Editorial: It's time to repeal 40B
The all but untenable regulations of the commonwealth's Chapter 40B affordable housing law provide for the kind of state control over local matters that can only serve to confuse and enrage municipalities.
It should be repealed.
But that only means the responsibility for ensuring the availability of affordable housing falls back to towns and cities, which for all of 40B's bureaucratic, nanny state market obliviousness, have done an equally miserable job zoning for affordable housing.
Chapter 40B requires 10 percent of a town's housing stock to be designated as "affordable." While reasonable if a bit idealistic in theory, it's a mess in practice. It is virtually impossible for a vast majority of towns to have 10 percent of their housing certified as affordable. While towns are under the 10 percent threshold, the state can force them to stand aside while affordable housing projects are built.
In Natick, land use officials had nearly lost the will to fight as 40B development after 40B development was foisted upon the town without so much as a municipal by-your-leave.
But just last week, the state Department of Housing and Community Development, after a year of wrangling with the town, a developer and a property owner, came around to Natick's point of view. The department told the town that it had met not its 10 percent threshold, but a one-year threshold for affordable housing the town itself calculated. As a result, the state allowed the town to deny or restrict a permit for a 100-unit 40B development in South Natick.
The battle between the state and Natick is an example of the kind of meddling, the kind of arbitrary, ill-informed government intrusion that prompts us to call for Chapter 40B's repeal.
But towns aren't off the hook. Chapter 40B is known as the "anti-snob" law for a reason.
Repealed or not, we hope the 40B experiment helps towns admit that they have played a leading role in pushing young would-be homebuyers out of Massachusetts. If it accomplishes nothing else, Chapter 40B should help municipalities realize that they must revise zoning regulations to allow for cluster developments.
Today, we know what some during the boom times feared: young homebuyers circa 2007 can't afford large homes on expansive lots, yet towns have forbidden the development of almost anything else. As of 2005, the 20-34-year-old age group was the only age group in Massachusetts to lose population.
Goodbye Massachusetts, hello North Carolina, they said. And those aren't the folks the commonwealth can afford to lose.
Towns should look upon this state of affairs with shame, and should be equally ashamed that the state felt obligated to remedy the problem with a law that acts as if the housing market is in state receivership.
Outside of necessary regulation, we favor a minimum of government intrusion in business and in the lives of ordinary citizens. Chapter 40B, and the shortsighted residential zoning regulations of the last 10 years have intruded in both, and have hurt the state's housing market.
It's unfortunate that towns couldn't see the need for even somewhat affordable housing coming, but it's not the state's place to require them to build it. That's the responsibility of the real estate market, residents, and ultimately, the towns themselves. If towns can't realize this while people still live here, they will when they're having a tough time convincing people to move back.
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