JohnAKeith
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I've never liked the idea of the government holding housing developers hostage. Is it illegal? I've always thought so.
Housing (Supply Crisis & Public Policy)
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Justbuildit
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I mean, there are very valid criticisms of IZ (it's my #1 complaint against Wu and the contradictory claims about wanting to build more housing) but the idea that governments can't regulate private developers in what they are allowed to build means the end of zoning altogether. With SCOTUS ruling that zoning itself is a legitimate use of power you're going to have a tough time getting a broad read there
en.wikipedia.org
The article makes a pretty compelling case, too:
“There are an infinite number of ways in which the government restricts the use of property,” Nikolas Bowie, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, said in an interview. “It’s hard to find a regulation that you can’t describe as a seizure.” If affordable housing requirements are unconstitutional, what about open space requirements, or public access easements? What about the Americans With Disabilities Act, which generally requires that 5 percent of any new housing development be set aside as accessible?
So yeah, city pols should listen to developers when they tell them they can't build with large IZ requirements, but I'd be surprised if they prevail in this case. My take is there should be a holiday (maybe 2 years?) to suspend IZ requirements as a recognition that inputs and interest rates are high and it's a tough time to get projects moving. Buy some goodwill, get some construction jobs cranking, and revisit once conditions are more favorable.
Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. - Wikipedia
The article makes a pretty compelling case, too:
“There are an infinite number of ways in which the government restricts the use of property,” Nikolas Bowie, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, said in an interview. “It’s hard to find a regulation that you can’t describe as a seizure.” If affordable housing requirements are unconstitutional, what about open space requirements, or public access easements? What about the Americans With Disabilities Act, which generally requires that 5 percent of any new housing development be set aside as accessible?
So yeah, city pols should listen to developers when they tell them they can't build with large IZ requirements, but I'd be surprised if they prevail in this case. My take is there should be a holiday (maybe 2 years?) to suspend IZ requirements as a recognition that inputs and interest rates are high and it's a tough time to get projects moving. Buy some goodwill, get some construction jobs cranking, and revisit once conditions are more favorable.
JumboBuc
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Every regulation ever written falls somewhere on a slippery slope, and what we as a society must do is draw the line of when laws or regulations go "too far" and when they don't.
What strikes me about IZ requirements is the degree to which they are explicitly financial in a way that other zoning regulations and building requirements aren't. It's one thing to enforce the physical conditions of built property for the public good, it's another to enforce prices and values for the (purported) public good. And open space requirements or public access easements or (especially) ADA requirements aren't written in a way that sets a price that developers can pay to be exempt, but IZ requirements often are.
I'm no lawyer, but the financial nature of IZ requirements ("property owners must put money in a fund") makes the issue of "just compensation" more relevant than a requirement like, say, "public buildings you build must be 5 percent handicap accessible."
Justbuildit
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I agree it's bad policy, but the Cambridge case on takings isn't about a requirement to put money in a fund (which I guess could be done by direct taxation on new developments a different way) but is focused on the fact that the use requirements are a curtailment of their property rights and lead to a loss in value. In Boston at least the IZ provides an either/or of building the units or paying into a fund but it doesn't look like that's an issue in the Cambridge case based on the brief (I'm also not a lawyer).
Again, I think IZ is an impediment to building housing and the correct remedy is to elect councilmembers and mayors who understand this issue and make tradeoffs to get housing built. I'd love to hear more urban politicians state plainly that more housing means more choice, and more choice means opportunities for prices to soften. Just Build It, some might say.
Again, I think IZ is an impediment to building housing and the correct remedy is to elect councilmembers and mayors who understand this issue and make tradeoffs to get housing built. I'd love to hear more urban politicians state plainly that more housing means more choice, and more choice means opportunities for prices to soften. Just Build It, some might say.
Also very much not a lawyer, so following how this plays out is fascinating. My view is it's not really any different than rent control or price fixing which, while I agree they're bad policy are legal. If you put a price cap on bread, that means anyone building a bakery has to sell their product, the bread, at that rate. Similarly, this is saying that the developer's product (housing) has to be sold at a set rate.
JumboBuc
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Are there legally enforceable price controls in Massachusetts as simple as these? I don't know of any.
I don't believe so, but if the state leg tomorrow decided to do so would it be ruled unconstitutional?
The reason that many housing authorities are below Faircloth limits is that they cannot pull together sufficient funding to replace/rehabilitate those units without also going over the faircloth. Bidens HUD tried to come up with some new models, but BHA was not seemingly positioned to meet the opportunity.
