Massachusetts Ballot Question 7
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Justbuildit
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Good idea. Globe had coverage of the question this morning. As always, the comments are a wasteland of misery.
www.bostonglobe.com
My gut says this doesn't pass because it's a scary thing for suburban voters, but even if it does pass there are going to be some slick workarounds from some of the wealthier towns. The final language isn't baked of course, but you can already imagine some litigation strategies:
This proposed law would allow single-family homes to be built in a residentially zoned area as long as the land on which it is to be constructed is at least 5,000 square feet, has at least 50 feet of land bordering the street, road, or public way that it faces, and has access to public sewer and water services.
The proposed law would allow cities and towns to reasonably regulate certain aspects of those single-family homes, including their height, distance from neighboring buildings, open space, parking requirements, and whether they can be rented out on a short-term basis. The proposed law would also allow the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to issue guidance or regulations to administer the proposed law.
Modest homes have been replaced by McMansions in Mass. Can a ballot question bring them back? - The Boston Globe
Question 7 seeks to revitalize the type of modest houses that were more widely accessible to first-time homebuyers decades ago.
www.bostonglobe.com
My gut says this doesn't pass because it's a scary thing for suburban voters, but even if it does pass there are going to be some slick workarounds from some of the wealthier towns. The final language isn't baked of course, but you can already imagine some litigation strategies:
This proposed law would allow single-family homes to be built in a residentially zoned area as long as the land on which it is to be constructed is at least 5,000 square feet, has at least 50 feet of land bordering the street, road, or public way that it faces, and has access to public sewer and water services.
The proposed law would allow cities and towns to reasonably regulate certain aspects of those single-family homes, including their height, distance from neighboring buildings, open space, parking requirements, and whether they can be rented out on a short-term basis. The proposed law would also allow the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to issue guidance or regulations to administer the proposed law.
commuter guy
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This is probably an unpopular opinion on this site, but I'm on the fence regarding this ballot question. Mass desparately needs to increase housing supply but I can't help think this is a very ineffective way to try to add housing. I can see negative aesthetic impacts to neigborhoods, developers tearing down homes (some historic), subdividing the lot and building the largest and most expensive homes possible on a 5,000 sq. ft lots. Will we see so called snout houses rise in historic neighborhoods where the home is hidden behind a two or three car garage? Will modest and less expensive older homes be demolished because they sit on valuable land only to be replaced by two more much more expensive new homes built on albeit smaller parcels? It's may add supply but potentially also remove more modest housing stock at the same time.
I did take a quick look at other states that undertook similar reform but with seemingly more due diligence. For example Texas mandates lots no larger than 3,000 Sq feet but the mandate only applies for larger towns and cities over a certain population threshold and for subdivisions with more than X amount of new homes being built. That would seem to encourage compact new development but without being aesthically disruptive to existing neighborhoods. Washington and Oregon seem to have implemented form based/design codes to minimize the impact of denser housing in existing neighborhoods.
I support increased density and constructing more supply, I just wish the legislature would have been proactive about housing and drafted a better solution to encourage denser suburban development without the potential negative impacts. For example, preclude large lot zoning on any new subdivision or development with more than 5 homes etc.
While on the topic of housing production, although it's not driving by large lot size restrictions, it's obvious at this point that Boston is losing ground against it's own historical benchmarks as well against peer cities in housing production. Mayor Wu has not taken a pragmatic approach to housing production and unfortunately this is going to have an impact on our cost of living for many years to come. I wish the Legislature would get it's act together and grow a pair, for example they could mandate statewide that the inclusionary zoning be no higher than 10%, which is exactly what they mandated with the MBTA Communities Act. The legislature obviously recongized suburban towns could increase the mandatory IZ set asides which would hamper or eliminate housing production thus defeating the goals of the MBTA Communities Act. I'd like the state to take some similar steps statewide to try to break the political log jam and disrupt the financial barriers to housing production in places like Boston as well as the surrounding towns and cities
I did take a quick look at other states that undertook similar reform but with seemingly more due diligence. For example Texas mandates lots no larger than 3,000 Sq feet but the mandate only applies for larger towns and cities over a certain population threshold and for subdivisions with more than X amount of new homes being built. That would seem to encourage compact new development but without being aesthically disruptive to existing neighborhoods. Washington and Oregon seem to have implemented form based/design codes to minimize the impact of denser housing in existing neighborhoods.
