One town says you can’t have 2 front doors and the apt. must be within the footprint of the original house. This town is a mill town with lots of large old houses.
One town required a doctor’s note that your in-law needs your help – you have to renew the permit to have the apt every 5 years -and the apartment must be able to be integrated back into the house when it is no longer needed.
In my town the different residential areas were determined by septic systems: the in-town had town sewers,thus 1/3 acre lots or less, the middle area had some town sewer and it was assumed that some more could be added – based on topography – (water flows downhill, pumps break down, rock ledge is a bummer), thus 2/3 acre. The then rural land was required to have 1 acre lots -to accommdate the septic systems. Since then, many have failed – real sewage running in the yards, yes – due to bad drainage, wet land, and lots of ledge – good old New England rocky soil, you know. My town had to extend the town sewer and invest in pumps, as well as the treatment plant, etc. which takes care of our sewage.
So, the State looked at my town and said your zoning is exclusive and we will write a law (Comprehensive Permits) which requires you to have more ‘affordable’ housing by overruling your zoning by-law. Hmmm, We thought, You know we wrote those laws ourselves, for our town, and we know the land, the traffic and river and creek patterns, the State doesn’t.
In our case the Comprehensive Permits were for dense multifamily housing on land that was, mostly, several miles away from the town center. The developers, naturally, needed to make a profit, and build as many units, and as few amenities, as they could. Profit is not bad, except that when the developer circumvented our rules, built as cheaply as possible, we, the town were left with what they did, good and bad. And the ‘affordable’ rental housing only lasts for 20 years before it reverts to market rates, and is sold at market rates…
So did we create anything more than high rising housing in rural subdivisions?
My town knows its housing is too expensive, and mulls over the problem constantly. The land itself costs too much. There isn’t any more if it. We see ‘tear downs’ of perfectly nice housing stock every day. My own house would have been a ‘tear down’ if it hadn’t been too close to wetlands, and therefore couldn’t have been rebuilt.
Perhaps one way to get some innovative solutions would be to gather local zoning and planning board members together to brainstorm on how each town might tailor its rules to encourage more inexpensive housing. The various rules about in-law apartments makes me hopeful.
There is a feedback loop in place in Massachusetts. Towns become more exclusive simply because they are already exclusive. Towns become less exclusive because they are not exclusive. No one wants to live in cheap housing because that means living near someone who can only afford cheap housing.
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Our state has a certain amount of crime, homelessness, poverty, and social problems. Yet a substantial amount of people feel that it is ethical and moral to ignore the problems, to just zone them out, push them onto someone else.
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Those problems are more prevalent in people with lower income — most likely because people with those problems have little chance of holding down a high-income job. So zoning is a very effective tool to keep such problems concentrated elsewhere; simply prevent any housing that has a per-unit cost below a certain threshhold.
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Many arguments are offered opposing development — traffic, cost of schools, “loss of character” — but the bottom line is usually that people in a town want to keep out certain people, people they don’t think “belong” in their town. They want to keep the “riff-raff” out. I can’t completely blame them.
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However, in my opinion, local exclusive zoning wouldn’t be as much of an issue if there was more recognition that our society does have problems outside the gates. That isn’t happening – when people cordon themselves off, their first instinct is to cry out “why are those other communities getting so much aid, why are we rewarding failure?”.
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It is the perfect cost-shift — drive the problems (lower expenses) out, then demand equal state aid (increase revenues, either via aid or lower taxes).
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That leaves some communities with a lot of problems and no money to address them. Which kist drives more people to seek exclusivity.
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The inequity just increases, feeding upon itself.
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The best answer is to index state aid to demographics, recognizing that lower-income people consume more services and higher-income people don’t. That will make any resuident “neutral” because towns will have resources to mitigate any problems brought on by lower-income residents.
but completely disagreed with your conclusion (so, a 5 instead).
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Your analysis of the situation we have created is interesting. But the conclusion needs a lot more justification. Looks to me like it’s taking the symptom and legislating it away. Instead, let’s get closer to the root of the problem, zoning that enforces things we don’t want to enforce.
