A Massachusetts state legislator has a big idea to ease the urban rent crisis
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/6/11370258/honan-zoning-reform-bill
Boston is one of several big coastal metropolitan areas suffering from a severe housing shortage driven by excessive limits on housing construction. A bill by Massachusetts General Assembly member Kevin Honan that's cleared the housing committee offers a glance at what a solution to the housing crisis gripping the United States is likely to look like.
Not action by the federal government, which is too remote from local land use issues to make a decisive difference. And not action by local governments, which are too tied up in picayune concerns and risk aversion to make the changes America needs.
What America needs is for states — particularly states like Massachusetts, California, and New York — to take the lead and recognize that housing policy is too important to be left up to a motley assortment of town councils and neighborhood committees. If the economies of America's highest-wage, best-educated metropolitan areas are going to grow, then they need to have places for people to live, and it's state governments that are going to have to make them do it.
The idea: force towns to zone for multifamily uses
Honan's bill does something pretty simple. As Clark Ziegler and Christopher Oddleifson of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership describe it:
The bill would require that every city and town plan for multifamily housing and designate areas where it is allowed as-of-right. It would also require every community to allow single-family homes clustered on modest lots in compact, walkable neighborhoods surrounded by open space. Cities and towns would be compensated for any net increases in school costs that result from their approval of multifamily and cluster developments.
