THE ARGUMENT

Is inclusionary zoning a good tool for cities and towns to expand affordable housing?

Vote in our online poll at www.bostonglobe.com/globelocal

Yes

Leslie Reid

CEO of Madison Park Development Corporation, a nonprofit that develops affordable housing

Inclusionary zoning policies require that new housing developments include a percentage of income-restricted homes, often in exchange for such incentives as being allowed to exceed the usual density limits. A 2022 Boston Foundation report documents that the region’s housing costs continue to escalate at levels that disproportionately impact lower-income and workingclass households. It also said many metro core communities have adopted inclusionary development policies as one way to incorporate more accessible housing opportunities.

These locally implemented policies have supported public and private partnerships that are bringing desperately needed new housing. We need to ensure elderly and disabled households living on fixed incomes, as well as minimum wage-level workers that provide essential services, are given housing opportunities that support our future growth.

Boston is joined by other communities in the area, from Brookline, Cambridge, and Newton to Quincy, Somerville, and Dennis, in recognizing that inclusionary requirements are critical to ensuring that new housing development is equitable.

As community-based, nonprofit affordable housing developers, Madison Park Development Corporation in Roxbury and South Boston Neighborhood Development Corporation are united across traditional lines by the positive impacts that inclusionary development has had.

In Roxbury and South Boston, inclusionary development has facilitated hundreds of income-restricted, affordable housing units, ensuring that decent and safe housing options are available to all of our neighbors — those in the bluecollar workforce and those on fixed incomes. Through the expansion of such policies, this benefit can be extended to many more Massachusetts communities.

While opponents of equitable and inclusionary development policies raise concerns that this may discourage development, we have seen proof that the opposite is the case. Continuing to expand inclusionary development to communities beyond the Boston metro core will advance the important goal of implementing collaborative and creative approaches with landowners and developers that provide equitable housing opportunities.

By achieving that goal, we can support our collective economic growth and provide important benefits, especially to our most vulnerable residents.

No

Emerson J. Clauss III Senior project manager at Landmark Associates; past president of the Home Builders & Remodelers Association of Massachusetts

Massachusetts is in the midst of a housing crisis that threatens its very vitality, and local proposals to adopt or expand inclusionary zoning requirements will simply aggravate this crisis rather than alleviate it. For many years, new home construction in the state has failed to keep pace with the need for more housing, and the supply-and-demand result of this problem is rapidly escalating home costs. From 2012 to 2017, the state added about 246,000 residents and 353,000 new jobs while permitting only 81,000 new housing units. The age of our housing stock is near the top of the list among states nationally.

These trends, combined with a global pandemic that has enabled many people to work from wherever they want, has contributed to a drop in our statewide population the last two years. With that reduction in population — and thus our talent pool — companies are being forced to make decisions about whether to stay in a state with such high housing costs, or follow the crowd and move elsewhere.

In just the same way that tax policy made “Taxachusetts” unattractive to business in the 1970s and ‘80s, changes in housing policy threaten to create a similar effect. Suburban communities have made it nearly impossible to build new housing, as restrictive zoning codes and NIMBY opposition to sorely needed multifamily housing have stopped many worthwhile proposed developments right in their tracks.

Some would argue that inclusionary zoning increases the number of affordable units constructed, but this is only the case when new housing actually is constructed. The setaside requirements for affordability under inclusionary zoning, conversely, prevent many builders from creating multifamily housing.

The ability to create new housing comes down to math, and the math simply doesn’t work when factoring in onerous set-aside requirements. The cost of building has never been higher: Land costs are soaring, material costs have escalated dramatically, and interest rates are surging. Imposing substantial set-asides without adequate density offsets will kill new housing development in urban communities, just as overly restrictive zoning and NIMBY opposition has served as a roadblock to development in the suburbs.

We should not make it harder to build new housing when the need is so significant. Adopting more inclusionary zoning will do just that, and should be stopped.