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Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
The city of Newton, whose Green Line stations include Newton Centre, was one of 12 rapid transit communities that adopted zoning changes by the year-end deadline under the MBTA communities law.
All 12 of the state’s designated “rapid transit communities” under the MBTA communities law met the deadline to adopt local zoning changes that they will use to apply for compliance.
The 12 communities — Braintree, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Medford, Milton, Newton, Quincy, Revere and Somerville — had a deadline of Dec. 31, 2023, to adopt zoning changes to encourage the development of multifamily housing near transit stations. [Update: Milton Town Meeting did approve zoning changes to comply in December, but voters overruled those changes on Feb. 14. The MMA will be following and reporting on Milton’s next steps.]
Enacted as part of the 2020 economic development law, Section 3A of Chapter 40A (the Zoning Act) requires 177 MBTA communities to have at least one zoning district of reasonable size near a transit station in which multifamily housing is permitted as of right — and to meet other criteria set forth in the statute. Failure to comply would mean a loss of eligibility for funding from a number of the state’s funding programs, including MassWorks, the Local Capital Projects Fund and Community Planning Grants.
In an effort to increase flexibility, revisions were made to the law last August allowing for mixed-use development districts.
The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities has not yet certified the zoning plans of the first group of 12 communities, but officials expect to do so in the coming weeks. The law only requires zoning changes, not the construction of units, but a total of more than 83,000 homes could be created under the changes made in the 12 communities.
Communities identified as either “commuter rail” or “adjacent” — of which there are 130 — have a deadline of Dec. 31, 2024, to adopt zoning changes under the law. The remaining 35 MBTA communities, classified as “adjacent small towns,” have a deadline of Dec. 31, 2025.
More than a dozen of these remaining communities have already passed their zoning changes.