Multi-Family Zoning Requirements for MBTA Communities

Smuttynose said:
Will the requirements radically change communities?
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I want to expand on this to again reiterate that not only is the MBTA communities act not destroying neighborhood character, it's a small course correction to the exclusionary practices of the past several decades that have decimated the character of most municipalities across the commonwealth.

KCasiglio said:
In 1980, 20.2% of the state's residents made enough money to buy a home in Belmont. 15.3% made enough to buy a home in Wellesley. By 1990 that was already down to 3.2% and 1.9%, respectively. (source - Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 1995). That is changing the character of a community. This is a very small, inadequate step towards course correction.
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I'm surprised, I thought Needham was very supportive.
 
"No" supporters frequently stated that they aren't against compliance, they're against this specific plan because it was over compliant, which is true. They have until July to become compliant, so we'll see whether enough No voters were sincere in that or if it was just the boilerplate NIMBY language that it sounded like.
 
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Using compliant and noncompliant from here: https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/05/09/mbta-communities-act-zoning-map
 
The EGE said:
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Using compliant and noncompliant from here: https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/05/09/mbta-communities-act-zoning-map
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The only issue with the WBUR dataset is that it still shows towns that have passed zoning, yet haven't had their zoned districts approved by the EOHLC as being in interim compliance, which would exclude them from your chart despite (likely) complying. The state's dataset (csv download warning) breaks that out - it would include places like Concord, Natick, Framingham, New Bedford, Waltham etc.

Edit: it appears that WBUR updated their article literally as I was writing the above, which is no longer true - they now show "have passed zoning intended to comply."
 
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Stlin said:
Edit: it appears that WBUR updated their article literally as I was writing the above, which is no longer true - they now show "have passed zoning intended to comply."
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Of course they updated it just hours after I made the graph! I'll start updating my graph with that symbology.
 
Jeremi said:
This article is worth reading - a bit about how blue state and local governments have built places with very high QOL and then have effectively banned people from living there. I feel a lot of the MA NIMBY problem here.

www.liberalcurrents.com

The Crisis of Democratic Governance

State Democrats have failed to deliver what the American people want.
www.liberalcurrents.com
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Thanks for the article, I think it puts into a single cogent piece a lot of arguments I've had with people over the last few years. Everyone in these states should be having a sputnik moment over the fact that deep red states are doing much much better than we are on housing and green energy. I feel like there's cognitive dissonance in the way that keep us from emulating aspects of their policy success. I am suspicious whether a reformed political process as the article suggests really will do anything, as I think the political goals and processes are fairly reflective of popular, especially for housing since many beneficiaries of affordable housing will never be represented (i.e. live in Texas now) while those 'harmed' live here now.
 
Jeremi said:
This article is worth reading - a bit about how blue state and local governments have built places with very high QOL and then have effectively banned people from living there. I feel a lot of the MA NIMBY problem here.

www.liberalcurrents.com

The Crisis of Democratic Governance

State Democrats have failed to deliver what the American people want.
www.liberalcurrents.com
Click to expand...

Quite the haunting image of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.
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Jeremi said:
This article is worth reading - a bit about how blue state and local governments have built places with very high QOL and then have effectively banned people from living there. I feel a lot of the MA NIMBY problem here.

www.liberalcurrents.com

The Crisis of Democratic Governance

State Democrats have failed to deliver what the American people want.
www.liberalcurrents.com
Click to expand...
It astounds me how respecting property rights has become a hot take. (Legit) externalities that escape property lines are one thing, but how are some neighbors able to decide, on land they don’t own, that a code complaint, three decker is ‘too tall’ for the downtown of an inside-128 ‘burb? So many liberal outcomes would be achieved, at zero cost, by simply getting out of our own way.

Ad nauseam, I hear the MBTA Communities Act described as “Big Government Overreach” imposed by the state upon our tiny, freedom loving town.

Marginally reducing collective control over private property is what again???
 
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I sympathize with the idea that the government passing and enforcing a law must feel a little unusual (or I guess “psychotic”) to those people who have engineered ways to make sure the government can do neither of those things in most cases, to those people’s financial benefit.
 
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