That being said, artificially capping publicly-owned housing below the limit is the intent of Faircloth - when they passed it they understood that to assemble funding for rehabilitation, housing authorities also often needed to expand the units to generate a larger revenue stream to pay-back the federal loans.
Braintree, MA - 11 mi from downtown Boston - Station opened 1980
Vs.
Wheaton-Glenmont, MD - 11 mi from downtown DC - Station opened 1990 (it's underneath the intersection)
This is one example of two particularly analogous situations, but almost everywhere you look DC completely gaps Boston in all measures of development, whether you're talking architectural quality, quantity of housing, height, complete street grids, park-and-ride garage sizes, etc.
Does anyone understand what specific mechanisms/policies/economic realities are under the hood that power outcomes like this? How exactly does DC do so much better with TOD than Boston?
I don't have any clear answer for you, but I think your question is really interesting. I've got some scattered thoughts.
First, DC really has been a lot better about TOD than maybe any other region in the country. I've seen planning documents from the early days of their subway system (1970's-ish) where TOD was a really explicit goal. I couldn't say why they latched onto that idea before a lot of other places did, but they did, and they kept at it. Poking around, I found this really interesting planning document for how DC area stations should be designed, and it really focuses on place-making and pedestrian access (mostly). WMATA builds that into the land they control and really push local governments to expand that around the station. I'm curious what leverage WMATA has to actually get that done.
Massachusetts was doing TOD before that was even a term, from the advent of railroads through the mid-20th century. So many of our towns and neighborhoods sprung up around rail stops and streetcars. Since you're looking at Braintree station, that was sadly from a period where the mindset was more about building park-and-rides. Once the garages and access roads are built, it's hard to then change that into a pedestrian-friendly area. The state has tried some things to get more built around stations, like the MBTA Communities Act. The results of that law are... messy. There is broad compliance with the law, but some high-profile objectors. Some towns are complying with the letter of the law while still blocking housing, but many towns are actually allowing new development. It will create new homes, but not a ton. It's a decent first step, but a long way to go.
Second, if you want to know why there aren't taller apartment buildings around Braintree, it's because that's illegal. (Sorry, I know this is obvious, but bears repeating.) The area around the station is mostly zoned for single-family detached housing.
There's some land zoned for commercial space, but there are height limits, thus box stores and strip malls. I don't know if they changed some of this recently, but that's been the law for decades.
Third, it's worth remembering that developing a new area like that can happen over decades. Wheaton station you point to is 35 years old. and bunch of the new development you're pointing to didn't exist even 10 years ago. The area still has a giant suburban-style mall with vast parking lots. Now there might be a critical mass of density that new developments spring up faster. Who knows? And looking at that kind of time scale, the Boston area is absolutely filling in decent development around a bunch of stations. To varying degrees there's: Lechmere, Jackson Square, Alewife, North Quincy, Assembly(!!). It's happening here, but maybe hard to notice at times.
And last, again, I think you're right that DC often does TOD better. But also, I think you're a little selective in the stations you're looking at. DC also has built kind of crap stations, and the Boston region has made a few really good ones. Assembly is probably the best around here. And, just as an example, here's Cheverly Park, MD compared to Alewife (both about 5 miles from downtown)
Thanks for linking that planning doc, pretty interesting read.
Cheverly station is just about as bad as it gets, though. 2nd lowest ridership station in the whole WMATA system, and it's basically just a convenient station location on the way to a more important terminus at New Carrollton. Not really fair to compare it to Alewife, a terminus handpicked for TOD.
And if you're going to cite TOD like Assembly or Lechmere (Jackson Sq. and North Quincy are laughable), its only fair to compare to equivalents in DC, all further from downtown:
Ballston
Courthouse
Crystal City
Carlyle
^ all areas surrounded by single family homes and sprawl that would suggest tough battles against NIMBYs, and yet high rise clusters prevail
And even if we go with the excuse that Braintree was developed as a park-and-ride, it STILL doesn't hold a candle to DC park-and-rides like:
Huntington
Franconia-Springfield
Herndon
Quincy Adams is maybe the ONLY park-and-ride in the whole system that can compare to these behemoths.
There's more to this story than just having open land. Even when we have had opportunities for greenfield development like in South Weymouth, the quality of outcomes just doesn't compare:
NoVa has this great historically-styled rowhouse form that has maxed out asethetic and density value while still appealing to the suburban home buyer and I wish we copied it more here. The grey boxes have gotten old.
