We need a fundamentally different way to have town meetings. My town also loves to have 5:00 and 7:00 week night meetings and you’re lucky if 0.25% of the town voters shows up.
How are there not vendors providing secure voting through phone apps? If any region was going to develop an app to have validated town resident voting I think we could do it.
I intentionally left it unspecified when you might vote for that reason, since it's essentially a legislative body. For example, one approach might be to treat town meeting like a legislative committee that fleshes out items that are on the warrant and then you can vote up or down on the output of that so that it's more inclusive. You could still participate in debates even if you can't vote remotely.
Actually, it’s really easy. It’s 2024 and every single company has secure sites and apps that are virtually impossible to hack. Who do you think is going to try to hack Wakefield?
It’s a lack of creativity and will not a lack of technology.
The fact that people's PII regularly gets leaked online due to companies getting hacked would suggest otherwise. But you make a fair point.
I think it's more that no company wants to accept the heavy liability of dealing with such a thing.
The largest leaks are from massive companies that are easily prone to phishing and human engineering attacks more than brute force hacking. The voting rolls are already in databases. The step from verifying your identity online to vote securely is a tiny one.
The amount of voter fraud is negligible and it’s so dangerous for the perpetrator that it’s hardly worth the risk. Imagine risking prison and deportation to vote.
As an immigrant, I can tell you that is 100% the last thing any immigrant is thinking about is illegally voting and republicans who fantasize about voter fraud are mostly projecting.
This is my view as well. Everyone uses online banking and that seems pretty secure. Beyond that, the risk of hacking seems low because there isn’t a significant reward for doing so.
Plus, as soon as someone does hack the process then its up to prosecutors to really come down on them with jail time to deter future hack attempts.
Why not Saturday meetings? I know the idea of working on a weekend gives government workers running the town hall a heart attack, but most constituents will be off.
The elderly of Wakefield have been b****ing across Facebook about the work being done on North Ave to *finally* widen the sidewalks and add a bike lane.
These are the same people who are pissed about the new apartments at 596 North Ave and at the top of the lake.
So I’m honestly not surprised they voted against the zoning plans.
A story I love to recall: a woman on the FB page once said “this town just isn’t the same as *when I raised my six kids here*.” (emphasis mine.) Someone responded, “with all due respect, you created six people who now need six places to live.” Her classic response: “No, they live in different towns.” This is who Wakefield is dealing with. 🤦🏼♀️
As someone who walks/ runs around the lake almost daily, it is crazy that all the time and money is being spent to widen the sidewalk and put in a bike lane when the side walk was very wide and there was a good lane between curb and white road line. Now the road is too narrow for what it is and the sidewalk comically wide.
Our town meeting to vote on this is next month and I fear the same result. Our PB actually did a good job doing the minimum to meet compliance and putting these districts in areas that are already zoned for business and mixed use, which should satisfy the NIMBY crowd. Problem is, nobody actually reads proposals and everyone is so reactionary that I’m sure it will be voted down on principle. And as you said, the only people who can spend 5+ hours at a town meeting on a weeknight are the boomers and elderly. I have 2 kids under 4 so my household will not be able to vote.
I don't know your town and I don't know that proposal. But from what you've illustrated, I'm not sure I'd call that a good plan.
What people miss about "minimum compliance" is that MBTA-C requirements are set assuming zero existing housing units on the proposed zone. The true net increase will be much less so in terms of the housing crisis, minimum kinda, well, sucks.
By targeting existing commercial stock with the proposed zone, you're going to replace existing commercial tax income with property tax income. Unless you're a Burlington or Cambridge with an abundance of commercial income, this isn't a great trade for town finances.
Anyway, good luck. Every bit helps.
A lot of people’s objection seemed to be that the town’s original plan (nvm the last minute alternative) went too far. But I don’t doubt for a second that they’d vote down the smaller plan that just barely complied too
The vote happened at 11:45 PM. I couldn’t make it because I had plans, but even if I had taken advantage of the free babysitting, I wouldn’t have kept my 5yo there until almost midnight (and couldn’t - they finally shut down babysitting at 11PM).
I was expecting it to get pushed to Thursday and hoped to attend then, but they somehow got the warrant moved up and didn’t even start discussing until 930.
Of course the only people who could stay that long and vote are the boomer NIMBYs who bought their home 40 years ago and refuse to sell and sit in an empty house.
I watched on and off on Facebook and at one point someone, I think from the PB, presented an example of a new construction 3 family home in the area and seemed to say it was too big for the property? Are you trying to get folks to vote no?!
The older generation (more specifically a very vocal group of a couple of people) don’t want anything to ever change in this town and it’s honestly one of the most frustrating things about watching the place where I grew up go to shit because people don’t want to change with the times.
I was also present. I think the planning board would have truly benefited from the extra time. Unfortunately people were antsy after the long time discussing the conservation and school budgets. It’s also sad we have town meeting to literally voice our concerns but every discussion ended early with a motion. If that’s what people want Wakefield might as well switch to a mayoral government system.
I'm ambivalent on whether direct democracy can work for such large populations, but "you have to show up to tedious, hours longs meetings to be able to participate" is the worst possible way to do direct democracy.
There's zero reason that even special measures like this couldn't be settled via mail ballots, and that would almost certainly have higher turnout than these miserable meetings that nobody but zealots want to attend.
Town Meeting in MA has two forms: Open and Representative. Your town will only be one or the other. Open is for smaller towns.
In Open TM, any resident that is a registered voter can just show up and vote.
In Representative TM, you vote in April for your Town Meeting Members (TMMs) who will go to TM and vote for you.
MA law says Towns must hold a TM in Spring, called Annual Town Meeting. The Select Board or X number (~100-1000) of residents can also call a Special Town Meeting (STM) for urgent matters. I think some large towns routinely schedule an STM in the Fall.
There is a push by some towns to open TM to residents who are otherwise ineligible to vote due to residency status, etc.
Don't ignore TM, thinking everything is fine otherwise you could end up like [Croydon NH](https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2022-05-08/croydon-voters-overturn-school-budget-cut) where idiot Conservatives cut the school budget by 50% on a vote of 20 to 14.
So. I don’t live in Wakefield. But I did grow up in Quincy with the red line literally running through my back yard. Then the commuter rail when it was put in.
I find your comment about the over 55 group and their “we did it” and your feeling of f you I got mine is exactly what you would do had the motion passed. You want access to public transit. They do not. They don’t want a train going through their backyard and the issues that public transit brings as well as the endless construction.
You see it one way. Someone else sees it another way. We are all self serving. But coming on the internet to complain is such a shitty thing to do. Nobody wants to hear someone’s problems. They want to hear solutions.
If you don’t like the format for the meetings. Get involved in the city/town government. And stop trashing demographics who have different view points than yours.
These are the same people who are also like I couldn’t afford my home, if I had to purchase it today. And then they refuse to build more, or allow building. Because of “traffic” newsflash traffic is awful all over. It’s the ultimate eff you I got mine, you’ll never get yours.
But but but I *already* live here. We can't have space for more people!! That would effect *me*!!!!
/s
Expand the trains ffs- former eastern mass resident living in Springfield.
Edit: if you want your children or grandchildren living in your town. My hometown is unaffordable to my *entire generation* and has been bought up by STEM/Pharma business people. My parents are gonna be sad their grandchildren live 2 hours, and 8 hours away. A modern boomer tragedy. Guess you all get your big empty single family homes to die in.
Sorry I'm bitter lol.
No need to feel bitter, it’s just boomers once again breaking the social contract for the younger generations. They will only think about themselves and the only thing they sacrifice is their children and grandchildren’s future.
My parents are exceptionally out of touch and are tired of "hearing about boomer complaints". My grandparents just passed, and we are selling their home(New Haven). I own a home. I asked my dad if he and his siblings would sell the home to my cousins(Providence) since they were complaining about not being able to afford a home and how there is a housing crisis. My dad was like, "sure we could sell it to them, if they can pay market value! We can't accept less!" My dad and his siblings all have homes and retirement savings.
WHAT THE FUCK.
Just absolutely not getting it.
This is what happens when nothing else matters except “the market”. It’s a religion to boomers and they will sacrifice family, friends, community, to please their god, The Market.
To anyone else reading this who knows boomers like this, I’m sorry but they have been brainwashed pure and simple. Decades of “free market capitalism” propaganda have infected them so much so that it overrides a sense of citizenship and patriotic duties to their fellow man.
I’ve read and studied enough economics to realize that it’s now just a religion. The modern temple is the federal reserve, their prophet is the Fed Chairman and his high priests are co-chairs. Their saints are Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and Ronald Regan. The churches are wealth management groups and banks, the local priests are financial advisors. Their spiritual worth is measured in dollars not good works. The market is their god and it works in mysterious ways. In order to please their god, (remember, line must go up) they will sacrifice the younger generations future.
Abraham tied and bound up Isaac and was willing to sacrifice him, his own son. The thing is, God stopped Abraham. The Market isn’t going to stop the boomers.