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Plus, a lot of local revenue comes not from state aid, but from property taxes on local real estate. Those will always be higher in wealthy locales, meaning that a wealthy town = a wealthy town government. So, the legislative fix probably wouldn’t be enough anyway.
You’re right, I took a short cut to my solution. Let me give you my rationale.
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Although I think that ultimately it would be better for there to be almost no economic segregation between communities, I think that it would be naive to think that this would be easy to achieve by mandate. It would be wildly unpopular, and would probably cause flight from the state because the state would probably do it in a ham-handed way, by simply plopping down low-income housing projects everywhere. I think that housing projects are not the right answer, I think that integrated income housing is much better.
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I also think that cities and towns are segregated beyond repair. Take Section 8 vouchers. Even if there are rental units in higher-income towns (there usually arenât), and even if landlords are willing to accept them (they usually donât), the rents there are so far beyond poorer communities that there is disincentive to choose the higher income community.
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Also, take land prices. Some towns are so exclusive that lots of land cost $100k or more. The land costs that much partially because of the pent-up demand for housing in that town, people are chasing the exclusivity. How can you build an affordable house on that land, even if you cut down lot sizes?
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I also think it doesn’t make a lot of sense to drop in low-income housing into the middle of a town where there are no local jobs for the residents, and I think there is some merit to preserving the character of communities — as long as that doesn’t mean “so we can keep out the poor”.
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My belief is that there will always be price/economic differences between communities; however, I think the state should work to minimize the differences caused by the “type” of people who live in a city or town. In other words, it shouldn’t be more desirable to live in Dover because there aren’t any poor people consuming more education or causing more societal problems, or even because the absence of the poor allows the towns to concentrate its resources on high-end services for the wealthy.
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I think that increasing state aid, indexing for demographics is like a market-based solution to the problem. I think the monies offered today — a onetime $3k payment by the state for a unit under 40R — are ridiculously low, and that’s why no one is jumping to permit these things. I think the true cost of low-income population is very high, and that is proven by the amount of effort that communities spend to keep it out.
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Why not try and determine it by some kind of reverse dollar auction? — determine how many low-income units are needed, the state starts with giving $100k per unit to whoever takes them, and then the state lowers the offer to the point where demand is met by cities and towns. Maybe that figure is $50k, maybe it’s $20k, maybe its $5k, but it is an amount offered to any town in the state that determines as to what it takes to support this population. No one should be able to complain about this aid going to other towns, because it would have been open to anyone
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Such an auction should also reward communities already providing low-income housing, and I think it should reward communities who have market-rate housing that is considered affordable too, because that is an important ingredient to the pie.
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I just donât understand how the Democratic legislature in this state seems to believe that something like education, safety, or basic quality of life are things that should be rationed out by income levels.
and indeed zoning is probably one of the most important issues that isn’t really talked about too much (probably because it can get pretty technical!). But zoning, esp. the antiquated way we do it here in MA, has a wide impact on housing costs, business development, enviromental protection, and so forth.
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Here’s my thoughts: zoning is a very important way for residents to have some control over development in their communities — and, as you say, people at the local level tends to know best what works for their communities.
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The problem is that many communities simply don’t want new housing or development, and would rather “some other town” build affordable housing or help create jobs. Of course, if just about every town says this, the state as a whole suffers, which is why we have stuff like 40B.
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If 40B development is unfair to communities because, as you suggest, it is the state coming in and telling localities how to zone, then another approach would probably be better. That would be to tie Local Aid and other state aid to communities to how the communities are doing on building affordable housing. That way, if a communtity wants to develop its own way, that’s fine — they just have to deal with less state help considering their actions may be hurting the state as a whole. Meanwhile, those communities that DO step up to help the housing problem should get considerably more in local aid.
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I know we have Smart Growth zoning incentives, but I’m talking about going beyond that and having a carrot/stick approach through the Local Aid distributions. This seems to me the fairest way of doing it.
