Governor: Work with us on housing
Healey reaches out over MBTA zoning law
The state’s lawsuit against Milton is slated to head to the Supreme Judicial Court in the fall, but Governor Maura Healey said in an interview this weekend she doesn’t want to wait that long and hopes other communities considering defying the multifamily zoning law will instead work with the state.
“i’ll say this, i don’t want to wait for the courts, and i certainly don’t want to get into it with communities. As a state, as governor, we’re here to support communities,” Healey said in an interview with WbZ-tV’s Jon keller that aired Sunday. “the fact is this, Jon, the reason that young people are leaving the state, the reason that employers can’t expand in the state, the reason other companies aren’t going to come to Massachusetts, is because housing costs are so high.”
the governor did not suggest another way to resolve Milton’s noncompliance during the interview.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell in February filed a lawsuit against Milton and its building commissioner after town voters rejected a zoning plan that would have complied with the MbtA Communities Act, which requires cities and towns near t service to adopt zoning that allows multifamily housing by right in certain areas. the SJC plans to hear the case in October, Justice Serge Georges ruled last week, saying the case raises questions that ought to be settled or else they will keep popping up.
Zoning has long been the domain of municipalities, contributing to lagging housing production in some places, and cities and towns seldom give up local control willingly. Healey didn’t answer directly when keller asked whether she was “prepared for a long, politically nasty battle with cities and towns over the issue of local control,” but she did address the topic in an interview with WbUR last week.
“We’re not looking to take away local control at all. but we are looking for everybody to realize that if we don’t meet this moment and work together — and every community can do it in different ways, there’s flexibility out there — we’re going to see people leave the state and we’re going to suffer for that,” Healey said. Healey also told keller in Sunday’s interview she will “have to take a look at” the possibility if granting exemptions from aspects of the communities act. As a growing municipal resistance has cropped up in other towns that face an end-of-theyear deadline to comply with the law, at least one, Wrentham, has already asked the governor for “a waiver or modifications” to its requirements.