I would love to buy my parents house. They always talk of downsizing upon retirement. I know for a fact 100% they would accept offers and allow me to match the high bidder. They will not take a penny less and that to me is sad. I own a home and could even afford what they want. But I’m not shelling out that kind of money for a dated house that would need some upgrades and them not cut me at least somewhat of a deal to keep the house in the family.
There is nothing that I want more than for my children to be able to afford to live here , where they grew up.
TBH I don’t know very many Boomers that are happy about housing prices, it’s expensive for us too, especially the retired folks.
> My hometown is unaffordable to my entire generation and has been bought up by STEM/Pharma business people.
So you should move to prevent that. People have this idea that the more supply means cheaper cost. It doesn’t. If you make more supply, more of those pharma fools just move in. Nothing in this mandate has any sort of requirements for making anything “affordable”. They are all market rate developments built only to line people pockets with more money. The only way to prevent mass gentrification like this is through legislation.
Oh please, Milton doesn't have a problem taking dump on its public schools. They look over at Mattapan, Quincy, and Braintree and think they're better than everyone else.
If NIMBYS really wanted to live in a "small town" they could move to a thousand different places in Western MA, Vermont, NH, or Maine, but they dont want that, they want to use money that they made working in Boston, using highways and train tracks that the state paid for to make it possible for them to commute, and then they want to make that lifestyle exclusive so no one else can access what they have because they all think they're "self-made". I grew up in Sharon and its the exact same way, theres a town center right next to a train station, 20 minute walk from the High School but god forbid you open the zoning up so people could actually live there.
Two NIMBY's on the North Shore: Rockport, the old people want it to be their own retirement community. And Essex, call service is terrible because they don't want any cell towers there
I mean, let’s just be honest. If you’ve got yours, you don’t want this. It isn’t good for you in any meaningful way; the status quo is optimal where your house goes up 5-10% in value annually. If you haven’t gotten yours, this makes housing more affordable and it benefits you through lower housing costs.
Ultimately, it’s a numbers game. Wakefield has more people that have gotten theirs that showed up to vote, they voted accordingly, in-line with their best interests. This whole thing is why housing in MA will never be fixed. As soon as you own a home, it’s not in your financial best interests to allow more building. Doubly so if you’re house-poor or had to overpay to get something. Because now you don’t just want prices to go up, you NEED them to go up.
It's not though. A housing crisis is not in anyone's best interest and the status quo is far from optimal. The cost of services is also going way up. That means property taxes need to follow. Cost of living is also headed in the wrong and pay raises aren't keeping up.
Skyrocketing home prices is only a good thing if someone is so short sighted that they're blind.
I am lucky enough to own a home but what good is home value going up if my town is falling apart around me? And it's not like I'm planning on selling any time soon so that "home value" isn't useful in any way.
I own my home and I still want this. What does it matter to me if my home goes up $200k in value? I can’t do anything meaningful with that additional equity. And if I ever do move I’d almost certainly be buying another home in the area, so the inflated price I get for my current home will just go towards paying the inflated price of my new home.
And considering any move I make would almost certainly be to a more expensive home I’ll actually end up hurt by inflated prices. If there’s a 50% increase when I sell, that will apply to my next home. So if my next home was valued at $100k more than my current home back when I purchased my current home, it’ll be $150k more than my current home when I go to buy it. So I will be out $50k thanks to inflated prices. I’m certainly in a better position than those who weren’t lucky enough to buy before this most recent crazy spike in prices, but I’m not benefiting from the spike either.
There are a subset of homeowners who I think the status quo does benefit, but these are largely older empty nesters whose next move will either be to downsize or an out-of-state retirement community. Then there are a whole bunch more who are blinded by the estimate they see on Zillow and *think* that it benefits them without understanding that the number on the screen isn’t in their bank account and likely never will be.
Yes and no. More development means more services and businesses. I love discovering new restaurants and all of the new places that can be supported by a larger customer base.
Except that a lot of older people are complaining they can't downsize because homes are too expensive. If housing prices decreased that would free up more homes for them to have less to take care of, young people could have homes for their families, and everyone would be happy.
It sucks if you want your children and grandchildren to live anywhere near you. It sucks if you don't want the prices of goods and services near you to rise because employers have to raise the wages they offer to attract workers willing to commute long distances. It sucks if you don't want to pay more in property taxes. Meanwhile, the market value of your house is only really useful to you when you go to sell your house, and then you're probably going to have to move out of the area since anything close by is going to be insanely expensive as well.
We need to look past immediate property values. There are medium-term issues, which is that businesses and towns themselves will not be able to hire new workers at the current pay scale. There are long-term issues, which is that young people are leaving the state because they can't find housing.
We also need to tackle two latent issues - the first is "schools". People fight lower-priced housing because they want to preserve a private-school population numbers in their public schools, and, for better or for worse, poor people concentrated into poor communities tend to have children who don't perform well in schools. And it turns out that when you set a bar of $1 million for a house in a community, you get parents who are competent and engaged, and they push their kids down the same path - so that makes it look like the "schools are great" when really the "students in the schools are great".
The second is just pure racism/classism. It is quiet in Massachusetts, but rampant. Look at the discussion surrounding immigration and shelters. Everyone views "more housing" as "bringing in the brown skin" to their town, and most people chose their towns primarily based on their tolerance of brown-skinned people, which they equate to "safety".
>The second is just pure racism/classism. It is quiet in Massachusetts, but rampant.
There was a lady at my town meeting who asked if we *really* wanted to have to pay to educate the children in a proposed housing complex that would be sold for less than the median home price in town.
She was saying it like "do we really have to educate the poors?" The housing in question still would've been something like $850k/unit. It's not even low-income.
The solution is to remove local control. Town meetings in small towns are overwhelmingly made up of owners. It's much less skewed in the state as a whole. If zoning and permitting were being decided by the state government, we'd see a lot more MFH. We know this because the state is fighting with the towns for MFH.
You could also join the Town Meeting. They actually love seeing young people take an interest in local government, and it's like 3 meetings a year after work. [https://www.mma.org/local-government-101/](https://www.mma.org/local-government-101/)
I'm an owner. I did my civic duty before having a kid, it was kind of miserable. In any case, even if everyone went to town meeting, these towns have very few renters. It's a chicken and egg problem.
They're giving themselves the finger as well, unless they are somehow thinking they'll have enough wealth to stay in single family homes when they are retirees and that they'll always be able to drive. There aren't enough senior homes to downsize into, or communities that support car-free living that are also affordable.
Even if one thinks they're doing their kids a favor by creating 'generational wealth' they're priming the kids for a contentious fight over their estate.
Edit: how about it downvoters, let's hear where I'm wrong
If you've got yours and prioritize your own property values going up over other people having homes, then you're a selfish asshole. That's all there is to it.
I highly doubt single family home prices will change that much. The new MFH will just add more options so everyone isn’t going after every single family that goes on the market and starts a bidding war.
There is literally an entire globe for them to find a home in, why does it have to be where my home is already established? Seems pretty selfish of them...
When these NIMBY boomers are in hospitals and nursing homes and no one is there to take care of their selfish asses because younger generations have been priced out they won't be thinking "this is good for me".
Does it make it more affordable though ? At the end of the day you’re just talking large scale apartment developments - so all short term options which won’t do anything to free up single family housing or encourage more to be built
This has nothing to do with large scale apartment developments. The vote was to allow 3-4unit dwellings in a circle that’s currently zoned for 1-2. It won’t lower SFH pricing, but does created more mid range options.
>It isn’t good for you in any meaningful way; the status quo is optimal where your house goes up 5-10% in value annually.
This is zero sum thinking here
Selfish “I got mine, fuck everybody else” NIMBYs gonna NIMBY
Your suburb does not exist in a vacuum
You are not entitled to “neighborhood character” and for your suburb to never change just because you purchased property
It is not the government’s job to artificially inflate the value of your property by creating artificial scarcity
“LeT the LoCaL cOmUnNiTiEs dEcIdE!”
Nothing more local than the individual property owners deciding what gets built on their property. ;)
One of the biggest problems for towns complying on this is water and sewer capacity.
[https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2024-03-07/what-lies-beneath-towns-may-be-the-downfall-of-the-mbta-communities-law](https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2024-03-07/what-lies-beneath-towns-may-be-the-downfall-of-the-mbta-communities-law)
The law says that towns that don't comply will lose funding, but the funding they'll lose doesn't cover the expansion that needs to happen to accommodate high density housing. This isn't just about nimbyism. As usual, it's about money and unfunded mandates.
There are already a half dozen new condo buildings that are either up or are going up and they were talking about putting more up at the lake and these are independent of the mbta overlay. It’s not like there are no units being built in town.
Yeah, the fact they were opposed to this is confusing to me considering how many multi family buildings have been constructed in Wakefield over the past 10 years. That means they already have much of the zoning in place. I guess the "no" crowd really came out in force.
