THE STATE IS moving to cut Westwood off from several sources of funding – the first municipality to be penalized for submitting a zoning roadmap that doesn’t comply with the requirements of the MBTA Communities Act.
Passed during the Baker administration and now championed by Gov. Maura Healey, the MBTA law tries to tackle the statewide housing shortage by requiring cities and towns within a certain distance from public transit to zone for more multi-family housing.
Westwood’s initial plan “claimed in a conclusory fashion that Westwood’s zoning bylaws already comply” with the MBTA Communities Act requirements “and the town will take no further action to amend its zoning bylaws, or to demonstrate that the existing bylaws comply,” the state Department of Housing and Community Development wrote in a letter to the town on April 19.
This puts Westwood at risk of losing out on a number of funding sources, including the Housing Choice Initiative, the Local Capital Projects Fund, and the MassWorks infrastructure program. The Department of Housing and Community Development said it is informing these funding programs that Westwood is not in compliance.
Town Administrator Christopher Coleman said Friday morning that the town has no comment at this time.
Westwood is roughly 12 miles southwest of Boston, home to about 16,200 residents in 5,800 units of housing. It also has two MBTA commuter rail stations – the Route 128 station and the Islington station – which places it squarely in the “commuter rail community” category of the new zoning requirements.
The town has until the end of 2024 to adopt a new and compliant zoning district “of reasonable size” anywhere within half a mile of its commuter rail stations. The district has to cover 50 acres and zone for 870 multi-family units, though the units do not have to be built.
“This law is not a housing production mandate,” state housing and economic development officials wrote in late 2022 as the requirements were rolled out. “It is all about setting the table for more transit-oriented housing in the years and decades ahead—which is not just good housing policy, but good climate and transportation policy, too.”
Expecting resistance from some regions, the state built in checkpoints to determine interim compliance. Communities had to submit action plans to the state by the end of January, explaining how they expected to meet those new requirements.
Almost all of the 177 municipalities have submitted plans, but a handful of towns dragged their feet, objecting to what they feel is a heavy-handed approach to encouraging density that is not flexible enough to local needs, limitations, and active planning. Middleborough, Holden, and Berkley are the final three holdouts.
Westwood, however, did submit a plan right on time on January 31. In the document, town officials asserted that existing zoning districts would likely comply with the MBTA requirements if the district boundaries were expanded. A recent zoning change in Westwood would create a new multi-family residential overlay district of about 16.5 acres within half a mile of its MBTA stations. The town does not know how many units would be created under the zoning change, but expects to file for a special permit application to allow density greater than 15 units per acre.
The 16.5-acre area already houses 450 units, Westwood officials wrote in their plan. If the special permit leads to another 150 potential units, the zone will more than double the MBTA Communities Act 15-units-per-acre density requirement. However, those projections are still well below the total 870-unit requirement the state assigned to Westwood.
Westwood’s interim plan insists that its existing zoning efforts should pretty much suffice, perhaps with some expansion.
“The town has asserted this position despite knowing … that its existing multi-family district is not of a ‘reasonable size’ as defined in DHCD’s compliance guidelines,” the housing department wrote in the letter. “The town declined an opportunity to amend its action plan to state an intent to comply with the DCHD guidelines.”
Like other cities and towns balking at the requirements, Westwood argues that the state should allow more flexibility for towns that feel they are already trying to responsibly build new housing.
“DHCD might consider revising its guidelines to apply the ‘Bird in Hand’ adage, and alter its requirements to allow municipalities that actually accomplish the construction of multi-family housing units, rather than merely the theoretic possibility of such units, to achieve compliance on a sliding scale,” Westwood’s action plan submission concluded.