The housing crisis is endemic across the United States: 90% of families between 2000 and 2020 lived in counties where housing costs rose faster than incomes. And the crisis is especially acute in states like Massachusetts, which usually ranks between the 2nd and 5th most expensive housing markets from year to year.
The prevailing solution to the crisis, held by many progressive organizations, is the construction of additional housing. An increased supply, it is said, would drive housing costs down. With this in mind, Massachusetts voters heading to the polls will also be deciding on a ballot question about housing development.
Question 7 would allow the development by right of single-family homes in residentially zoned areas with lots as small as 5,000 sq ft, provided there is access to the street, sewer, and water. The zoning change would leave open the ability for municipalities to enact “reasonable” legislation restricting building height, parking requirements, and a few other measures.
I will be voting No on Question 7. At best, passing Question 7 would provide pyrrhic benefits to housing production; at worst, it would exacerbate the housing crisis.
Zoning regulation and deregulation are value neutral; they can be used in progressive or regressive ways. It is easy to point to overly restrictive zoning ordinances. For example, 25% of residential properties in Massachusetts, especially those in rural communities, have two-acre minimum lot requirements for single-family homes. The Legalize Start Homes campaign, which is spearheading the ballot initiative, aims to tackle this unproductive zoning.
But the ballot question would solve these zoning concerns in the same way that a sledgehammer would assist in surgery.
Massachusetts is one of 10 home rule states wherein cities and towns are granted broader legislative powers. So long as a city’s zoning laws do not expressly contradict state laws, a city has the right to enact them. This has led to a complex patchwork of zoning regulations that can differ radically from town to town, a landscape that developers have long griped about. If Question 7 passes, the statewide law allowing 5,000 sqft lots would override all local zoning laws. In other words, towns and cities will lose significant legislative authority over all residential lots that are 5,000 sqft or larger.
It is for this reason that the primary opponent of Question 7 is the Massachusetts Municipal Association, an advocacy organization that represents all 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts. It is easy to point to bad zoning ordinances in a town or city, but those zoning ordinances are a result of local and democratic political processes. To remove local authority over residential zoning based on poor outcomes would be similar to suspending national voting because Donald Trump was elected. A better solution, and one keeping to the democratic character of home rule, would require the mass action of people in their local communities, work that is already required for the broader fight against capitalism.
This alone, I believe, provides strong grounds to reject Question 7. But the Legalize Starter Homes coalition argues that such surrender of local governance is necessary to produce enough housing to alleviate the housing crisis. By their estimates, passing Question 7 would allow between 2,200 and 5,700 new homes to be built every year. Other studies disagree with this estimate; Tufts, for example, believes that Question 7 would more plausibly produce between 350 and 1,200 new homes per year.
But what would these new homes look like? As its name suggests, the Legalize Starter Homes campaign believes the missing key to ending the housing crisis is starter homes. These new homes would be smaller, cheaper, and give middle-Americans access to a new sector of the housing market.
Consider me highly skeptical. If we look through the full (yet brief) text of the proposed law, we’ll see that it lacks any mention of affordability or starter homes. Put simply, this legislation idealistically relies on the benevolence of capital in using its newly-gained access to vast swaths of land to produce affordable housing.
Question 7 is purposely left open and vague because it is centered around amorphous developer capital. The housing crisis manifests differently for the working class and for the capitalist class. The former is faced with a crisis of affordability where rents, mortgages, utilities, etc. consume ever greater shares of working-class wealth. For the capitalist class, the housing crisis manifests in capital’s inability to produce profit. Developers, like other capitalists, are primarily concerned with transforming money into commodities (e.g., houses) and back into money plus profit. Concerns about affordability are always couched in terms of profitability.
This capitalist crisis is widespread in housing development. A recent report of the residential construction industry from the Association of Professional Builders stated that only 12% of builders showed strong financial literacy; the rest, especially small builders, operated in “Ponzi-like dynamics” where new building projects supply funds necessary to complete older ones. Question 7 slots perfectly into this cycle, providing developers new land to continue the very same capitalist logic that had developed this crisis.
As I have written elsewhere, I fully reject the notion that any resolution to the housing crisis will arise through the capitalist logic of supply and demand. As things stand now, roughly 250k homes are vacant in Massachusetts. One fifth of those homes are available for rent or purchase, and one half are currently for seasonal use. And the predominant trend of Massachusetts housing over the past two decades has been a steady decline in vacant housing that is available for rent or sale paired with an increase in vacant homes that are “sold but not yet occupied” or “otherwise vacant” (this includes second homes, luxury condominiums, homes as investments, etc.). An increase in housing supply will not guarantee that new homes are available to the working class; many will instead be bought by the wealthy.
And the wealthy have the most to gain from seeing Question 7 pass. One only needs to look at the financial backers of Legalize Starter Homes. Of the $1.5 million raised so far, $500k comes from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors. The Greater Boston Real Estate Board donated a further $350k. Both groups were some of the largest funders of the anti-rent control ballot campaign earlier in the year. Other funders of Legalize Starter Homes include Eastern Bank ($100k), private equity firm Marcus Partners LLC ($100k), and Blackstone-owned Apartment Income REIT ($40k). There are tens of thousands of dollars more in donations from various real estate management firms, developers, and wealthy individuals. And earlier this month, Airbnb donated $105k to Legalize Starter Homes. It is no coincidence that these companies and organizations have funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into this ballot initiative; they stand to make immense profits should Question 7 pass.
For these reasons, I urge Massachusetts voters to reject Question 7. As it stands now, Question 7 places capital at the driver’s seat of housing development, all but guaranteeing the continuation of the housing crisis.
As with all opinion and news-analysis articles published by People’s World, the views expressed here are those of the author.
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