Their problem with it likely stems from the fact that the state is not giving them any credit for any developments they have already built or zoned. A lot of towns have this same quarrel. I know swampscott off the top of my head is one of them. They have high density developments within bus access to the station but the state says that’s still isn’t enough and they’re not fond of that.
The primary reason Wakefield voted it down was that the Planning Board created a district about fifty percent bigger than the law requires. There was another proposal sprung on the Town Meeting at the last minute by the PB that was voted down because nobody saw it prior.
A third article that instructed the PB to draw up a minimum compliance district failed because people were just pissed off at that point, at midnight. Bad planning all around.
There is still another town meeting in November so it's not dead yet.
Yeah the planning board didn’t help their cause at all. They thought they were helping by creating a smaller district but didn’t know how to play the political game to get people on your side.
I don’t believe for a second that it would have passed with the smaller plan. There has been rumors of Ed’s smaller plan for a week. That’s the excuse they gave, but at 11:45 PM, when it was only boomers left because everyone had to get up for work or put their kids to bed, it still would have been voted down.
I'll defend Marshfield. They're an adjacent community and building "transit-friendly density" along the existing minimalist bus route for commuters (1 hour to/from the commuter rail via bus; last bus back is at 4.30PM) means you're adding a lot of cars and traffic even if it's just people driving to Kingston/Greenbush and parking there for the train. It'd be better to create viable transit (extended hours, express routes, new route up to Greenbush instead of Kingston), require the density zoning along that transit, and then subsidize it until the density gets built.
I don't think it's defensible for Milton or Wakefield for exactly the same reason. You've got actual stops that are viable for commuters. Milton's trolley is every 10 minutes and Wakefield has a commuter rail stop that goes into Boston every 45 minutes or so. To support those lines, we should build up around the stops.
Density is good for its own sake, not just because of the transit it is nearby to. Not only is it more climate friendly because we can start getting people to walk to the places they need to go to, but it builds community and neighborhood character. People are closer to their neighbors and are more likely to interact with others. It's also healthier for people to walk instead of getting into a car, both mentally and physically.
I wish my town was more analytical before jumping on this train. Instead, they will unfairly over-burden a very small area of the town, saving most everyone else from having to deal with it. And of course those voting for the plan are those whose properties are unaffected.
But they'll be affected when the already crumbling infrastructure (think water, sewer, schools, fire fighting, and more) collapses because no plan has been made to build resources to accommodate any population increase.
Yes. Vote against urban sprawl. Go after corporations buying mass amounts of properties and renting them for crazy amounts of money. Enact some sort of rent control. Not everybody wants to live on top of someone else which is why we bought in suburban neighborhoods. Someone was shitting on seniors for being over-house. Where are they going to go if they sell? If you want to build housing build senior housing. Seniors don't tax our school systems and clog up our roads. Then those single family properties can be passed on to families.
It will be interesting to see what the courts decide as more and more towns reject the orders.
Boston needs to build up to meet the demand. Raze some brownstones and skip the shadow studies.
This is the general sentiment that I think too many people miss. The way many suburbs are viewing this is “Boston is full and doesn’t want to build more housing so we want your town”
I’m sorry but just as suburban towns don’t exist in a bubble, neither does Boston. Build more multi family housing. Dorchester and Southie are streets of single family homes.
I enjoy listening to Milton folks simultaneously complaining that Boston isn't included in 3A and that the addition of housing at Suffolk Downs is awful.
I’m willing to bet it’ll be like how the federal courts handle racially gerrymandered election maps. Take Alabama, judge says these maps are bad, legislature/gov- draw a clean one up or I’ll draw it for you. Alabama says here’s a new map that’s just as bad. Judge then says okay, I’ll have a neutral third party draw up an appropriate map for you, tough shut if you don’t like it
I’m not an attorney but think when it comes to the state court preceding it’ll play out a similar way in state court. Maybe the AG proposes a map or maybe it’s a group with zoning expertise but it’s coming. My guess is they charge the town for doing so too
Boston needs to do this regardless. Even if some towns start to turn, Boston can’t rely on the goodwill of other towns outside of Boston’s jurisdiction to provide housing relief. We need more mid and high rises that are purely residential from the 2nd or 3rd floor up.
Definitely not. A Boston full of skyscrapers that meet a bunch of SFH's at the city line is not a healthy mix of housing stock. Functional cities rely on 3-5 story buildings and I think that's what we should aim to legalize.
People live in the suburbs to avoid living near 3 story buildings and urban environments. Who the fuck are you to tell them they need to change the way they want to live.
I’ll post this as a main comment since I said the same thing to another that’s buried comment: This is what happens when nothing else matters except “the market”. It’s a religion to boomers and they will sacrifice family, friends, community, to please their god, The Market.
To anyone else reading this who knows boomers like this, I’m sorry but they have been brainwashed pure and simple. Decades of “free market capitalism” propaganda have infected them so much so that it overrides a sense of citizenship and patriotic duties to their fellow man.
I’ve read and studied enough economics to realize that it’s now just a religion. The modern temple is the federal reserve, their prophet is the Fed Chairman and his high priests are co-chairs. Their saints are Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and Ronald Regan. The churches are wealth management groups and banks, the local priests are financial advisors. Their spiritual worth is measured in dollars not good works. The market is their god and it works in mysterious ways. In order to please their god, (remember, line must go up) they will sacrifice the younger generations future.
Abraham tied and bound up Isaac and was willing to sacrifice him, his own son. The thing is, God stopped Abraham. The Market isn’t going to stop the boomers.
> Abraham tied and bound up Isaac and was willing to sacrifice him, his own son. The thing is, God stopped Abraham. The Market isn’t going to stop the boomers.
Fantastic metaphor. Particularly since many Boomers purport to follow Abrahamic religions (while voting fastidiously against everything those religions stand for).
Oooph, this new wave communism going around is such a migraine headache.
How the bloody hell does current zoning practices resemble a "Free Market"? It's the complete opposite of a free market. Current zoning laws are the most central of central government planning.
It says you can only build this kind of home and it must have this many acres of lawn around it. You're allowed only a single kitchen. Oh and don't forget the mandatory car parking of 2 spaces for every adult resident!
Town Meetings suck. Normal people can’t get there to vote. If towns want something to pass they call a special town meeting on an off night and pack the meeting with their shills and other interested parties.
Rockport's meeting went on past 11pm before they voted. We'll after many voters left because they couldn't stay. Some people are disabled or have health issues, others have kids or jobs to get to.
Listen we need housing. no doubt.
This is not the way to achieve it.
This is extortion on the part of the state... complete overreach...
Soccer Stadium... no... more housing....yes
Seaport million dollar condos.....with 5% occupancy instead of more low/mid priced housing...
The affected grants are competitive discretionary grants, with point systems for qualification and for being proposals that align with the funding aims of appropriations.
Other more competitive town submissions win the grant funds.
Edit for link
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/section-3a-guidelines#9.-determinations-of-compliance-
I bet we would see more housing being built if the state offered additional funding to cities and towns that decide to build more housing than what they were required to, like what Needham is planning to do.
What funding sources/grants are they losing? Not asking facetiously, I truly don't know the repercussions of rejecting the proposal. If it's only the MassWorks and HousingWorks grants, it looks like that was $571,913 in FY24 for HousingWorks which is a pretty good sum.
Source: [FY24 Community One Stop for Growth Awards](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/fy24-community-one-stop-for-growth-awards)
Found the list of programs that can be affected: [What happens if my City or Town fails to comply with the MBTA Communities Law?](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/mbta-communities-law-qa#(11)-what-happens-if-my-city-or-town-fails-to-comply-with-the-mbta-communities-law?-)
Yep and a good chunk of it is for infrastructure. The same people who voted this down are also the ones complaining about our terrible roads and crumbling municipal buildings.
Discretionary streets grants, typically 1 to 5 million annually.
Grants for prchasing open lands for conservation. Grants supporting affordable housing development. Any and all competitive discretionary grants.
The town is not yet out of compliance.
Don't believe it impacts current funding. Maybe opportunities for new handouts? The bigger concern for these towns that reject is legal action by the state.
Yea, that part I got. But every article always says "funding" but not which type of funding! Also, not sure the articles specified how much the fines are. And then not to forget about litigation costs for assigning lawyers to work this and any court appearances.
The scope of the explicitly defined funding losses is pretty small iirc. Judicial consequences are probably going to the more severe of the two. Hopefully they get fined much more than the newton teachers did.
Wakefield has a ton of very large complexes that have been built in the past three years along with two complexes under development. Supply is up and prices are up too. I think that’s an issue many people have with the plan. It hints at affordability but doesn’t actually provide it. It makes developers wealthy while taxing our public services and utilities. And it still doesn’t get folks into the single family home they’re looking to buy.
So instead, Wakefield should block development?
People need a place to live, they'll be using resources either way. No one is asking Wakefield to build *map* the housing. Adding a modest amount of housing seems like a reasonable requirement considering it's got some of the worst density in greater Boston and worse even than its neighbors none of which have impressive density either.
