality of life, schools, housing, etc. Should that happen at the neighborhood level, municipality, state?

You can’t really disentangle e.g. schools from housing. Good schools will create demands for housing. Demand for housing will create NIMBY pressure to lock out new housing. Demand for seats in the schools will create NIMBY pressure on taxes to build e.g. senior housing.

In a just world should a person in Wellesley be entitled to a better education (and all the benefits that brings) than one in Fall River?

 

[as02155]

The biggest problem with the law - is the requirement that the MBTA is somehow involved. In the end, the law forces towns to have at least one multi-family housing area which, regardless of town and condition, is 100% something that every municipality in the Commonwealth should have. But, the big brains at the Statehouse cannot create something simple and effective, they are masters of the universe who are ultimate in their knowledge of Rube Goldsbergian devices. They also really want to overburden the T with even more baggage as if the entire statehouse doesn't sh*t on the T every chance they get. The only people who have shown up to save the T were the voters - by passing the millionaires surtax - which is giving money to the T for T bureaucrat's pet projects.

 

[HenryAlan]

Im pretty in agreement with @DZH22 on this. The state should have written this law to encourage density and height in its core cities. Sprinkling housing randomly over all these little towns and villages is not a good solution to the areas housing crisis.

When I say "core cities" Im also including Worcester, Framingham, Lowell, Salem, Lynn, Brockton etc. All places that could be much denser and more tightly tied to Boston with improved transit.

It doesn't need to be an either/or proposition. We need to build lots of dense urban housing in core city locations, but also build a lot more housing adjacent to commuter rail stations. We can and should do both of these things.

 

[Justbuildit]

The biggest problem with the law - is the requirement that the MBTA is somehow involved. In the end, the law forces towns to have at least one multi-family housing area which, regardless of town and condition, is 100% something that every municipality in the Commonwealth should have. But, the big brains at the Statehouse cannot create something simple and effective, they are masters of the universe who are ultimate in their knowledge of Rube Goldsbergian devices. They also really want to overburden the T with even more baggage as if the entire statehouse doesn't sh*t on the T every chance they get. The only people who have shown up to save the T were the voters - by passing the millionaires surtax - which is giving money to the T for T bureaucrat's pet projects.

Would a better proposal have been flat upzoning statewide? I think the X housing units on Y acres is a bit convoluted, but the concept of "if you have state-funded transit you need to build more housing" is pretty straightforward.

My preference would be a statewide override that allowed some multiple of average existing zoning density (3x?) anywhere within 1/4 mile of a rail station of any kind up to FAA limits.