Ballot Question 7 proposed to increase housing development across the state by making it possible to build a single-family home on any 5,000 square feet lot that’s served by municipal water and sewer systems. The measure lost statewide on Nov. 3 by just one percentage point. Ironically, it was voters in suburban and rural communities, most of which lack municipal sewer service and would have been exempt from the law, who voted it down.
Like most densely developed communities across the state, Greenfield’s voters overwhelmingly favored the measure, with 58% for and 42% against. Their message was clear: they want to bring more affordable and more attainable housing to our city.
Greenfield’s City Council, Planning Board, and mayor should heed this call and update city zoning requirements to allow building single-family residences where municipal water and sewers exist, predominantly in the center of Greenfield (“Zone RA”), to mirror what Question 7 proposed.
This would be a good start but may have less impact than one might hope, since most lots along our city sewer lines are already nearly fully “built out.” Even with relaxed dimensional requirements, there are few opportunities for new lots, and net housing gains would likely be modest.
Greenfield’s bigger opportunity to increase housing is to relax outdated square footage and frontage requirements in outlying residential districts.
Sixty-four percent of Greenfield’s area is zoned under this “Rural Residential, Zone RC” designation. Our current zoning code for single-family homes in those areas requires a lot of 40,000 square feet — about an acre, or the area of a football field — with 200 feet of street frontage. These areas are well served by existing water mains and town roads, but not municipal sewers.
Simply halving these dimensional requirements — to 20,000 square foot lots with 100-foot frontage — would both greatly expand Greenfield’s inventory of buildable lots and make them much more affordable. This would likely lead to much more significant growth in our housing supply and bring more variety.
Our current zoning requirements were enacted almost 40 years ago when the then-town of Greenfield was relatively prosperous and economically vibrant. Building costs were lower, households were larger and the population was much younger. On the other hand, we enjoyed nowhere near the current acreage permanently protected under agricultural preservation restrictions, conservation restrictions, Conservation Commission ownership, and wetlands protections. Zoning regulations that might have made sense, or reflected exclusionary biases, long ago do not align with Greenfield’s needs today.
In addition, more than half of the 948 existing residential lots in Zone RC do not actually meet the 40,000 square foot minimum (and even more are “non-conforming” on street frontage). Updating our zoning code to reflect this reality would allow additions and rebuilding of these dwellings without requiring a slow and expensive ZBA variance.
The city today already allows lots of this size in Zone RC, in “Conservation Cluster” subdivisions. The proposed subdivision at 36 Log Plain Road, where 15 of the proposed 18 lots are under 40,000 square feet (and 10 are under 20,000) is a good example. These lots and/or finished homes will be relatively expensive — this project requires a new road and water mains, expensive in themselves, and which also increase the developer’s target profit margin.
Expanding this opportunity to smaller lots in Zone RC on sites served by water mains on existing roads will allow small contractors and families without access to the capital and resources of a subdivision developer to build, sell, and buy for much less.
Greenfield’s voters have spoken, loudly and clearly, and it’s time to update city zoning bylaws to reflect their will. Allowing 5,000-square-foot lots in town and 20,000-square-feet lots in our rural areas would go a long way toward reinvigorating private sector housing development in Greenfield. City leadership should act quickly to make these changes happen and help bring more affordable housing to its citizens.
Doug Stotz is a Greenfield native, GHS graduate, and advocate for affordable and attainable housing.