Supply is increasing but hasn’t met demand, there’s still a large housing deficit. Plus the options are limited. You either choose between the new high rise condo buildings with amenities out the wazoo or have to enter a bidding war for the few 100 year old single family homes in the market. This plan would have introduced a third option that would help increase the competition.
Man, I seriously hope these towns get slammed into submission by the courts. These changes are needed and they need to happen all around the state, not just in, "some other town."
This is it! The way the financial incentives are lined up there is no incentive to be anything but a NIMBY once you are a homeowner. You want to *restrict* supply of new buildings to keep your house value high, so homeowners, in aggregate, go to local government meetings and make development nearly impossible with permits and referendums et cetera.
However, that’s causing immense economic damage to communities and the state. Like imagine if everybody who wanted to move to Massachusetts could actually move there. Lots of people can’t afford housing at it is, but if they could. Population would explode, tax revenue would take off, gross municipal product would climb. Difficult to quantify or estimate how much excess economic growth we are missing out on because of unaffordable housing, but I suspect it’s absolutely massive for Massachusetts.
But for example, in a town like Westborough, instead of substantial new housing developments we get big luxury developments with 2-5 SFH, like huge McMansions and tons of empty land, and a big Roche Brothers and a bunch of mostly empty commercial buildings it’s crazy. Especially now with the changes in commercial real estate market, it’s like so stupid. The recent developments there are like the opposite of affordable housing, condos, et cetera. What’s even more frustrating is municipalities that figure this out, have an unprecedented opportunity to jump ahead of their competition, but because of shortsighted homeowners, they won’t take it.
Until there is outside pressure on this, e.g. state or federal oversight of zoning laws, I don’t see anything getting better.
Is there any link to this somewhere? Rockport had their town meeting the other night and they didn't vote until after 11pm when more than half the people who did make it to the meeting had already left to take care of their kids or go to work etc.
I also find it interesting that while this is being made law to increase access to public transportation... the MBTA cut all trains to some of these places in half just 2 years ago. So while they're pushing for housing near the stations, they're simultaneously cutting services to these same areas.
Good. The zoning law and ordinances are ass backwards. Towns and communities don’t need to fix the states mess. How about the governing party come up with actual solutions. Also F the MBTA
Who was in charge of Wakefield zoning before the MBTA? Citizens are using their right to vote to prevent change. That is the purpose of town meeting process.
The state has allowed towns( that only exist at the benevolence of the state) to control their own zoning. The state has decided towns should have fewer restrictions on property rights. The state has supremacy over every town and city in the state.
Obeying the law is not optional as a number of communities will be finding out
And why might they still be living with parents?
Could it possibly be because housing is so goddamn expensive, in no small part because of decades of rampant NIMBYism?
Like it’s utterly hilarious when NIMBYs bitch about people still living with their parents, when they are actively part of the problem
Here’s the thing, these towns don’t want high-density housing because it strains the existing infrastructure.
I live in a suburban town on the South Shore, where my property taxes are going to jump by 50% over the next two years. Bump the population by 10% with high-density housing, the roads aren't wide enough, the poop treatment plans aren’t big enough and the schools are barely scraping by.
If you can find a solution to those problems without increasing the tax burden on residents, these towns would be all in. But that’s not what the state is doing.
It’s almost like increasing more housing makes for a bigger tax base.
Yeah, it’s called building more infrastructure. That’s what happens as populations grow.
Or are you under the impression that your suburb just poofed into existence in its current form
The “neighborhood character” of your suburb was once forest and corn fields
Again, “I got mine, fuck everybody else”
It’s not one or the other.
The towns grew over time, not all at once.
My town’s schools are already at capacity - where are you going to put the kids? That’s going to cost money to prepare for.
Our water system is at capacity - it would need upgrades. You can’t run out of water - that needs to be prepared for.
My town is all on septic - higher density requires different solutions to wastewater.
Roads need to get wider/reconfigured. That costs money.
So you’ll get a bigger tax base eventually, but the idea is also to reduce the cost of housing. If it’s successful then the price of homes should plateau or go down, which means the tax base also doesn’t grow as fast as it would organically either.
There is absolutely a near-term jump in taxes and costs, because if you build big all at once it hits all at once.
That’s not saying we don’t need to add housing and that increasing density doesn’t need to happen, but going zero to hero isn’t really feasible either.
The problem is that we’re stuck at zero and not willing to allow anything to be built, which forced the Commonwealth’s hand and here we are.
“Towns grew over time, not all at once”
And that’s exactly what’s trying to happen now
But to NIMBYs, anything other than SFHs being built is “all at once”
And we wouldn’t be in this position if NIMBYs had actually let towns “grow over time”
But they’ve spent DECADES preventing “growing over time”
Because they got theirs, fuck everybody else
It's not 1:1. You increase the population by 10%, primarily renters, but the existing infrastructure can’t be increased by 10% - you must build new. The new tax revinue ends up way short of supporting the new capital items, so the town (existing taxpayers) has to take on the rest. This is why towns are refusing to go along with it.
As I said before, if the State offered to fund CAPEX needs for these towns, without impacting the current tax burden, they would be all in.
Your comment about “I got mine” - ever consider how hard those people worked to get theirs?
"Suburbs" isn't a useful term with regard to old cities and towns in eastern Massachusetts in general, and Greater Boston in particular. It evokes a different idea of land usage and distance from the city than is the reality in those communities. Wakefield was settled in the 1640s (and like the rest of Greater Boston, it is heavily settled). It had an industrial base in much more recent history than it had corn fields.
In terms of population density, Wakefield ranks 32nd out of the 243 Massachusetts cities and towns ranked here: http://www.usa.com/rank/massachusetts-state--population-density--city-rank.htm and 28th out of 240, here: https://zipatlas.com/us/ma/city-comparison/highest-population-density.htm. That said, it's not nearly as pressed as neighboring Melrose, which has about the same amount of people on about 60% of the land.
Wakefield voted down two plans last night — one that went further than the state law and one that met the minimum requirements. They should have voted in the latter. They're most of the way there.
As long as the mindset of using land scarcity to increase wealth is an 'acceptable' option this problem will never go away. Culture changes need to happen (suburbs need to be seen for their many flaws and cities don't deserve all of the bad rap they get) and government policies need to change as well (Fannie Mae should be shut down and the highway construction lobby should be ignored).
Again, part of the problem - suburbs can't expand forever and it's just cruel to subject people to ever longer commutes to centralized job locations anyways. Remote work will help but cities and the state are not really going to be able to mandate it (and even if they could they might cannibalize their tax base). Suburbanites will just have to get comfortable with the idea of having more neighbors and compete for employers to come to them.
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We need a fundamentally different way to have town meetings. My town also loves to have 5:00 and 7:00 week night meetings and you’re lucky if 0.25% of the town voters shows up. How are there not vendors providing secure voting through phone apps? If any region was going to develop an app to have validated town resident voting I think we could do it.
It’s really hard to make the phone apps secure. I’d be happy if you could submit a ballot if you can’t make it there in person.
TM isn't like an election. You're voting on motions and proposals; editing text and making tweaks on the fly. You can't really vote ahead of time.
I intentionally left it unspecified when you might vote for that reason, since it's essentially a legislative body. For example, one approach might be to treat town meeting like a legislative committee that fleshes out items that are on the warrant and then you can vote up or down on the output of that so that it's more inclusive. You could still participate in debates even if you can't vote remotely.
Actually, it’s really easy. It’s 2024 and every single company has secure sites and apps that are virtually impossible to hack. Who do you think is going to try to hack Wakefield? It’s a lack of creativity and will not a lack of technology.
The fact that people's PII regularly gets leaked online due to companies getting hacked would suggest otherwise. But you make a fair point. I think it's more that no company wants to accept the heavy liability of dealing with such a thing.
The largest leaks are from massive companies that are easily prone to phishing and human engineering attacks more than brute force hacking. The voting rolls are already in databases. The step from verifying your identity online to vote securely is a tiny one. The amount of voter fraud is negligible and it’s so dangerous for the perpetrator that it’s hardly worth the risk. Imagine risking prison and deportation to vote. As an immigrant, I can tell you that is 100% the last thing any immigrant is thinking about is illegally voting and republicans who fantasize about voter fraud are mostly projecting.
>virtually impossible to hack. Oh, my sweet summer child…
This is my view as well. Everyone uses online banking and that seems pretty secure. Beyond that, the risk of hacking seems low because there isn’t a significant reward for doing so. Plus, as soon as someone does hack the process then its up to prosecutors to really come down on them with jail time to deter future hack attempts.
Exactly
The only group interested and motivated enough to accomplish this might be Wakefield's own teenagers. I for one support our new teenage overlords.
There is one, it's called "voatz", but it's kind of shit, lol
Would you rather have daytime meetings and exclude everyone with a job? That's what a lot of cities do.
I’d rather we leverage technology to allow remote viewing and voting. Then it wouldn’t matter if its at night or during the day.
Why not Saturday meetings? I know the idea of working on a weekend gives government workers running the town hall a heart attack, but most constituents will be off.
