Zoning bill faces uncertain future
Antonio Caban/SHNS
House Speaker Robert DeLeo said many people have reached out on the zoning changes and the Senate bill might go to a committee for exploration.
With a growing list of things to complete before formal sessions end in July, House Speaker Robert DeLeo did not instill confidence on Monday when asked whether he would take up a comprehensive zoning reform bill that the Senate plans to debate Thursday.
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, standing next to DeLeo after a meeting with him and Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday afternoon, called the zoning reform effort a “a key element in helping solve our housing shortage here in the commonwealth.”
Asked if the House would take up the Senate's bill, DeLeo said, “I'd have to take a look at it. I can tell you that with the word getting out that this bill was going to be taken up I heard form a number of folks, developers, builders and what not, that they'd like to talk to me and the members of the committee and other members of the House about the bill, so at this time I don't know.”
Baker also said he wanted to move cautiously on the zoning reform bill, which includes provisions to make it easier to build accessory apartments and multi-family housing.
“Let's see what comes out of the Senate and go from there,” Baker said. “There's a lot of moving parts on that and a lot of interested parties and while I certainly share the concern that was raised by the Senate president about the fact that this one's going on 50 years without being updated, I want to make sure whatever we decided to do here, we don't make a complicated situation more complicated.”
Baker also said Massachusetts is “famous” for being a difficult state I which to build.
“That's one of the reasons why we have trouble building less expensive things like more affordable housing and that sort of thing and I want to make sure whatever we do with respect to this makes the situation better and not worse, and it's really complicated so I'm not going to talk more about it at a detailed level beyond that,” he said.
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