Never have I seen a more anti-community-planning ballot question than No. 7 (Question 7) — single-family homes.
Ballot questions don’t arise out of any elected body in the commonwealth, including our Legislature; they can be submitted by anyone or group with enough funding and shoe leather to walk around and gather the required signatures (often from people who don’t know much about the topic or just want the canvasser to go away).
The favorable arguments in the secretary of the commonwealth’s red guidebook are written by “Legalize Starter Homes,” out of Lowell. They have a commercial email address and are supported by powerful real estate development and banking interests. Their higher reported donations for this $1,700,000 effort range from $10,000 to $150,000 each, with Airbnb coming in at $105,000.
Writing the arguments against is the Massachusetts Municipal Association, which represents the 351 cities and towns in the commonwealth.
All nine of the ballot questions were sent to the Legislature’s Special Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions. Although this committee cannot make changes to any of the ballot questions, it does conduct a public hearing on each and takes testimony from supporters and opponents. After hearing of some unsettled questions and possible unintended consequences, the committee concluded relative to Question 7 that it “cannot support this Petition.”
1) Visualize the density: Question 7 would allow any residentially zoned land to be divided and developed into 5,000-square-foot lots for single-family dwellings provided there is “access” to public water and sewer service. Five-thousand-square-foot lots amount to about eight single-family dwellings per acre — about the playing area of a football field. In there would be eight full-sized houses each with driveways, garages, and a yard area. These are urban densities, appropriate for the tightly packed residential neighborhoods in and around Boston that have city services and public transportation available. Even if a small town has or constructs public water and sewer service, eight lots per acre does not fit in a rural town. I can’t think of a single small-town center that tightly packed.
2) One size doesn’t fit all: This command-and-control power grab takes away the authority of cities and towns to chart their own futures. Every little town in western Massachusetts will have the same single-family zoning as Boston metropolitan area towns do. Eight lots per acre can work in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline if they choose so; but a “housing trumps all” cookie-cutter law should not be statewide.
3) What about ADUs (accessory dwelling units)? Last year the Legislature passed an amendment that says every “principal dwelling,” such as a single-family dwelling, is entitled to an ADU, whether internal or detached from the principal dwelling. But there is nothing in Question 7 that restricts detached ADU construction for each single-family dwelling it authorizes. A western Massachusetts acre increases from eight to 16 dwellings. Again, inappropriate densities that are not found in our part of the state.
4) How big will the houses be? Who knows?A sizable dwelling can be built on a 5,000-square-foot lot, easily 3,000 square feet. I know because of spending so much time at my mother-in-law’s triple-decker in Brookline (which abuts Boston). That house and all the others around were huge, but sat on lots the size contemplated in Question 7.
5) How affordable will the houses be? Again, who knows? Question 7 lacks any affordability component or size limit on the housing — a serious flaw that opens the floodgates to “McMansion” construction on small lots.
6) Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC) regulations: The ballot measure authorizes EOHLC, a state agency focused on housing, to write regulations to implement Question 7. This is not comforting because after giving lip service to taking community input, EOHLC can write the regulations any way they want.
Should Question 7 pass, EOHLC may, as they have in the past, write regulations interpreting “access” (to public water and sewer) as a developer simply being willing to run a cross-country sewer or water line out from existing lines so the new development goes on forest or farmland and not in a town center (as the community had planned). Who decides?
There are ways for the state to address affordability in housing — like requiring it! Or beefing up the housing element in the state’s master planning statute and requiring that land use regulations be consistent with it.
This ballot measure is not the answer; rather, it’s a developer’s bonanza cloaked in rhetoric about starter homes, but without any requirement to ever build a single one.
Vote “no” and let’s find a better way to do this.
Jeff Lacy lives in Conway.