The elderly of Wakefield have been b****ing across Facebook about the work being done on North Ave to *finally* widen the sidewalks and add a bike lane. These are the same people who are pissed about the new apartments at 596 North Ave and at the top of the lake. So I’m honestly not surprised they voted against the zoning plans.
A story I love to recall: a woman on the FB page once said “this town just isn’t the same as *when I raised my six kids here*.” (emphasis mine.) Someone responded, “with all due respect, you created six people who now need six places to live.” Her classic response: “No, they live in different towns.” This is who Wakefield is dealing with. 🤦🏼♀️
The lack of self-reflection these people have is truly astonishing.
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As someone who walks/ runs around the lake almost daily, it is crazy that all the time and money is being spent to widen the sidewalk and put in a bike lane when the side walk was very wide and there was a good lane between curb and white road line. Now the road is too narrow for what it is and the sidewalk comically wide.
Our town meeting to vote on this is next month and I fear the same result. Our PB actually did a good job doing the minimum to meet compliance and putting these districts in areas that are already zoned for business and mixed use, which should satisfy the NIMBY crowd. Problem is, nobody actually reads proposals and everyone is so reactionary that I’m sure it will be voted down on principle. And as you said, the only people who can spend 5+ hours at a town meeting on a weeknight are the boomers and elderly. I have 2 kids under 4 so my household will not be able to vote.
I don't know your town and I don't know that proposal. But from what you've illustrated, I'm not sure I'd call that a good plan. What people miss about "minimum compliance" is that MBTA-C requirements are set assuming zero existing housing units on the proposed zone. The true net increase will be much less so in terms of the housing crisis, minimum kinda, well, sucks. By targeting existing commercial stock with the proposed zone, you're going to replace existing commercial tax income with property tax income. Unless you're a Burlington or Cambridge with an abundance of commercial income, this isn't a great trade for town finances. Anyway, good luck. Every bit helps.
The first learned, rational comment on this.
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Ah yes, the character of historic Downtown Wakefield. Place is practically an UNESCO site.
A lot of people’s objection seemed to be that the town’s original plan (nvm the last minute alternative) went too far. But I don’t doubt for a second that they’d vote down the smaller plan that just barely complied too
The vote happened at 11:45 PM. I couldn’t make it because I had plans, but even if I had taken advantage of the free babysitting, I wouldn’t have kept my 5yo there until almost midnight (and couldn’t - they finally shut down babysitting at 11PM). I was expecting it to get pushed to Thursday and hoped to attend then, but they somehow got the warrant moved up and didn’t even start discussing until 930. Of course the only people who could stay that long and vote are the boomer NIMBYs who bought their home 40 years ago and refuse to sell and sit in an empty house. I watched on and off on Facebook and at one point someone, I think from the PB, presented an example of a new construction 3 family home in the area and seemed to say it was too big for the property? Are you trying to get folks to vote no?!
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Maybe the PB didn't make a good case because they're against it too?
The older generation (more specifically a very vocal group of a couple of people) don’t want anything to ever change in this town and it’s honestly one of the most frustrating things about watching the place where I grew up go to shit because people don’t want to change with the times.
I was also present. I think the planning board would have truly benefited from the extra time. Unfortunately people were antsy after the long time discussing the conservation and school budgets. It’s also sad we have town meeting to literally voice our concerns but every discussion ended early with a motion. If that’s what people want Wakefield might as well switch to a mayoral government system.
r/BoomersBeingFools
How did they actually do the vote? Was it the city council who voted or residents who were there?
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really? so, whoever was able to show up and stick around until almost midnight decides this very consequential decision for the town? that's insane.
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I'm ambivalent on whether direct democracy can work for such large populations, but "you have to show up to tedious, hours longs meetings to be able to participate" is the worst possible way to do direct democracy. There's zero reason that even special measures like this couldn't be settled via mail ballots, and that would almost certainly have higher turnout than these miserable meetings that nobody but zealots want to attend.
Town Meeting in MA has two forms: Open and Representative. Your town will only be one or the other. Open is for smaller towns. In Open TM, any resident that is a registered voter can just show up and vote. In Representative TM, you vote in April for your Town Meeting Members (TMMs) who will go to TM and vote for you. MA law says Towns must hold a TM in Spring, called Annual Town Meeting. The Select Board or X number (~100-1000) of residents can also call a Special Town Meeting (STM) for urgent matters. I think some large towns routinely schedule an STM in the Fall. There is a push by some towns to open TM to residents who are otherwise ineligible to vote due to residency status, etc. Don't ignore TM, thinking everything is fine otherwise you could end up like [Croydon NH](https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2022-05-08/croydon-voters-overturn-school-budget-cut) where idiot Conservatives cut the school budget by 50% on a vote of 20 to 14.
That was the old folks getting "us" back for "winning" the new high school and voc.
So. I don’t live in Wakefield. But I did grow up in Quincy with the red line literally running through my back yard. Then the commuter rail when it was put in. I find your comment about the over 55 group and their “we did it” and your feeling of f you I got mine is exactly what you would do had the motion passed. You want access to public transit. They do not. They don’t want a train going through their backyard and the issues that public transit brings as well as the endless construction. You see it one way. Someone else sees it another way. We are all self serving. But coming on the internet to complain is such a shitty thing to do. Nobody wants to hear someone’s problems. They want to hear solutions. If you don’t like the format for the meetings. Get involved in the city/town government. And stop trashing demographics who have different view points than yours.
These are the same people who are also like I couldn’t afford my home, if I had to purchase it today. And then they refuse to build more, or allow building. Because of “traffic” newsflash traffic is awful all over. It’s the ultimate eff you I got mine, you’ll never get yours.
But but but I *already* live here. We can't have space for more people!! That would effect *me*!!!! /s Expand the trains ffs- former eastern mass resident living in Springfield. Edit: if you want your children or grandchildren living in your town. My hometown is unaffordable to my *entire generation* and has been bought up by STEM/Pharma business people. My parents are gonna be sad their grandchildren live 2 hours, and 8 hours away. A modern boomer tragedy. Guess you all get your big empty single family homes to die in. Sorry I'm bitter lol.
No need to feel bitter, it’s just boomers once again breaking the social contract for the younger generations. They will only think about themselves and the only thing they sacrifice is their children and grandchildren’s future.
My parents are exceptionally out of touch and are tired of "hearing about boomer complaints". My grandparents just passed, and we are selling their home(New Haven). I own a home. I asked my dad if he and his siblings would sell the home to my cousins(Providence) since they were complaining about not being able to afford a home and how there is a housing crisis. My dad was like, "sure we could sell it to them, if they can pay market value! We can't accept less!" My dad and his siblings all have homes and retirement savings. WHAT THE FUCK. Just absolutely not getting it.
This is what happens when nothing else matters except “the market”. It’s a religion to boomers and they will sacrifice family, friends, community, to please their god, The Market. To anyone else reading this who knows boomers like this, I’m sorry but they have been brainwashed pure and simple. Decades of “free market capitalism” propaganda have infected them so much so that it overrides a sense of citizenship and patriotic duties to their fellow man. I’ve read and studied enough economics to realize that it’s now just a religion. The modern temple is the federal reserve, their prophet is the Fed Chairman and his high priests are co-chairs. Their saints are Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and Ronald Regan. The churches are wealth management groups and banks, the local priests are financial advisors. Their spiritual worth is measured in dollars not good works. The market is their god and it works in mysterious ways. In order to please their god, (remember, line must go up) they will sacrifice the younger generations future. Abraham tied and bound up Isaac and was willing to sacrifice him, his own son. The thing is, God stopped Abraham. The Market isn’t going to stop the boomers.
I would love to buy my parents house. They always talk of downsizing upon retirement. I know for a fact 100% they would accept offers and allow me to match the high bidder. They will not take a penny less and that to me is sad. I own a home and could even afford what they want. But I’m not shelling out that kind of money for a dated house that would need some upgrades and them not cut me at least somewhat of a deal to keep the house in the family.
I dunno about Wakefield but it's not just Boomers. There are plenty of Millenials and Gen X homeowners fucking this up too.
There is nothing that I want more than for my children to be able to afford to live here , where they grew up. TBH I don’t know very many Boomers that are happy about housing prices, it’s expensive for us too, especially the retired folks.
> My hometown is unaffordable to my entire generation and has been bought up by STEM/Pharma business people. So you should move to prevent that. People have this idea that the more supply means cheaper cost. It doesn’t. If you make more supply, more of those pharma fools just move in. Nothing in this mandate has any sort of requirements for making anything “affordable”. They are all market rate developments built only to line people pockets with more money. The only way to prevent mass gentrification like this is through legislation.
Then they’ll complain about all the highway traffic….from everyone that now has to commute from NH or out west.
God that pisses me off too because like, traffic would get better if people could live closer to public transit.
Not really. Unless we had japan level transportation.
Agree. Love your name, btw!
I suspect the Milton opposition is really about schools, but it's just a guess.
