Massachusetts voters narrowly voted down a proposal to spur the construction of more single-family homes in Massachusetts by overriding local zoning control, according to a projection from the Associated Press days after the election.
Ballot Question 7 would have forced Massachusetts cities and towns to let developers build single-family homes on 5,000-square-foot plots of land. Supporters billed the measure as a way of boosting home construction and bringing down housing costs. But opponents worried that a statewide requirement would take control away from local cities and towns.
In a statement earlier this week, the measure’s opponents declared victory and celebrated the results, saying that a one-size-fits all approach for homebuilding would have negative consequences in communities.
“We’re grateful to the voters of Massachusetts for recognizing that Question 7 was not an effective or workable approach to creating entry-level homes in the Commonwealth,” said Adam Chapdelaine, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association. “We believe voters recognized that a top-down, one-size-fits-all mandate would have negative consequences in communities, and they shared our concerns about the proposal’s lack of affordability guardrails.”
Vote counts as of Friday afternoon showed the “no” side winning by just over 30,000 votes — out of more than 2.5 million residents who’d weighed in on the question, AP showed. That’s the smallest margin among the record-tying nine ballot questions Massachusetts voters were asked to weigh in on this year.
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Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of Abundant Housing MA, said the strong support for the question shows that voters want change.
“More than 1.2 million residents, in urban, suburban, and rural communities voted in support of a more affordable Massachusetts,” Kanson-Benanav wrote in a statement. “With high hopes for the future, we remain committed to helping Massachusetts residents achieve the dream of housing stability and homeownership.”
Builders have to meet all types of requirements set at the local level, and one is typically minimum lot size: Your local government can say that you need to be building on, at minimum, a few acres of land to put up a new building.
But Question 7 would have set one statewide standard of 5,000 square feet for single-family houses — with several caveats, including that the lots must already be zoned for residential use, have public water and sewer service and have at least 50 feet bordering a public street.
It would not have applied to rural communities that use well water and septic tanks, or the city of Boston and other municipalities that already had a smaller minimum lot size in place.
The question’s backers did not immediately respond to the AP race projection.
Diane Adame and Sam Turken contributed reporting. This story uses material from prior GBH News stories.
