Menu

Some White Towns Resistant to Change, MBTA Zoning Law Action Plans Show

Housing

MBTA Zoning Law “Action Plans” Raise Concern that Some Predominantly White Towns Remain Resistant to Change 

Lawyers for Civil Rights (“LCR”) has demanded that seven municipalities rectify their failure to submit mandatory “action plans” for Massachusetts’ new MBTA Zoning Law.  Towns are starting to comply.  On a parallel track, LCR is conducting a statewide review—town-by-town—of recently submitted action plans.  While some covered communities seem to be taking the Law’s mandate for change seriously, emerging trends raise serious red flags about resistance to the Law even from municipalities that submitted timely action plans.   

The Law requires 175 cities and towns with or near MBTA service to provide for a multi-family zoning district of “reasonable size” within the next few years.  As LCR has outlined, compliance with this Law is critically important to address the Commonwealth’s affordable housing crisis and enduring racial segregation problem.  

Each covered community’s action plan must demonstrate how it will meet the Law’s new zoning specifications. However, instead of showing a commitment to the development of inclusionary and affordable housing, many submissions confirm that cities and towns prefer to preserve the status quo, disproportionately harming people of color.  

As part of their action plans, communities had to enumerate important “non-housing characteristics” for a new multi-family housing district.  Alarmingly, many predominantly white towns listed characteristics that evince thinly veiled racism.  Six immediate examples:

  • Chelmsford (83.7% white) stresses “community fatigue for existing multi-family typology”  
  • Bellingham (84.9% white) wants to keep “existing neighborhood character”
  • Princeton (92.1% white) seeks to preserve its “rural character”
  • Southborough (79.6% white) lists the importance of its “New England Charm”
  • Boxborough (70.6% white) worries about the district’s “diminished appearance”
  • Ashland (75.8% white) identifies “respect for traditional housing patterns”

These statements are exclusionary and problematic.  Experts have noted that concerns about “neighborhood character” may be racially coded and a federal court in New York has recognized that a community’s stated “interest in maintaining the character of a neighborhood [is] a veil for race-based animus.” MHANY Management, Inc. v. County of Nassau, No. 05-CV-2301, 2017 WL 4174787, at *6 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 19, 2017).  

Towns across the Commonwealth also raised concerns surrounding traffic, parking congestion, school system incapacity, and strain on municipal services such as sewer systems.  But these concerns are misguided.  Researchers have not only written that fears like these often aren’t born out in reality, but also that multi-family housing actually creates less strain on things like traffic infrastructure and schools than single-family housing. 

All of this raises the specter that covered communities don’t intend to meaningfully comply with the Law.  This is especially apparent given that longstanding incentives to develop affordable housing, like the 10% subsidized housing goal in Chapter 40B, haven’t proven compelling enough to move the needle in many covered communities. 

LCR will continue monitoring enforcement of the MBTA Zoning Law, and stands ready to compel compliance through legal action.