Over the last few decades, a series of complicated factors have helped create Massachusetts’ housing crisis. The housing bubble burst in the late 2000s, slowing new construction for years afterward. The post-pandemic economy supercharged home prices. The number of households that need their own home has soared.
But perhaps the easiest starting point to understand the state’s housing problem is this: Apartment buildings with four units or more can only be built, under current local zoning rules, on roughly 4 percent of the land in this state.
That is the conclusion of a new report by researchers at the National Zoning Atlas, who spent several years poring over every zoning code in Massachusetts to determine precisely what can be built where in this state. Their findings, finalized this month, shed new light on an issue that has helped send housing prices soaring. It’s not just that it is difficult to build apartments in Massachusetts. On the vast majority of land in this state, without special approval from the town, it is against the law.
“We have a huge housing problem in this country, and all of this discourse about how to fix it, and yet we still have yet to address the fact that it is simply illegal to build housing in most places,” said Sara Bronin, founder of the National Zoning Atlas. “If you want to understand the housing crisis, that’s a pretty good place to start.”
Source: New ‘Atlas’ maps zoning in every community in Massachusetts
