A Mandate for Boston’s Suburbs: Make Room for More Apartments
The New York Times
The state required 177 cities and towns served by public transit to loosen their zoning rules so that more multifamily housing can be built. A number of them resisted.
Working at a cafe in Winthrop, Mass., for the last seven years, Valdineia Santos fell in love with the seaside suburb of 20,000 people, just north of Boston.
But the two-bedroom apartments she found there rented for about $3,000 per month, considerably more than she could afford. So Ms. Santos and her young daughter stayed put in Malden, a city about a half-hour’s drive inland.
“Maybe someday,” she said, winding down her shift at the cafe recently.
A four-year-old state law meant to increase the supply of apartments in dozens of towns around Boston — ideally putting downward pressure on rents — was passed to help people like Ms. Santos. But the law has had a rough road, with a number of towns arguing that the state cannot force them to allow more multifamily housing.
“It’s taking away the rights of citizens, and transferring those rights away from the people who know the town best,” said Diana Viens, a Winthrop resident who has led a movement there to defy the law. “Has the governor ever set foot here? Has she looked at our plan for our downtown?”
The law requires 177 cities and towns served by public transit — spanning eastern Massachusetts from the New Hampshire border to the Cape Cod bridges — to allow multifamily housing to be built without a special permit, in at least one area near public transportation. Most of the communities were supposed to submit revised zoning rules by the end of last year.