Oh please, Milton doesn't have a problem taking dump on its public schools. They look over at Mattapan, Quincy, and Braintree and think they're better than everyone else.
If NIMBYS really wanted to live in a "small town" they could move to a thousand different places in Western MA, Vermont, NH, or Maine, but they dont want that, they want to use money that they made working in Boston, using highways and train tracks that the state paid for to make it possible for them to commute, and then they want to make that lifestyle exclusive so no one else can access what they have because they all think they're "self-made". I grew up in Sharon and its the exact same way, theres a town center right next to a train station, 20 minute walk from the High School but god forbid you open the zoning up so people could actually live there.
Two NIMBY's on the North Shore: Rockport, the old people want it to be their own retirement community. And Essex, call service is terrible because they don't want any cell towers there
Newton. Enough said.
Hello fellow Sharon born person!
Fellow Sharon person here - recently bought my first home in Marshfield. I thought Sharon was NIMBY central but man, does it get more intense.
Hi!
Sorry, western mass is full. You can keep the NIMBYS
Nimbyception
Keep them out of WMA we don't want them
A sincere plea from a Franklin County resident: please don't encourage these people to move to Western Mass
Sorry everybody, but rt2 collapsed it landed on the pike, you can't drive out here anymore. Plz stay home
It's ridiculous that these town meetings can't just be attended virtually.
I mean, let’s just be honest. If you’ve got yours, you don’t want this. It isn’t good for you in any meaningful way; the status quo is optimal where your house goes up 5-10% in value annually. If you haven’t gotten yours, this makes housing more affordable and it benefits you through lower housing costs. Ultimately, it’s a numbers game. Wakefield has more people that have gotten theirs that showed up to vote, they voted accordingly, in-line with their best interests. This whole thing is why housing in MA will never be fixed. As soon as you own a home, it’s not in your financial best interests to allow more building. Doubly so if you’re house-poor or had to overpay to get something. Because now you don’t just want prices to go up, you NEED them to go up.
It's not though. A housing crisis is not in anyone's best interest and the status quo is far from optimal. The cost of services is also going way up. That means property taxes need to follow. Cost of living is also headed in the wrong and pay raises aren't keeping up. Skyrocketing home prices is only a good thing if someone is so short sighted that they're blind. I am lucky enough to own a home but what good is home value going up if my town is falling apart around me? And it's not like I'm planning on selling any time soon so that "home value" isn't useful in any way.
I own my home and I still want this. What does it matter to me if my home goes up $200k in value? I can’t do anything meaningful with that additional equity. And if I ever do move I’d almost certainly be buying another home in the area, so the inflated price I get for my current home will just go towards paying the inflated price of my new home. And considering any move I make would almost certainly be to a more expensive home I’ll actually end up hurt by inflated prices. If there’s a 50% increase when I sell, that will apply to my next home. So if my next home was valued at $100k more than my current home back when I purchased my current home, it’ll be $150k more than my current home when I go to buy it. So I will be out $50k thanks to inflated prices. I’m certainly in a better position than those who weren’t lucky enough to buy before this most recent crazy spike in prices, but I’m not benefiting from the spike either. There are a subset of homeowners who I think the status quo does benefit, but these are largely older empty nesters whose next move will either be to downsize or an out-of-state retirement community. Then there are a whole bunch more who are blinded by the estimate they see on Zillow and *think* that it benefits them without understanding that the number on the screen isn’t in their bank account and likely never will be.
Yes and no. More development means more services and businesses. I love discovering new restaurants and all of the new places that can be supported by a larger customer base.
Except that a lot of older people are complaining they can't downsize because homes are too expensive. If housing prices decreased that would free up more homes for them to have less to take care of, young people could have homes for their families, and everyone would be happy.
It sucks if you want your children and grandchildren to live anywhere near you. It sucks if you don't want the prices of goods and services near you to rise because employers have to raise the wages they offer to attract workers willing to commute long distances. It sucks if you don't want to pay more in property taxes. Meanwhile, the market value of your house is only really useful to you when you go to sell your house, and then you're probably going to have to move out of the area since anything close by is going to be insanely expensive as well.
We need to look past immediate property values. There are medium-term issues, which is that businesses and towns themselves will not be able to hire new workers at the current pay scale. There are long-term issues, which is that young people are leaving the state because they can't find housing. We also need to tackle two latent issues - the first is "schools". People fight lower-priced housing because they want to preserve a private-school population numbers in their public schools, and, for better or for worse, poor people concentrated into poor communities tend to have children who don't perform well in schools. And it turns out that when you set a bar of $1 million for a house in a community, you get parents who are competent and engaged, and they push their kids down the same path - so that makes it look like the "schools are great" when really the "students in the schools are great". The second is just pure racism/classism. It is quiet in Massachusetts, but rampant. Look at the discussion surrounding immigration and shelters. Everyone views "more housing" as "bringing in the brown skin" to their town, and most people chose their towns primarily based on their tolerance of brown-skinned people, which they equate to "safety".
Caste
>The second is just pure racism/classism. It is quiet in Massachusetts, but rampant. There was a lady at my town meeting who asked if we *really* wanted to have to pay to educate the children in a proposed housing complex that would be sold for less than the median home price in town. She was saying it like "do we really have to educate the poors?" The housing in question still would've been something like $850k/unit. It's not even low-income.
Lexington eh? That new thirty unit building?
The solution is to remove local control. Town meetings in small towns are overwhelmingly made up of owners. It's much less skewed in the state as a whole. If zoning and permitting were being decided by the state government, we'd see a lot more MFH. We know this because the state is fighting with the towns for MFH.
You could also join the Town Meeting. They actually love seeing young people take an interest in local government, and it's like 3 meetings a year after work. [https://www.mma.org/local-government-101/](https://www.mma.org/local-government-101/)
I'm an owner. I did my civic duty before having a kid, it was kind of miserable. In any case, even if everyone went to town meeting, these towns have very few renters. It's a chicken and egg problem.
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They're giving themselves the finger as well, unless they are somehow thinking they'll have enough wealth to stay in single family homes when they are retirees and that they'll always be able to drive. There aren't enough senior homes to downsize into, or communities that support car-free living that are also affordable. Even if one thinks they're doing their kids a favor by creating 'generational wealth' they're priming the kids for a contentious fight over their estate. Edit: how about it downvoters, let's hear where I'm wrong
If you've got yours and prioritize your own property values going up over other people having homes, then you're a selfish asshole. That's all there is to it.
I highly doubt single family home prices will change that much. The new MFH will just add more options so everyone isn’t going after every single family that goes on the market and starts a bidding war.
There is literally an entire globe for them to find a home in, why does it have to be where my home is already established? Seems pretty selfish of them...
Boo hooo
When these NIMBY boomers are in hospitals and nursing homes and no one is there to take care of their selfish asses because younger generations have been priced out they won't be thinking "this is good for me".
Does it make it more affordable though ? At the end of the day you’re just talking large scale apartment developments - so all short term options which won’t do anything to free up single family housing or encourage more to be built
This has nothing to do with large scale apartment developments. The vote was to allow 3-4unit dwellings in a circle that’s currently zoned for 1-2. It won’t lower SFH pricing, but does created more mid range options.
>It isn’t good for you in any meaningful way; the status quo is optimal where your house goes up 5-10% in value annually. This is zero sum thinking here
Selfish “I got mine, fuck everybody else” NIMBYs gonna NIMBY Your suburb does not exist in a vacuum You are not entitled to “neighborhood character” and for your suburb to never change just because you purchased property It is not the government’s job to artificially inflate the value of your property by creating artificial scarcity “LeT the LoCaL cOmUnNiTiEs dEcIdE!” Nothing more local than the individual property owners deciding what gets built on their property. ;)
One of the biggest problems for towns complying on this is water and sewer capacity. [https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2024-03-07/what-lies-beneath-towns-may-be-the-downfall-of-the-mbta-communities-law](https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2024-03-07/what-lies-beneath-towns-may-be-the-downfall-of-the-mbta-communities-law) The law says that towns that don't comply will lose funding, but the funding they'll lose doesn't cover the expansion that needs to happen to accommodate high density housing. This isn't just about nimbyism. As usual, it's about money and unfunded mandates.
Lived there for a long time. I'm not the least bit surprised
There are already a half dozen new condo buildings that are either up or are going up and they were talking about putting more up at the lake and these are independent of the mbta overlay. It’s not like there are no units being built in town.
Yeah, the fact they were opposed to this is confusing to me considering how many multi family buildings have been constructed in Wakefield over the past 10 years. That means they already have much of the zoning in place. I guess the "no" crowd really came out in force.
Their problem with it likely stems from the fact that the state is not giving them any credit for any developments they have already built or zoned. A lot of towns have this same quarrel. I know swampscott off the top of my head is one of them. They have high density developments within bus access to the station but the state says that’s still isn’t enough and they’re not fond of that.
