State hopeful, though no towns approved yet for smart growth plan
by Statehouse News ServiceMay 8, 2006 -- State officials are frustrated with the stark unpopularity of a highly touted program designed to increase housing stock within "smart growth" guidelines, but anticipate a domino effect once it begins to take hold, they said Monday.
No municipality has finalized an agreement under the so-called 40R program introduced last year to reward cities and towns that build along the Romney administration's development principles. Fourteen cities and towns are "in negotiations" with the Department of Housing and Community Development, state officials said.
"It is voluntary, so they have to have the political will and the resources to undertake it," said Sarah Young, deputy director of policy development at DHCD, who acknowledged the agency was "absolutely" disappointed by the response. During Monday's hearing before the Legislature's Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets, part of the panel's annual series on executive branch spending, DHCD Director Jane Wallis Gumble also told lawmakers she couldn't speak to the administration's plans to curb spending on the maintenance of public housing. In budget hearings before Gov. Romney printed his fiscal 2007 budget, subsidized housing advocates told officials stories of crumbling infrastructure and sorely needed maintenance funding.
At Monday's session, House Dean David Flynn (D-Bridgewater), the committee's co chair, asked Gumble whether the administration planned to reduce funding for maintenance of public housing infrastructure.
"At this point," Gumble said, "I don't have an answer."
Chapter 40R, included in the fiscal 2005 budget, dangles financial incentives before localities who agree to build high-density housing for low and middle-income occupants in "smart growth zoning districts." Designed to encourage communities that have been loath to embrace new and affordable development, the statute fits into Romney's larger "smart growth" strategy.
In a March 2005 hearing with lawmakers, who worried that communities wouldn't be able to pull enough cash out of the state's incentives program, then Secretary for Development Doug Foy called 40R "the gold standard for zoning reform," and reported 20 cities and towns in talks with the state.
But since the initiative's inception, only Chelsea and Norwood have reached the "preliminary approval stage," while North Reading and Plymouth are "very close" to preliminary approval, Young said.
"A lot of communities are interested. They're looking at ways to do it," said Young. "It's new, but as soon as someone has done it, and they're some sample zoning they can look at, they'll go.”
But Young conceded that many localities "tend to be very reactionary," and Gumble attributed the paucity of affordable housing units to "supply" and local zoning
regulations.
"We can't build it if communities are not interested in dealing with that head on," she told the committee.
DHCD spokesman Phil Hailer said the program was beginning to build momentum, and said Foy frequently compared reversing decades of growth-averse local policies to "turning a super tanker."
With Massachusetts, made up of 351 cities and towns, the only state in the nation to lose
population two straight years, the challenge of providing enough housing at reasonable cost has riddled policymakers.
"We are spending money all across the system, but not providing the right carrot and stick for communities to help solve the problem," Sen. Mark Montigny (D-New Bedford), committee co-chair, told the housing officials.
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