Massachusetts is an economic success story. The state’s leaders have leveraged its strong K-12 school system and excellent universities to build booming biotechnology and medical care industries. In an era when many Americans lament economic stagnation, the inflation-adjusted median income in Massachusetts has grown about 40 percent in the past decade alone.
Yet Massachusetts has a fundamental problem that prevents many people from living the good life there: They cannot afford a home. The median house costs almost $700,000, the third-highest among states.
The main reason is that Massachusetts has not built enough to keep up with its growing population and economy. Its municipalities tightly limit new home construction through a combination of onerous zoning and permitting rules. For decades, the state government has ceded control over housing policy to its 351 cities and towns. When it comes to housing policy, the state of Massachusetts is often a bystander, allowing town governments to impose classic “not in my backyard” policies.
Massachusetts typifies the problem that we described in an editorial last week: Many of the country’s strongest job markets are in coastal regions that have refused to build enough new housing.
This November, Massachusetts has a chance to do better. It can live up to its self-image as a progressive, inclusive state by passing a ballot initiative to override stifling local housing rules that harm the young at the expense of the old and the middle class at the expense of the wealthy. The initiative would prevent many towns from setting needlessly large minimums for lot sizes and effectively blocking the construction of middle-class homes. The campaign, Legalize Starter Homes, is now trying to gather the nearly 12,500 signatures it needs before June 17 to place the measure on the ballot. We endorse the initiative.
Currently, many Massachusetts towns require house lots to be at least 20,000 square feet, which is larger than most midsize supermarkets, like Trader Joe’s. Nationwide, only about one-fifth of homes are built on such large plots. It is a minimum that caters to the affluent.
The initiative would create a new statewide minimum of 5,000 square feet, which is about the size of a basketball court, and bar towns from creating their own standards. The policy would enable the construction of more homes that young families and other members of the middle class could afford.
We recognize that many homeowners are wary of allowing more construction. They like their neighborhoods as they are and want to maximize their home values. These skeptics tend to be older and richer, with the time and resources to attend town meetings and criticize plans for new development. Yet if the United States has any chance to reduce wealth inequality, increase economic mobility and help more people achieve the American dream, it needs significantly more housing. Blue states like Massachusetts need to be part of the solution.
For more than a century, Massachusetts state law has allowed town and city governments to dictate what housing can be built within their limits. From the 1950s to the mid-1970s, Massachusetts towns, particularly affluent suburbs, passed a flood of zoning rules that limited the construction of apartments and small homes. These rules often exacerbated economic and racial segregation.
Newton, a small city bordering Boston with excellent public schools, is typical. It adopted many of its current lot-size minimums in 1953, preventing it from adding sufficient housing as the economy has grown. Today, young people who grew up in Newton say they cannot afford to raise their own families there. The rules create problems even for some existing homeowners.
Beth Sagan, a 68-year-old Newton resident, wants to split her 17,400-square-foot property in two. She hopes to build a new home in her large backyard that will be accessible for her husband, who has arthritis and knee trouble, and then sell her current home. But her part of Newton requires lot sizes for new homes to be at least 15,000 square feet. The ballot initiative would allow her to split her property. It would also allow construction on vacant lots that are smaller than the current minimums.
If anything, the ballot initiative is too accommodating of local governments. The new policy, for example, would exempt areas that lack public sewer and water systems, out of concern that new construction would overwhelm areas that instead rely on wells and septic systems. That exemption means that nearly 80 percent of the state’s residential land could maintain its current lot-size minimum. Some of Boston’s affluent suburbs — like Lincoln (which has an 80,000-square-foot minimum) — fall into this category. These towns should not get a pass. The state should help municipalities modernize their infrastructure and then apply statewide lot-size rules more broadly.
Andrew Mikula, the leader of the initiative, estimates that it would allow the construction of a few thousand new homes each year. That is far from enough new housing to meet demand, but it is a meaningful step. It should be accompanied by other changes, including allowing the construction of more multifamily homes, such as duplexes, and apartments. Other places, including Austin, Texas, Minneapolis and Raleigh, N.C., have kept home prices down by allowing more multifamily homes than Massachusetts does. Gov. Maura Healey has shown an interest in making it easier to build, but the state has a long way to go.
Unfortunately, the anger over high housing prices has also raised the possibility that Massachusetts voters will approve a different ballot proposal this fall that would be counterproductive: statewide rent control. It might sound like a solution, but it would discourage construction and renovations. Artificially low rents make it harder for developers to recoup the costs of building. Rent control has not solved the housing problems in New York City, and it will not solve them in Massachusetts. The national pattern is clear. The way to bring down housing costs is to increase housing supply. The initiative to create a statewide lot-size minimum would help accomplish this.
There is a larger principle here. States should not outsource their housing policy to local governments that tend to have a bias toward the status quo. States should assert more control over lot sizes, multifamily zoning, permitting processes and more. States have an interest in ensuring that they are affordable places to live.
In their campaign to take back Congress in the midterm elections, Democrats are promising to end the affordability crisis. If they want voters to take them seriously, they should address the largest cost for many families and stay true to the long progressive tradition that prioritizes upward mobility. They must bring down the high price of housing in the states they govern.
Source photograph by Jeffrey Hamilton/Getty Images.
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