Sign up to receive Ward and political newsletters by email here.
Many Newton residents are probably aware by now that the City of Newton – including staff, Councilors, and the public – has recently been working on a plan to reform and improve the zoning code for Newton’s village centers as part of a comprehensive zoning review and redesign effort now spanning more than a decade. We hope to make our village centers more vibrant for residents and businesses and featuring high-quality uses of available land in high-demand areas.
By coincidence, the state legislature last year passed into law an “MBTA Communities Act” on multi-family housing that would affect zoning in many of these same areas, the village centers close to transit stops on the Green Line, Commuter Rail, and potentially bus hubs. The state’s view is that suburbs served by the MBTA need to step up how much housing is allowed to be built near these public transit services, especially with plans to add passenger capacity to fixed-rail service, which will require huge investments from the state and probably federal governments.
The MBTA Communities legislation, which reserves a great deal of local control in tailoring its implementation in each municipality, is an exciting opportunity for Newton to solidify these discussions about village centers and transit-oriented land use into a coherent and official plan. In a sense, Newton got a head start on coming into compliance quickly with these new state requirements. It’s also an opportunity, depending on how we choose to structure it, to get more units of both market-rate and low-income housing built in Newton in the coming years.
What will be required? What stays the same?
The new state rules will require that certain areas of the city near major transit stops be rezoned in sections to allow for the potential future possibility of 8,330 units of housing in total, including any existing units of housing. It is not a requirement that this many units of housing actually be built, and there is no deadline to reach this benchmark. It simply must be hypothetically permissible for landowners at some point to build by right (i.e. without special permit approval) that many units across all these special zones in the future. That might come in the form of multi-family houses or it might come in the form of apartment buildings, both of which we already see near transit in Newton. (Very large projects could still be required to go through the special permit process, but those allowances would not count toward the 8,330 permitted by right.)
Please note that Newton’s existing, ambitious “Inclusionary Zoning” requirement for including affordable units in market-rate buildings would still be in effect even on by-right construction in these zones. The new zones also wouldn’t override any historic protections or conservation/environmental restrictions, which means those protections are factored into the formula calculating how many units could hypothetically be built in these new zones.
The market conditions over several decades would then primarily dictate what happens from there as various parcels of land in the zones turn over. (Bear in mind that the primary market characteristic of Newton remains its suburban quality and that is still likely to be a selling-point even on many parcels that could now be more densely built under the new zoning code.)
Does this mean “density”? It depends!
As noted above, the rezoning would be in sections, since we have multiple transit stops. One zone would need to be fairly large (25 acres) and contiguous, but the other zones would be smaller (5 acres minimum) and probably clustered along the various commuter rail and light rail stations. All added together it would need to be possible for 8,330 units to exist on paper across these zones.
The required density buildable in these zones can vary quite dramatically depending on the aggregate size of the new zoned areas. For example, if we decide to make it very spread-out (say 555 acres altogether), then a pretty low density of by-right construction would be expected (15 units/acre average), and we would anticipate a lot more three-family or four-family housing in a wider region of Newton in the future. 15 units/acre is, in fact, the lowest possible threshold for density under the state rules. On the other hand, if we made the MBTA-oriented zones very constrained geographically (say 238 acres altogether), we would need to be zoning for larger apartment building projects (35 units/acre average) in or near our village centers. I would expect us to land somewhere in the middle at the end of this drafting process.
Low-income housing possibilities
One possible scenario that I am very interested in Newton adopting would be to zone for significant density bonuses near the village centers for mid-sized (think 30-75 units) 100% low-income housing developments (projects eligible for Low-Income Housing Tax Credit development). The automatic density bonus for low-income projects would mean that “market-rate” housing projects would not be allowed to be this dense, at least by right.
These hypothetical low-income buildings might not get built, of course, based on market financing conditions and tax credit availability, but it would finally give us the chance: One of the biggest deterrents to specialized low-income housing developers has been the slowness and uncertainty of Newton’s project approvals process, and these by-right zones would effectively grant pre-approval in key locations. It would also be a good mission for our new City of Newton Affordable Housing Trust to help out with.
More importantly for the purposes of this law, it would add a significant number of allowed units in a compact version of the new transit-oriented zones, with less disruption to the areas of the city that are not as well served by transit and other infrastructure.
Conclusions
Again, I want to emphasize that we have a wide range of options that we can tailor to the specific needs of Newton and its various villages, and this is an exciting chance to address all at once many of the village center objectives we have already been discussing. This legislation is great news for Newton because we were already working in that direction anyway. Embracing this quickly will give us maximum flexibility to fit it to our needs with the most local control and input.
But it should be noted, too, that the MBTA Communities requirements from the state are not optional, either. Some municipalities may try to hold out against it, but it is imperative that Newton not become deadlocked on this issue and face legal consequences and penalties for not implementing it. Unlike some of the lower-population cities and towns with even higher local tax bases, Newton actually does receive a pretty significant amount of help from the state each year on funding our priorities and serving our less-affluent populations.
Failure to comply with the new MBTA Communities law by the deadline would result in the termination of a number of critical state funding grants (such as MassWorks planning money that has been going toward revitalization and infrastructure planning in less affluent neighborhoods like Newton Upper Falls and Nonantum). Failure to comply would also damage our relationship with various state agencies and officials and thus put at serious risk Newton’s chances of seeing state funding delivered for absolutely necessary upgrades to commuter rail capacity and station accessibility (and maybe even several planned Green Line station upgrades).
The City Council needs to hear from you in the public on how we should implement the MBTA Communities Act zoning requirements here in Newton. I also encourage you to let your Councilors know that you favor a timely implementation of the new law without unnecessary delays.