Boston-Area Officials Starting To Permit And Plan Parcels For Affordable Housing Projects Themselves
Local officials are taking control of planning, zoning and permitting processes for multifamily projects in an attempt to ease the seemingly insurmountable affordable housing gap.
Boston has put forth plans for multifamily housing atop redeveloped public library branches. Meanwhile, 20 miles west in Wayland, a 218-unit multifamily complex is under construction almost a decade after city officials decided to permit, plan and rezone an undeveloped parcel for affordable housing in a first-of-its-kind process for the town.
The creative initiatives are municipal officials’ latest attempts to solve an affordable housing crunch with no single or easy solution.
“Why should developers have all the fun?” said Rebecca Mattson, Sagebrook Development's founder and principal and a Wayland development official, last week in Boston at Bisnow’s The Future of New England Multifamily event. “We have these assets, we should use them.”
The Boston region lacks the necessary housing inventory for its booming economy, which expects to add 40,000 new life sciences workers alone by 2024. Investors, salivating at the economic forecast, have scooped up both luxury towers and smaller properties at a rapid rate, further dampening affordability. The permitting and approval process in and around Boston remains the largest challenge, drawing the ire of both developers and elected officials including Boston Mayor-elect Michelle Wu.
Hiring an architect or planner and pre-permitting land for development can attract more interest in a parcel, RISE Together founder and CEO Herby Duverne said.
“The process right now is, you have to get the land and you have to fight the community and try to build whatever you think that makes sense for you to do,” he said.
Boston first explored the idea of utilizing municipal-owned buildings like libraries, fire stations and community centers for affordable housing in 2018. The idea for the land-starved Boston market, dubbed Housing with Public Assets, has since gained steam with two Dorchester library projects. The Boston Public Library and city officials in September approved a pair of requests for proposals for a new library topped with affordable housing for the Upham’s Corner branch, The Dorchester Reporter reported.
At a site 2 miles away, the city and architect Sasaki presented residents with three possibilities for affordable housing development around a new Codman Square library branch, according to the Dorchester Reporter. Two of the possibilities include affordable housing built adjacent to a new branch while a third suggests stacking 69 units of affordable housing on top of the library in a four-story building.
“These public buildings are municipally owned and that can potentially be catalysts and connectors of both immediate use and expropriation of affordable housing,” said Taylor Cain, deputy director for the Office of Housing Stability in Boston.
In Wayland, a town of approximately 14,000 residents, planning officials turned to an undeveloped 8-acre parcel to create a multifamily complex. The city sought an affordable housing project to meet a threshold under the state’s Chapter 40B Housing law. The law allows developers to circumvent local zoning rules to build dense housing with at least 25% affordable units if the city at large has affordable housing inventory under 10%.
Wayland’s control of the process preserved its power to stipulate the project size and aesthetics, details that would have been out of the town’s control if a developer utilized its 40B power, said Mattson, who has been chair of Wayland’s Economic Development Committee since 2011.
The town targeted land off Route 20 and rezoned it for 190 multifamily units. Of the units, 25% would be affordable and, once completed, raise the city’s affordable inventory to just over 10% with a single project, Mattson said.
The Wayland EDC requested and was ultimately granted $360K from the city to perform a civil survey, minor environmental site planning and a traffic impact study, among other permitting requirements, in an attempt to ready the multifamily development.
Once planning tasks were completed, the Wayland EDC presented a rezoning of the parcel before the city; the rezoning passed with a two-thirds majority vote on its second attempt in 2014, Mattson said.
“Without permitting, cities and towns, especially smaller ones, don’t see their land as assets,” she said, noting many suburbs have underutilized parcels being lightly used by city and state agencies. “It doesn’t compute that way.”
Wayland filed an RFP for the 190-unit multifamily project in 2016 and Atlanta-based multifamily developer Wood Partners was selected as its developer. Wood Partners paid $1.8M to Wayland for the 490 Boston Post Road site earlier this year and began construction on the $60M River’s Edge project, since upgraded to 218 units. It is expected to be completed between 2022 and 2023 and will deliver $829K in permit fees and $1M annually in property taxes once finished.
Real estate veterans like Mattson serving on Wayland’s EDC helped to guide the affordable housing project’s progress, she said. Mattson and other panelists at the event called on industry experts, including those in attendance, to participate on municipal planning and economic development boards.
MKA Architecture principal Michael Kim echoed Mattson’s call, poking fun at his own service as a Martha’s Vineyard Commissioner, a development manager for the ultra-wealthy Cape Cod destination town. He asked the audience to raise their hands if they’ve served on a local planning board.
“For the rest of you whose kids are still out of the house, if you are, say, below 80 or some other age, the rest of you that didn’t raise your hands, you are the problem,” Kim said. “You need to become the change that we need to have.”