I don’t know which town you live in, but my understanding is that the Comprehensive Permit law was enacted state-wide in the 1970s to address a need for affordable housing in lots of communities, not to punish a single community that seemed to be exclusive.
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The law allows developers to request waivers from local regulations in return for building SUBSIDIZED (more on that in a moment) housing. The Board of Appeals is designated as the single local entity to review proposals, cutting out the Planning Board and other groups (including, I believe, the Building Inspector? Conservation Commission?) that usually get a chance to formally shape development plans.
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The local community can deny waivers, but the developer can then appeal to a state board called the Housing Appeals Committee. So the local reviewers usually try to reach a negotiated deal with the developer to avoid having the state take all the power over the development permit.
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If at least 10% of the housing stock in the community meets the state definition of “affordable,” it can deny the developer’s waiver requests altogether and the developer has no recourse.
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There was an explosion of Comp. Permit applications in the 1980s, when the state decided to develop new approaches to increasing the supply of affordable housing. (In contrast to the current Lt. Gov, who thinks that cuts in income tax rates will magically solve the problem. . . .) A key step in increasing the housing supply was an administrative decision to redefine the word “subsidized” that was built in as a condition of the Comprehensive Permit. Instead of providing public funds the rules changed so that, essentially, state designation of a development, based on a review of a preliminary proposal, was enough to qualify the development as “subsidized” and allow the developer to approach local officials.
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Having said all this, I guess I should say that I agree with your proposal that local officials should meet to come up with some new ideas for land use. Regional Planning Agencies can be very helpful in facilitating these discussions, too. Keep in mind though, that it takes a 2/3 majority at Town Meeting to amend a local zoning bylaw. Local officials have to take a lot of time and invest a lot of effort if they hope to effect change in land use rules.
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Your mention of the 20-year expiration of affordable housing restrictions is another issue altogether, and not one we can resolve with zoning changes. There is something in land use law called the Law Against Perpetuities that mandates some reasonable expiration date for some kinds of restrictions on property. (Is this one of those ancient provisions that comes down from English Common Law?) I’m not a lawyer, but I know we had to respond to the Law Against Perpetuities when I was helping to write deed restrictions for affordable housing units built with a Comprehensive Permit in the 1980s.
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I just wanted to get these points in before the 8 a.m. quiz tomorrow! Sorry to be so long-winded.
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in Massachusetts. 351 different autonomous governments hold the power of zoning.
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There are plenty of good reasons for local control of zoning, but the problem remains – most people cannot afford to live in Massachusetts.
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The state took action (and rightly so) to address this housing problem in 1968 and again in 2004 and 2005 because the local governments have not done anything to address the issue. That may be because of too much hand-wringing or it may be because it is impossible to wait for a Town Meeting to make timely decisions. Either way, the state government acted to preserve the long-term stability of the state and its residents.
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It may seem like no big deal, that whatever your hometown you ought to be able to write the law, but the problem is we have a Balkanized state which is competing with other, better equipped states for popoulation and jobs. If we let all 351 towns and cities call all the shots, this would all be a moot point in 20-30 years when Massachusetts has become severely economically depressed.
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An analogy, if I may – After the Revolutionary War, before the United States were United under the Constitution, all 13 colonies had plans to pay off war debts with their own currency. Of course, this was absurd – as the currency of each individual colony had little actual value. Thus, during the Constitutional Convention, one of the main reasons given behind uniting in a federalist form of government was the simple need to pay back war debts (to France, in particular — yes, before Rove, Bush and the other idiots at 1600 Pennsylvania decided to enlarge their personal grudge against the French, the French secured our country’s freedom.)
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Indeed, it was the central government which was given to address issues which were too great (or of too much importance) to the nation to be left to each individual state. Much in the same way, it is to the state government to address larger issues of vitality and stability that simply cannot be addressed by each individual municipality. (And an important note, every local form of government derives any and all power from the state constitution, or charter.)
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Fitting then that Massachusetts, the birthplace of American Democracy, continues to struggle with this concept of federalism. In other states, governed by counties, basics like schools, housing and utilities are generally well-provided and better coordinated (though counties do have their own special problems.)