I would personally love to see a study on how much IZ requirements affect development. It's hard to get accurate numbers because things vary municipality-to-municipality, but it seems like DC and other high-development, density-focused metros like Minneapolis and Seattle all have MUCH lower IZ reqs than Boston. It would actually be a relief to know that those policies in particular are the main culprit for our development woes, because its such a simple policy fix. n
Attachments
MAPC Seeks Industry Input on Regional Offsite Housing Manufacturing Strategy – MAPC
The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) is issuing a Request for Information (RFI) as part of its Greater Boston Regional Offsite Construction Strategy, funded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Affordable Housing (PRO...
www.mapc.org
Interesting RFI from MAPC
Healey’s housing secretary to leave job, marking eighth Cabinet departure in three years - The Boston Globe
Massachusetts Housing Secretary Edward M. Augustus Jr. is leaving his cabinet position for a job in the private sector as a bank CEO.
www.bostonglobe.com
Hopefully this doesn't represent a pivot to demand subsidy as the primary approach to housing.
stick n move
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I’m glad you added the row house bit at the end because as I was reading your post I was going to reply with the same thing. Not only does dc do TOD better than boston, but what gets built is much higher quality as well. You mentioned the row houses, dc puts them up by the thousands. Alexandria has brand new neighborhoods that look like the south end. On top of that sure you get the normal crappy fiber cement panel 5 over 1’s here and there, but theyre also throwing up neo art deco mid rises and everything in between at random TOD stops well outside downtown.
Ive actually considered moving to dc because surprisingly they still have cheap housing there, as long as youre not scared of a bit higher crime rate areas. Dc still has today areas like what southie or roxbury used to be in the 80’s and the lower prices to match. Boston has nowhere left that is cheap, geneva ave in dorchester is probably the most dangerous place in the entire city and yet fields corner rent goes for the same insane prices as basically anywhere else. There are no bastions of affordability left. Id have to imagine that even though its a similar size to boston dc builds at such a furious rate that the demand has been able to be met and you dont have college kids flooding into the “hood” and jacking up the prices like youve seen in boston out of shear non-availability. Boston has become a pressure cooker because weve built all the labs in the world for the thousands of biotech jobs but almost none of the housing that has to come with that.
Anyways heres a few examples of what dc is building around its stations.
Rockville md, rockville station, red line.
Chevy chase md, maryland purple line opening up next door soon.
Bethesda md, bethesda station, red line
North bethesda md, north bethesda station, red line.
Alexandria va, braddock rd station, blue line, yellow line.
Alexandria va, potomac yard station, blue line, yellow line.
You get the point…
Hmm ok so I have a hypothesis about the townhouses.
From some admittedly very surface-level research, it appears that in MA we generally classify townhouses as "multi-family", while in VA it is considered "single-family attached". This distinction may have significance in terms of inclusionary zoning requirements, which would necessitate townhouses to be built with some % of affordable units in MA.
From some admittedly very surface-level research, it appears that in MA we generally classify townhouses as "multi-family", while in VA it is considered "single-family attached". This distinction may have significance in terms of inclusionary zoning requirements, which would necessitate townhouses to be built with some % of affordable units in MA.
Anyone have thoughts on the Legalize Starter Homes ballot initiative?
As much as I'd like to be in favor of more open zoning policy, it feels like this will not lead to conscious development. 5000sqft lots (~8 units/acre) are pretty much right in that sweet spot for maximizing pain: not dense enough to support quality transit but dense enough to cause lots of traffic. If you think about what kind of parcels might get subdivided and redeveloped as these starter homes, it would most likely be those larger 0.5 acre / 1 acre parcels in exurban sprawl like Bedford or Dover (i.e. places with no downtown core or commuter rail station with zero hope of enough density to ever become walkable/bikeable for local trips...). The only positive thing it could do is absorb demand and bring down prices, but at the cost of leaving underutilized parcels in the urban core undeveloped and increasing per capita car usage.
So even though I'm super pro-housing, part of me feels compelled to vote against such poorly thought-out policy.
The ONLY way I could see it working out is if it could synergize with the YIMBY bill going through the Senate. Combined, that could then make it possible to build 4 units on 5000sqft lots everywhere in the state. That would be powerful, but is just so unlikely to come to fruition.
As much as I'd like to be in favor of more open zoning policy, it feels like this will not lead to conscious development. 5000sqft lots (~8 units/acre) are pretty much right in that sweet spot for maximizing pain: not dense enough to support quality transit but dense enough to cause lots of traffic. If you think about what kind of parcels might get subdivided and redeveloped as these starter homes, it would most likely be those larger 0.5 acre / 1 acre parcels in exurban sprawl like Bedford or Dover (i.e. places with no downtown core or commuter rail station with zero hope of enough density to ever become walkable/bikeable for local trips...). The only positive thing it could do is absorb demand and bring down prices, but at the cost of leaving underutilized parcels in the urban core undeveloped and increasing per capita car usage.
