SEB Housing

  While 80% of Massachusetts cities and towns voted last November to save 40B, it is clear from my experience that most suburban communities don’t like it and would rather have developers use their own inclusionary bylaws to create affordable housing. Having researched many of these bylaws, I have to conclude that the economic realities of developing mixed income housing has been ignored in drafting these bylaws. In order to stimulate or induce affordable housing development in lieu of any “as-of-right” development options, there needs to be an economic or financial incentive, yet most inclusionary bylaws totally fail in this regard. The Governor’s “ Smart Growth Tool Kit ” has developed a model inclusionary bylaw which allows 2 additional market rate units to be built for every affordable unit required. This makes sense to me as the economic loss of creating an additional affordable unit can only be offset by adding 2 more market units (in some communities with lower land values a...