I’m in the real estate development business, done a fair bit of multi-family in New England.
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I have 3 suggestions that would add a lot of housing:
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(1) eliminate ALL profit restrictions for 40B projects under 8 or 12 units (need to be some multiple of 4.) There are many, many small scale projects which are now too small to pursue under 40B because of profitability and hassle. Those one- and two-acre rump and infill sites would get a second wind, and community impact with 4 or 8 or 12 units would be small. Cumulative, the statewide impact could be significant.
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(2) Allow for some modest relaxation of the wetlands regs, including encroachments, crossings, and, yes, even filling. MA is actually a pretty wet state and a lot of property is currently unusable because of minor wetlands issues. I say “wetlands” only as it pertains to the regs as written…much of what is regualted as “wet” actually are isolated low areas that aren’t important and often not even damp. Please allow us to replicate or even increase the net wetland areas elsewhere on our sites.
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(PS — over time, all wetlands fill in, as Ducks Unlimited will tell you. They maintain millions — millions! — of real wetland acres by dredging. In MA, we can’t even step foot within 25 or 30 or 50 feet. And so, we’re actually losing our productive waterfowl habitat. Go figure.)
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(3) Why is it so hard to pass density-credit zoning in MA? I’d love to take 20 acres of one-acre-lot land and build 20 units on only 8 or 10 acres, smaller lots, smaller houses, smaller roads (assuming septic & water not an issue on smaller lots.) Instead, too many towns insist on one- or 2-acre lots in conventional subdivisions…we end up razing 20 acres to build 10 or 20 huge houses in checkerboard communities which, by definition, have to sell for 3 or 4 times the cost of the raw land. That’s exclusionary.
Notice all the flooding in DC area — you know, the former swamp which lost a bunch of wetlands.
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Remember all the flooding in northern MA and NH not too long ago? Again, the loss of wetlands was a crucial factor, and the fact that the Charles River’s wetlands have been preserved were instrumental to the Charles not flooding.
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When you create massive areas without sufficient natural buffer, the runoff gets enormous, and you get flooding (and erosion and other problems). Preserving wetlands — even if it’s only a few acres here and a few acres there — goes a long way. Right now, the EPA is working really hard to convince Worcester of these facts, with little progress made.
that wetlands are important, but I think bostonshephard’s point is a bit different.
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The problem is not with wetlands protection per se. It is when individual towns go well beyond the state wetlands standards, not for the purpose of protecting wetlands but rather as a tool for exclusionary zoning. So many municipalities have an anti-development outlook and will use strict wetland regs (among many other methods) to prevent development.
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I think the best policy here is either to have a state MAXIMUM of wetlands protection (like a maximum of protection of X number of feet from a wetland), or at least require municipalities to give rational, scientific reasons for why protection stricter than the state minimums is required.
In MA, wetlands are not defined by water but by flora. What we generally imagine as wetlands — streams, rivers, marshes, adjacent areas of flooding, dynamic areas which are indeed important in absorbing the impact of 20-, 50- and 100-year flood events â account for maybe 50% of wetlands in MA as defined by the regs. At least that what environmental engineers with whom Iâve worked have claimed.
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Our wetlands regs are totally out of control, or are applied that way. Wetlands are treated like priceless, untouchable works of art when in fact they are ever-changing natural features which, like drainage ditches and storm culverts, need to be maintained. Left untouched, many become swampy, and eventually filled-in uplands. Our laws make it impossible to do this maintenance. You can look at historical topo maps and see how streams and ponds in the 1950âs became smaller in the 60âs and 70âs, and swamps and partial uplands in the 80âs and 90âs. Wetlands fill in if not maintained.
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What about replication? On one project, I offered to increase the total existing wetlands area by 20% if I could relocate some of the isolated wetlands. This work would have included improvement of the existing wetlands. You thought Iâd suggested building a plutonium waste dump.
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But Iâm not even talking about that. I’m talking about the isolated “wetlands”, those low areas which collect standing water during parts of the year, which are routinely flagged by Conservation Commissioners not because of its habitat value but because of its flora classification. Often they sit in the middle of property, in a low spot, and ruin the propertyâs usability.