I support increased density and constructing more supply, I just wish the legislature would have been proactive about housing and drafted a better solution to encourage denser suburban development without the potential negative impacts. For example, preclude large lot zoning on any new subdivision or development with more than 5 homes etc.
While on the topic of housing production, although it's not driving by large lot size restrictions, it's obvious at this point that Boston is losing ground against it's own historical benchmarks as well against peer cities in housing production. Mayor Wu has not taken a pragmatic approach to housing production and unfortunately this is going to have an impact on our cost of living for many years to come. I wish the Legislature would get it's act together and grow a pair, for example they could mandate statewide that the inclusionary zoning be no higher than 10%, which is exactly what they mandated with the MBTA Communities Act. The legislature obviously recongized suburban towns could increase the mandatory IZ set asides which would hamper or eliminate housing production thus defeating the goals of the MBTA Communities Act. I'd like the state to take some similar steps statewide to try to break the political log jam and disrupt the financial barriers to housing production in places like Boston as well as the surrounding towns and cities
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Justbuildit
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Does your representative support policies that incentivize more housing? If not, why not? Michelle Wu is mayor of one city in the state and indeed it would be better if Boston has more housing but there are like 5 neighborhoods that have Parisian levels of human density of over 30,000 people per square mile (edited). Nowhere else outside of 95 is even close to that. So yes, Boston needs to do better, but protecting 2 acre lots in Lincoln or wherever does not help in any way, and waiting for the legislature to rescue us is a waste. Yes on 7.
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Modest older homes are already getting demolished, though. With demand for suburban living what it is, the land under those cheaper homes is sometimes worth 4-5x the home itself, so the pressure for redevelopment is high. In a lot of suburbs, you can see modest homes getting torn down in favor of mansions if they are only zoned for single-family. From an affordability perspective, 2 new starter homes > 1 new mansion any day of the week.
I agree that we should be focusing new housing construction into more urban areas where a critical mass of people would allow for more effective low-car living, but to the extent that a suburb is going to zone a piece of land for residential, requiring lots over 5000 sqft is just a waste of land and leads to even more unattainable housing.
I actually think that parking minimums and other regulations could lead to more true starter homes being built (as opposed to, say, a house taking up 3,000+ square feet on a 5,000 square foot lot, as some Facebook commenters have criticized the question for allowing)Good idea. Globe had coverage of the question this morning. As always, the comments are a wasteland of misery.
Modest homes have been replaced by McMansions in Mass. Can a ballot question bring them back? - The Boston Globe
Question 7 seeks to revitalize the type of modest houses that were more widely accessible to first-time homebuyers decades ago.
My gut says this doesn't pass because it's a scary thing for suburban voters, but even if it does pass there are going to be some slick workarounds from some of the wealthier towns. The final language isn't baked of course, but you can already imagine some litigation strategies:
This proposed law would allow single-family homes to be built in a residentially zoned area as long as the land on which it is to be constructed is at least 5,000 square feet, has at least 50 feet of land bordering the street, road, or public way that it faces, and has access to public sewer and water services.
The proposed law would allow cities and towns to reasonably regulate certain aspects of those single-family homes, including their height, distance from neighboring buildings, open space, parking requirements, and whether they can be rented out on a short-term basis. The proposed law would also allow the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to issue guidance or regulations to administer the proposed law.
JumboBuc
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I think the "at least 50 feet of land bordering the street, road, or public way that it faces" and the "has access to public sewer and water services" requirements should allay many of your fears. And the same for allowing "the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to issue guidance or regulations to administer the proposed law."
You really aren't going to get "snout houses" with a minimum of 50 feet of street frontage and you aren't going to get 3-car garages on 5k sf lots. The public sewer and water access requirement also does a lot of work, as something like 80% of lots in MA and 50% of existing houses do not have public water and/or sewer. Dense cities in Greater Boston don't have undeveloped residential-zoned lots that meet the dimensional requirements and more rural areas don't have the water and sewer, so really this initiative squarely targets the leafy suburbs.
In many of the hardest core New England Aesthetic communities in Massachusetts, single-family houses are built on lots <5k sf. But that same development on those same lots in those same towns today would be illegal due to minimum lot size restrictions. This ballot initiative would correct that.
This times 100. A friend was house shopping in Newton lately and found multiple examples of developers buying older $800k houses and tearing them down and replacing them 1-for-1 with new-build $3+ million houses. If the market could instead replace that same older $800k house (on, say, a 20k sf lot with 175 feet of street frontage) with three new-build $1 million houses, that's a big win!