Affordable housing honeymoon
Patrick’s approach gets sunny reviews
Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration is drawing upbeat responses from business groups and municipalities alike thus far for its approach to affordable housing.
Several business groups who singled out affordable housing as the top gubernatorial election campaign issue last fall say they are optimistic that the Patrick administration is taking steps to address that crucial need, including barriers being put up by municipal home rule. And the Mass. Municipal Association, often at odds with such groups on housing development, says everything it has seen regarding housing from Patrick’s office has been positive thus far as well.
The Mass. Association of Realtors, the Mass. Chapter of the National of Industrial and Office Properties, the Homebuilders Association of Massachusetts and the Builders Association of Central Mass. note that the Patrick transition team sought their comments and suggestions on what’s needed to create more affordable housing. They praise the new governor’s appointment of Boston real estate developer and attorney Daniel O’Connell, who also served as executive director of the Mass. Industrial Finance Agency, as secretary of housing and economic development.
"He has the background and understands what barriers there are," says David Wluka, president of the MAR. "At the same time, he’s very much an environmentalist and understands quality of life issues."
MAR, which met with Patrick staffers in December about housing, along with several other groups, have pointed to the state’s tradition of home rule, under which individual cities and town control zoning and permitting, as a key barrier to housing. Some communities, they say, have adopted measures that block affordable housing to avoid growth and increased demand for schools and other services.
While the groups acknowledged during the election season the political difficulty of taking on home rule in the Commonwealth – terming it the "elephant in the room" for the affordable housing problem – they indicated that the next governor would need to take on the sacred tradition if the state was going to stem the loss of talented workers to other, more affordable regions.
Asked about the home-rule dilemma, O’Connell indicated that he would take a carrot approach to the home rule tradition, which he admitted some communities use to set one- and two-acre zoning that hinders "housing production." Responding via e-mail to WBJ’s questions, O’Connell said the new administration will use incentives like those already in place – namely Chapter 40R and 40S – to get cities and towns to voluntarily embrace affordable housing. Chapter 40S, he noted, "is a step in the right direction" because it gives cities and towns financial incentives to zone for denser housing development. Chapter 40S, covering increase education costs associated with affordable housing development, is another tool O’Connell says the new administration wants to see used more.
Patrick’s Housing Transition Working Group recommended forming a governor’s task force on local zoning reform and permitting to increase affordable housing through such strategies as cluster development. The task force is slated to contain representatives from municipalities, developers, environmentalists and elected officials. Asked how he would get communities to accept the task force efforts when some may view it as interference in home rule, O’Connell stated that he would seek to have them "look at the big picture" of how the state’s lack of affordability is keeping it from attracting and keeping skilled professionals.
Business group leaders agree that incentives like 40R and 40S might be effective in offsetting home rule. David Begelfer, CEO of the Mass. Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, says offering communities help in handling education costs via 40S will hopefully be an effective "carrot" to communities to allow more affordable housing. "If not, I’m afraid it’s going to need to be a stick," he says.
Matthew Feher, legislative analysts for MMA, says the association also favors 40R and 40S, both of which it helped draft. And, he says, MMA sees a governor’s task force as a good idea, though, he adds, planners, environmentalists, lawmakers and municipalities have already been meeting for years as the Zoning Reform Working Group. The group, he says, helped draft pending legislation to reform the state’s zoning enabling legislation, Chapter 40A.
While the MMA has not yet met with Patrick staffers about housing, Feher says the group looks forward to working with the new governor and O’Connell.
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