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The inflexibility of some towns on wetland matters are intolerable. On occasion, even the planners have agreed. Wetlands, as some Conservation Commissions define them, are sacrosanct.
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This includes drainage swales which cannot be crossed, or wetlands setbacks that keep expanding and eat into buildable acreage. I know of one town that did not wish to see a parcel developed and so expanded the setback to land lock the property entirely.
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One example of âextremeâ ⦠I was redeveloping a supermarket in a coastal MA town. Cattails were growing up from cracks in the parking lot pavement, and the Conservation agent tried to claim that area as a wetlands. Go figure.
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Our wetlands regulations are serving neither the public nor the wetlands at this point, and are in desperate need of reform. Even modest reform would open many acres to new housing.
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Hoyapaul can’t have it both ways. Regulations regulate, and the “science” can be twisted to mean anything you want. (How can science determine what the optimal setback is?)
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I think reasonable exclusions need to be put into the law, to allow replication, and more area exemptions stated as a % of the property. And stop using wetlands in buildable areas calculations.
I don’t see how I’m trying to “have it both ways”.
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What I’m saying first off is that there SHOULD be some state protection at a minimum. You may disagree, but that would be quite an extreme position indeed (and in any case, there are federal regulations as well).
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However, my point is that the state should rein in individual towns (and Conservation Commissions) that are using stricter controls than the state requires. I’m surprised that you are debating me on this point — it seems like something you would support.
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As far as “science” goes, I think “science” can indeed determine what the ideal setback is, because let’s say past a certain point (say, 50 feet — I have no idea of the science), a setback serves no purpose because the proposed development will not disturb or ruin the wetland past 50 feet away. If that is the case, then (under my proposal) the town wouldn’t be able to have a setback going past the 50 feet.
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I would expect pro-development persons to be all for this, and environmentalists to go ballistic, so I’m again surprised you don’t like the idea.
I have really enjoyed what you all have added! We must be up to the 4th or 5th lecture by now!
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some comments:
The Comprehensive Permits may have been directed at all of Massachusetts, but consider that my town is surrounded by 4 other towns. One of them is as ‘wealthy’ as my town, 3 are ‘poorer’ – all relative terms here – 8 developers thought my town was a good place to build multi-family housing. The only other town that had any was the other ‘wealthy’ town.
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I liked bostonshepard’s thoughts about small scale in-fill housing, not only because it allows small lots to be used and is less intrusive in a neighborhood, but because it might allow local, smaller, developers – home town types – to build in their own regions. It might result in better work because we all (us builder types) like to say, “I did that!” and hear approval.
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Beware of filling wetlands. Consider the Merrimack Valley supermarkets which were build on low lying farm land and, yes, their parking lots were underwater in May. In my experience, up until the 1980’s wetland rules were not really enforced. I can take you to whole neighborhoods built in the 1960’s without much concern for drainage, now with wet basements, sump pumps that can’t keep up, and unuseable yards under water. I know creeks now confined to culverts which weren’t big enough to carry the water from the May floods.
But the water (including that which fell today) has to go somewhere.
First, the fact that you’re looking at the multi-family housing as “why here and not in the poorer towns” shows the extent of the problem in this state. Why are you opposed to multi-family housing? Why don’t you want it in your town? Be honest, this is an anonymous forum.
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Second, I wonder if the enforcement of the wetlands regulations in the 1980’s corresponds with the introduction of Proposition 2.5? Does anyone have any historical perspective to add here? I suspect that the introduction of that law changed the view of residents into one where the “less profitable” should be excluded, because when a town can’t control its income anymore it must control its expenses.
with your assumptions, there!
I live in multifamily housing, which suits me for many reasons. I enjoy the diversity of my neighbors.
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I was trying to discuss, when I wrote the original diary, how the concepts and laws of zoning become actual buildings – maybe, or maybe not, what the planners intended. And how zoning in each community reflects how that community itself decided to grow.