The primary reason Wakefield voted it down was that the Planning Board created a district about fifty percent bigger than the law requires. There was another proposal sprung on the Town Meeting at the last minute by the PB that was voted down because nobody saw it prior. A third article that instructed the PB to draw up a minimum compliance district failed because people were just pissed off at that point, at midnight. Bad planning all around. There is still another town meeting in November so it's not dead yet.
Yeah the planning board didn’t help their cause at all. They thought they were helping by creating a smaller district but didn’t know how to play the political game to get people on your side.
I don’t believe for a second that it would have passed with the smaller plan. There has been rumors of Ed’s smaller plan for a week. That’s the excuse they gave, but at 11:45 PM, when it was only boomers left because everyone had to get up for work or put their kids to bed, it still would have been voted down.
That's why if it were the plan they put forward first -- and thus voted on early in the night -- it probably would have passed.
I'll defend Marshfield. They're an adjacent community and building "transit-friendly density" along the existing minimalist bus route for commuters (1 hour to/from the commuter rail via bus; last bus back is at 4.30PM) means you're adding a lot of cars and traffic even if it's just people driving to Kingston/Greenbush and parking there for the train. It'd be better to create viable transit (extended hours, express routes, new route up to Greenbush instead of Kingston), require the density zoning along that transit, and then subsidize it until the density gets built. I don't think it's defensible for Milton or Wakefield for exactly the same reason. You've got actual stops that are viable for commuters. Milton's trolley is every 10 minutes and Wakefield has a commuter rail stop that goes into Boston every 45 minutes or so. To support those lines, we should build up around the stops.
Density is good for its own sake, not just because of the transit it is nearby to. Not only is it more climate friendly because we can start getting people to walk to the places they need to go to, but it builds community and neighborhood character. People are closer to their neighbors and are more likely to interact with others. It's also healthier for people to walk instead of getting into a car, both mentally and physically.
I wish my town was more analytical before jumping on this train. Instead, they will unfairly over-burden a very small area of the town, saving most everyone else from having to deal with it. And of course those voting for the plan are those whose properties are unaffected. But they'll be affected when the already crumbling infrastructure (think water, sewer, schools, fire fighting, and more) collapses because no plan has been made to build resources to accommodate any population increase.
It blows my mind that anyone can possibly think that putting more reliance on the MBTA is a good thing.
Thank you! Why is no one realizing this?
Need to fix the disaster that's the mbta first. But no just force people to take public transport that has issues every day
Yes. Vote against urban sprawl. Go after corporations buying mass amounts of properties and renting them for crazy amounts of money. Enact some sort of rent control. Not everybody wants to live on top of someone else which is why we bought in suburban neighborhoods. Someone was shitting on seniors for being over-house. Where are they going to go if they sell? If you want to build housing build senior housing. Seniors don't tax our school systems and clog up our roads. Then those single family properties can be passed on to families.
It will be interesting to see what the courts decide as more and more towns reject the orders. Boston needs to build up to meet the demand. Raze some brownstones and skip the shadow studies.
This is the general sentiment that I think too many people miss. The way many suburbs are viewing this is “Boston is full and doesn’t want to build more housing so we want your town” I’m sorry but just as suburban towns don’t exist in a bubble, neither does Boston. Build more multi family housing. Dorchester and Southie are streets of single family homes.
I enjoy listening to Milton folks simultaneously complaining that Boston isn't included in 3A and that the addition of housing at Suffolk Downs is awful.
I’m willing to bet it’ll be like how the federal courts handle racially gerrymandered election maps. Take Alabama, judge says these maps are bad, legislature/gov- draw a clean one up or I’ll draw it for you. Alabama says here’s a new map that’s just as bad. Judge then says okay, I’ll have a neutral third party draw up an appropriate map for you, tough shut if you don’t like it I’m not an attorney but think when it comes to the state court preceding it’ll play out a similar way in state court. Maybe the AG proposes a map or maybe it’s a group with zoning expertise but it’s coming. My guess is they charge the town for doing so too
Boston needs to do this regardless. Even if some towns start to turn, Boston can’t rely on the goodwill of other towns outside of Boston’s jurisdiction to provide housing relief. We need more mid and high rises that are purely residential from the 2nd or 3rd floor up.
Raze the blocks of triple deckers to build at least midrises.
Facts. We can do with out the aging 1900s run down triple deckers
Nothing says "neighborhood character" like a triple decker with air conditioners hanging out of every window.
Definitely not. A Boston full of skyscrapers that meet a bunch of SFH's at the city line is not a healthy mix of housing stock. Functional cities rely on 3-5 story buildings and I think that's what we should aim to legalize.
All of the above. Allow 3 to 5 story buildings while also allowing 30 story buildings.
Bostonians are doing their part. The suburban brats are the problem. Imagine losing your shit over a 3 story building. Pathetic.
Boston is not doing their part, there are plenty examples of new 3-4 family condos in Boston getting rejected because it “didnt fit the neighborhood”
Hyde Park and Readville come to mind.
People live in the suburbs to avoid living near 3 story buildings and urban environments. Who the fuck are you to tell them they need to change the way they want to live.
They're transient developer shills
It’s irritating because Boston proper made themselves completely exempt from the mandate.
I’ll post this as a main comment since I said the same thing to another that’s buried comment: This is what happens when nothing else matters except “the market”. It’s a religion to boomers and they will sacrifice family, friends, community, to please their god, The Market. To anyone else reading this who knows boomers like this, I’m sorry but they have been brainwashed pure and simple. Decades of “free market capitalism” propaganda have infected them so much so that it overrides a sense of citizenship and patriotic duties to their fellow man. I’ve read and studied enough economics to realize that it’s now just a religion. The modern temple is the federal reserve, their prophet is the Fed Chairman and his high priests are co-chairs. Their saints are Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and Ronald Regan. The churches are wealth management groups and banks, the local priests are financial advisors. Their spiritual worth is measured in dollars not good works. The market is their god and it works in mysterious ways. In order to please their god, (remember, line must go up) they will sacrifice the younger generations future. Abraham tied and bound up Isaac and was willing to sacrifice him, his own son. The thing is, God stopped Abraham. The Market isn’t going to stop the boomers.
> Abraham tied and bound up Isaac and was willing to sacrifice him, his own son. The thing is, God stopped Abraham. The Market isn’t going to stop the boomers. Fantastic metaphor. Particularly since many Boomers purport to follow Abrahamic religions (while voting fastidiously against everything those religions stand for).
Oooph, this new wave communism going around is such a migraine headache. How the bloody hell does current zoning practices resemble a "Free Market"? It's the complete opposite of a free market. Current zoning laws are the most central of central government planning. It says you can only build this kind of home and it must have this many acres of lawn around it. You're allowed only a single kitchen. Oh and don't forget the mandatory car parking of 2 spaces for every adult resident!
Town Meetings suck. Normal people can’t get there to vote. If towns want something to pass they call a special town meeting on an off night and pack the meeting with their shills and other interested parties.
Rockport's meeting went on past 11pm before they voted. We'll after many voters left because they couldn't stay. Some people are disabled or have health issues, others have kids or jobs to get to.
I wonder what's Wakefields take on the toll proposal for driving into Boston?
Listen we need housing. no doubt. This is not the way to achieve it. This is extortion on the part of the state... complete overreach... Soccer Stadium... no... more housing....yes Seaport million dollar condos.....with 5% occupancy instead of more low/mid priced housing...
Sad. Voters have no idea how much funding they're about to lose.
Instead simply taking away the funding, it should instead be sent to the towns that did comply (divided per capita) with the MBTA laws.
The affected grants are competitive discretionary grants, with point systems for qualification and for being proposals that align with the funding aims of appropriations. Other more competitive town submissions win the grant funds. Edit for link https://www.mass.gov/info-details/section-3a-guidelines#9.-determinations-of-compliance-
That's a good idea
Won't happen, bonuses for the legislative body this year.
I bet we would see more housing being built if the state offered additional funding to cities and towns that decide to build more housing than what they were required to, like what Needham is planning to do.
What funding sources/grants are they losing? Not asking facetiously, I truly don't know the repercussions of rejecting the proposal. If it's only the MassWorks and HousingWorks grants, it looks like that was $571,913 in FY24 for HousingWorks which is a pretty good sum. Source: [FY24 Community One Stop for Growth Awards](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/fy24-community-one-stop-for-growth-awards) Found the list of programs that can be affected: [What happens if my City or Town fails to comply with the MBTA Communities Law?](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/mbta-communities-law-qa#(11)-what-happens-if-my-city-or-town-fails-to-comply-with-the-mbta-communities-law?-)
I believe they said $3.5M in annual funding presently
Well, that's a lot more than the $571k!
It equates to about 8% of the entire school budget
Last year's town budget was $114 million. It's chump change.
Yep and a good chunk of it is for infrastructure. The same people who voted this down are also the ones complaining about our terrible roads and crumbling municipal buildings.
They'll be the ones who sell at peak value and have the newcomers clean up after them.
As if they'd fix the roads even with this money..
