| Supporters of a developing House land use, smart growth and housing production bill say 54 House members have signed on as supporters, but real estate industry interests are strongly opposed to the measure.
According to the Great Neighborhoods campaign, the bill will be aimed at creating more housing choices for families, encouraging cities and towns to update zoning bylaws more often, establishing more predictable permitting, reducing time and money spent on legal battles, and improving local coordination around development.
Reps. Stephen Kulik and Sarah Peake, both members of Speaker Robert DeLeo’s leadership team, on May 10 released a list of areas of emerging agreement that they said stemmed from meetings over the winter with officials from the real estate, planning, municipal government, environmental and housing sectors. Kulik and Peake asked in a letter to DeLeo that the House act on a bill this session and said Massachusetts families, especially young people and seniors, face a “housing crisis that threatens to tear them from their communities and undermine our economic success and quality of life.”
Tamara Small, a government affairs official with the commercial real estate group NAIOP Massachusetts, said major real estate groups support a “balanced bill” filed by Gov. Charlie Baker. She told the News Service real estate groups are “strongly opposed” to bills that form the basis of the Kulik-Peake plan.
“While meetings did take place with NAIOP, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, and the Homebuilders & Remodelers Association of MA, we were unaware of any compromises that had been reached,” Small recently told the News Service. She said many of the areas promoted by those behind the Kulik-Peake plan “would make it more difficult to build housing in Massachusetts” and make development more expensive and unpredictable.
Andre Leroux, director of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance, has said the areas of emerging agreement outlined in the Kulik-Peake letter represent “a big step forward from where we’ve been.” On Thursday, Leroux said the alliance is still pursuing more signers but is “pleased with the progress so far.”
