Anti-Snob Zoning
from prof_booty

The debate over affordable housing is growing in the Commonwealth, and open space and housing advocates in Massachusetts are fighting back. The legislature has found time in their busy schedule of outlawing smoking to take up revision of Chapter 40B of the Massachusetts General Law, otherwise known as the Anti-Snob zoning ordinance. Proposed revisions to the law are intended to make it easier for towns to control the development of new housing units within their borders.

My promised follow up to the Art of the Growth Ordinance article. Comments welcomed.

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WALTHAM-The debate over affordable housing is growing in the Commonwealth, and open space and housing advocates in Massachusetts are fighting back. The legislature has found time in their busy schedule of outlawing smoking to take up revision of Chapter 40B of the Massachusetts General Law, otherwise known as the Anti-Snob zoning ordinance. Proposed revisions to the law are intended to make it easier for towns to control the development of new housing units within their borders.

As the law currently stands, developers can override zoning restrictions in towns with less than 10% of their housing stock deemed affordable. Affordable is defined by a complicated formula, essentially that if you make 80% of the median income, you spend less 33% of your income on rent or mortgage, excluding utilities. If a community doesn't meet this standard, then developers can bypass local zoning ordinances as long as they promise to build at least some affordable units. Towns and cities claim that they are then riddled with unwanted developments that don't fit with the character of their communities, such as the JPI development in Waltham. Open space advocates claim the vanishing natural resources in the metro area are being gobbled up by developers in the name of greed, using 40B as a conduit. The open space advocates and cities and towns have lobbied the legislature to revisit the issue, and Governor Romney has charged his development chief, Doug Foy, former head of the environmentalist Conservation Law Foundation, with coming up with a solution.

Yet, at the same time affordable housing advocates see any weakening of the law as detrimental to the Commonwealth's already dire situation. The lack of affordable housing is cited in several recent studies as the prime reason young educated people in the Commonwealth move out of state, causing some to call the trend a "brain drain." Even though the economy has been in decline since 2000, rents have not dropped noticeably in the metro Boston area. The large number of college students in area, while contributing to the economy, also serves as an artificial inflationary pressure on rent prices.

The legislature intends to make it easier for cities and towns to reject developments they do not like, and to "double count" some affordable units to bring others over the 10% threshold. Open space advocates are breathing a sigh of relief, but the unless there is a significant increase in affordability in rental units in Boston and surrounding areas, it looks likely the "brain drain" will continue.

posted by prof_booty | 11:44 AM