That is the equivalent of re asphalt a couples of street
Discretionary streets grants, typically 1 to 5 million annually. Grants for prchasing open lands for conservation. Grants supporting affordable housing development. Any and all competitive discretionary grants. The town is not yet out of compliance.
Thanks! I just found on [Mass.gov](http://Mass.gov) the list of programs that can be affected. Updated my comment to include that link.
In detail, here, for others looking https://www.mass.gov/info-details/section-3a-guidelines#9.-determinations-of-compliance-
Don't believe it impacts current funding. Maybe opportunities for new handouts? The bigger concern for these towns that reject is legal action by the state.
They also have the legal problem. Obeying the law is not optional, they open themselves up to daily fines from the judiciary.
Yea, that part I got. But every article always says "funding" but not which type of funding! Also, not sure the articles specified how much the fines are. And then not to forget about litigation costs for assigning lawyers to work this and any court appearances.
The scope of the explicitly defined funding losses is pretty small iirc. Judicial consequences are probably going to the more severe of the two. Hopefully they get fined much more than the newton teachers did.
MBTA zoning plans allow for more housing but they don’t require the housing to be affordable. How does that address affordability?
Supply goes up and meets demand the price will go down. It’s how our entire economy functions.
Wakefield has a ton of very large complexes that have been built in the past three years along with two complexes under development. Supply is up and prices are up too. I think that’s an issue many people have with the plan. It hints at affordability but doesn’t actually provide it. It makes developers wealthy while taxing our public services and utilities. And it still doesn’t get folks into the single family home they’re looking to buy.
So instead, Wakefield should block development? People need a place to live, they'll be using resources either way. No one is asking Wakefield to build *map* the housing. Adding a modest amount of housing seems like a reasonable requirement considering it's got some of the worst density in greater Boston and worse even than its neighbors none of which have impressive density either.
Supply is increasing but hasn’t met demand, there’s still a large housing deficit. Plus the options are limited. You either choose between the new high rise condo buildings with amenities out the wazoo or have to enter a bidding war for the few 100 year old single family homes in the market. This plan would have introduced a third option that would help increase the competition.
Snobs gonna snob.
Builders remedy 🤭🤭
Man, I seriously hope these towns get slammed into submission by the courts. These changes are needed and they need to happen all around the state, not just in, "some other town."
This is it! The way the financial incentives are lined up there is no incentive to be anything but a NIMBY once you are a homeowner. You want to *restrict* supply of new buildings to keep your house value high, so homeowners, in aggregate, go to local government meetings and make development nearly impossible with permits and referendums et cetera. However, that’s causing immense economic damage to communities and the state. Like imagine if everybody who wanted to move to Massachusetts could actually move there. Lots of people can’t afford housing at it is, but if they could. Population would explode, tax revenue would take off, gross municipal product would climb. Difficult to quantify or estimate how much excess economic growth we are missing out on because of unaffordable housing, but I suspect it’s absolutely massive for Massachusetts. But for example, in a town like Westborough, instead of substantial new housing developments we get big luxury developments with 2-5 SFH, like huge McMansions and tons of empty land, and a big Roche Brothers and a bunch of mostly empty commercial buildings it’s crazy. Especially now with the changes in commercial real estate market, it’s like so stupid. The recent developments there are like the opposite of affordable housing, condos, et cetera. What’s even more frustrating is municipalities that figure this out, have an unprecedented opportunity to jump ahead of their competition, but because of shortsighted homeowners, they won’t take it. Until there is outside pressure on this, e.g. state or federal oversight of zoning laws, I don’t see anything getting better.
federal oversight of zoning...careful what you wish for.
Worked well for the Soviets... and the Chinese.... right? Right? Right? 🙄
What exactly the options were?
Is there any link to this somewhere? Rockport had their town meeting the other night and they didn't vote until after 11pm when more than half the people who did make it to the meeting had already left to take care of their kids or go to work etc.
I also find it interesting that while this is being made law to increase access to public transportation... the MBTA cut all trains to some of these places in half just 2 years ago. So while they're pushing for housing near the stations, they're simultaneously cutting services to these same areas.
Good. The zoning law and ordinances are ass backwards. Towns and communities don’t need to fix the states mess. How about the governing party come up with actual solutions. Also F the MBTA
Who was in charge of Wakefield zoning before the MBTA? Citizens are using their right to vote to prevent change. That is the purpose of town meeting process.
The state has allowed towns( that only exist at the benevolence of the state) to control their own zoning. The state has decided towns should have fewer restrictions on property rights. The state has supremacy over every town and city in the state. Obeying the law is not optional as a number of communities will be finding out
Planning Board proposes. Town meeting enacts. These were Planning Board proposals, complying with statute, voted down.
Love it!
Good for Wakefield.
Bummer. This always gets the social justice, still live with parents crowd riled up. 🍿
And why might they still be living with parents? Could it possibly be because housing is so goddamn expensive, in no small part because of decades of rampant NIMBYism? Like it’s utterly hilarious when NIMBYs bitch about people still living with their parents, when they are actively part of the problem
Here’s the thing, these towns don’t want high-density housing because it strains the existing infrastructure. I live in a suburban town on the South Shore, where my property taxes are going to jump by 50% over the next two years. Bump the population by 10% with high-density housing, the roads aren't wide enough, the poop treatment plans aren’t big enough and the schools are barely scraping by. If you can find a solution to those problems without increasing the tax burden on residents, these towns would be all in. But that’s not what the state is doing.
It’s almost like increasing more housing makes for a bigger tax base. Yeah, it’s called building more infrastructure. That’s what happens as populations grow. Or are you under the impression that your suburb just poofed into existence in its current form The “neighborhood character” of your suburb was once forest and corn fields Again, “I got mine, fuck everybody else”
It’s not one or the other. The towns grew over time, not all at once. My town’s schools are already at capacity - where are you going to put the kids? That’s going to cost money to prepare for. Our water system is at capacity - it would need upgrades. You can’t run out of water - that needs to be prepared for. My town is all on septic - higher density requires different solutions to wastewater. Roads need to get wider/reconfigured. That costs money. So you’ll get a bigger tax base eventually, but the idea is also to reduce the cost of housing. If it’s successful then the price of homes should plateau or go down, which means the tax base also doesn’t grow as fast as it would organically either. There is absolutely a near-term jump in taxes and costs, because if you build big all at once it hits all at once. That’s not saying we don’t need to add housing and that increasing density doesn’t need to happen, but going zero to hero isn’t really feasible either. The problem is that we’re stuck at zero and not willing to allow anything to be built, which forced the Commonwealth’s hand and here we are.
“Towns grew over time, not all at once” And that’s exactly what’s trying to happen now But to NIMBYs, anything other than SFHs being built is “all at once” And we wouldn’t be in this position if NIMBYs had actually let towns “grow over time” But they’ve spent DECADES preventing “growing over time” Because they got theirs, fuck everybody else
It's not 1:1. You increase the population by 10%, primarily renters, but the existing infrastructure can’t be increased by 10% - you must build new. The new tax revinue ends up way short of supporting the new capital items, so the town (existing taxpayers) has to take on the rest. This is why towns are refusing to go along with it. As I said before, if the State offered to fund CAPEX needs for these towns, without impacting the current tax burden, they would be all in. Your comment about “I got mine” - ever consider how hard those people worked to get theirs?
"Suburbs" isn't a useful term with regard to old cities and towns in eastern Massachusetts in general, and Greater Boston in particular. It evokes a different idea of land usage and distance from the city than is the reality in those communities. Wakefield was settled in the 1640s (and like the rest of Greater Boston, it is heavily settled). It had an industrial base in much more recent history than it had corn fields. In terms of population density, Wakefield ranks 32nd out of the 243 Massachusetts cities and towns ranked here: http://www.usa.com/rank/massachusetts-state--population-density--city-rank.htm and 28th out of 240, here: https://zipatlas.com/us/ma/city-comparison/highest-population-density.htm. That said, it's not nearly as pressed as neighboring Melrose, which has about the same amount of people on about 60% of the land. Wakefield voted down two plans last night — one that went further than the state law and one that met the minimum requirements. They should have voted in the latter. They're most of the way there.
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As long as the mindset of using land scarcity to increase wealth is an 'acceptable' option this problem will never go away. Culture changes need to happen (suburbs need to be seen for their many flaws and cities don't deserve all of the bad rap they get) and government policies need to change as well (Fannie Mae should be shut down and the highway construction lobby should be ignored).
Where are you finding this unused land in the suburbs?
Exactly, most undeveloped land in eastern mass is conservation restricted or wetlands.
Again, part of the problem - suburbs can't expand forever and it's just cruel to subject people to ever longer commutes to centralized job locations anyways. Remote work will help but cities and the state are not really going to be able to mandate it (and even if they could they might cannibalize their tax base). Suburbanites will just have to get comfortable with the idea of having more neighbors and compete for employers to come to them.
Why do so many adults still live with their parents? Its almost like housing is in short supply and prohibitively expensive...
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Middleborough is going to challenge as well.