Needham Voters Strike Down MBTA Communities Zoning Plan
In the latest pushback to the state's ambitious multifamily zoning law, the town of Needham voted down its promising housing plan.
The town saw more than 11,000 votes cast Tuesday night with a 59% to 41% victory to reject the town's initial housing plan, the Needham Observer reported. The Needham Planning Board will now have to go back to the drawing board to bring forth a new plan that will be voted on during town meeting later this year.
Charles River Regional Chamber CEO Greg Reibman said a "no" vote doesn't mean the town doesn't want to comply with the law but rather that it doesn't want to develop as much housing as the original plan zoned for.
"I very well expect there'll be an effort to come back and put forward something more modest for town meeting," Reibman told Bisnow. "Needham will probably come in compliance either way, but you never know."
The plan, dubbed the Neighborhood Housing Plan, would have created capacity for roughly 3,300 units more than the minimum 1,784 units the town needed to comply with the law. Needham Town Meeting passed the plan in a 118-to-90 vote in October, but pushback from residents led to this week's townwide referendum.
The town voted after weeks of contentious discourse between the pro- and anti-zoning groups Yes for Needham and Needham Residents for Thoughtful Zoning.
"There's been a lot of misinformation," Reibman said. "The main thing that voters definitely don't understand is compliance numbers don't equal the numbers that will be built. It terrifies people."
Although Needham struck down its plan, other towns and cities have already begun to see development interest after complying with the law.
Lexington has seen more than 1,000 new units proposed in its MBTA Communities districts. Westwood saw one of its projects, Petruzziello Properties' 150-unit apartment building, break ground last year.
Earlier this month, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously upheld the MBTA Communities Law in a case involving Milton, another town that voted to reject the law's required zoning. The court ruled that Attorney General Andrea Campbell has the power to take legal action over cities and towns that don't comply with the law.
The court also ordered the state to submit new guidelines for the law, which it did this week, and the state extended the compliance deadline by six months to give towns and cities more time to pass zoning plans, Boston.com reported.
"As disappointing as the vote in Needham is, the overwhelming trend in Massachusetts is unchanged: cities and towns are consistently giving the green light to more housing because voters know that the future of our commonwealth depends on investing in housing," Citizens' Housing and Planning Association CEO Rachel Heller said in a statement.
As of last week, 116 communities have filed new zoning plans to comply with the law. A handful of other communities have held out on passing plans while they awaited the results of the Milton suit or have rejected plans altogether.
Reibman said that following the SJC ruling, communities that have held back on approving plans now have an answer about whether or not the law can be enforced, so they should move forward with plans.
"Now we know that the AG does indeed have the authority, and now we know that the law is indeed constitutional, which is an argument that I've heard in communities all over Massachusetts ... I think every one of the holdout communities that either didn't pass something or refused to pass something and missed the deadline, and so it ends that conversation," he said.