So even though I'm super pro-housing, part of me feels compelled to vote against such poorly thought-out policy.
The ONLY way I could see it working out is if it could synergize with the YIMBY bill going through the Senate. Combined, that could then make it possible to build 4 units on 5000sqft lots everywhere in the state. That would be powerful, but is just so unlikely to come to fruition.
Longfellow
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Idk, is traffic even real? I grew up in Dover and I’m there all the time. It’s gotten significantly more denser with that typology you describe. People complain about the traffic but I’ve literally never had an issue. The population density or politics don’t support transit but you can technically build to the sky without building a single bus or train, it just sucks mentally and makes people who are more discerning eventually move to Boston. And yes if we were centrally planning we would build up city centers and let suburbs die on the vine, but we can’t do that, so fuck it, densify the suburbs for those who want them.
This is why I'm going to vote yes on this ballot question. The 1/2, 1, or 2 acre zoning requirements in cities around Boston should not exist. I'm looking at the zoning map for Newton right now, and their single family lot area requirements are in the 10,000 to 25,000 SF range. This includes parcels very close to Green Line stops. Ideally the YIMBY bill passes to, and allows for a lot more density, but I'll take any improvement to our zoning codes that I can get.
Newton's zoning code:
Zoning map:
Experience
Yeah, I have some thoughts. Primarily, I think it's great and I want it to pass. This is overwhelmingly the right thing to do. But you do point to a general problem I've been thinking about. In no particular order:
- Really broadly, I think the state just needs to start setting zoning laws, at least fixing the ways that municipalities are most egregiously, wastefully blocking housing. Trying to fix municipalities one by one is just too slow and takes orders of magnitude more political organizing and effort. And besides, the housing crises is a regional problem; it requires regional solutions. I wrote a little about this here and here's an interesting blog post about this kind of political organizing in California (among other things).
- You point out one flaw with this approach: the kinds of zoning reforms that have a shot of passing statewide would disproportionally encourage housing in the suburbs but have little effect on generating new housing in the inner core. Unfortunately, I think that would be true of basically any blanket pro-housing laws you might want to make statewide. For example, you mention allowing quadplexes statewide (which would be great), but that too would generate a ton more suburban housing while having a really marginal effect on Boston proper. I don't know a way around that, other than we do the statewide fixes best we can, then we also have to fix inner core municipalities one by one to allow more density.
- I'd really like to know if anyone has any ideas of a relatively straightforward zoning law that could 1) be applied statewide, 2) encourage new housing in the inner core, 3) encourage new housing in the suburbs and 4) pass a statewide referendum. I'm optimistic there's something, but I can't think of any.
- I don't think the density of 5,000 sqft lot sizes is too low to support good transit. Neighborhoods like that already exist in lots of inner core cities. In fact, you'll find a lot of places within 128 that have lower density but still get useable transit. This would allow more people to live near the transit infrastructure we already have. Look around the commuter rail stops in Weston, or bus routes through Milton. Look at big sections of Brookline or Newton, generally.
- Even if this mostly encourages housing outside the inner core, that can be fine. Most jobs in Greater Boston are outside the inner core. There are people who work in Dover, for example, since you mentioned it. They might want to live in or near Dover. Building more housing around there would be good for them. Same for any other town.
- Historically, the big minimum lot sizes were enacted really explicitly to enforce racial, ethnic, and class segregation. (Around Greater Boston, a lot of these sprawling zoning rules were originally to make sure the Irish wouldn't move in.) Those rules still perpetuate those kinds of segregation today. Get rid of the segregationist rules. (I highly recommend the book The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein for anyone interested)
- I don't usually get very libertarian but, jeez, let people do what they want on land they own. If people want to split up land they own and build smaller houses, let them do it. I'm fine with regulations, but when the regulations around minimum lot sizes are arbitrary at best and racists at worst, get rid of them. Let people do what they want. Regardless any other policy considerations, letting people build the kinds of houses they want is inherently good.
- You mention how this could work in conjunction with other laws like the YIMBY bill, and I think that is really important. I don't know how that bill will turn out, but there are dozens and dozens of zoning changes that need to happen to encourage new housing construction. Some municipalities will try to subvert whatever progress is made, then we'll need to win dozens more political battles to make sure housing is actually built. This is a long fight, and fixing minimum lot sizes has to be one step. We'll never know the exact, optimal order of changing laws to fix the housing crisis. Even if there were an exact, optimal order, you'd never be able to convince and coordinate everyone to follow it. So when there is a politically viable opportunity to chip away at the problem, take it. This is one of those opportunities. Take it, then move on to the next.