Attorney General Andrea Campbell mentioned her workplace will sue cities and cities that fail to adjust to the MBTA communities zoning regulation, including to penalties that already excluded these municipalities from state funding alternatives.
In a Wednesday advisory, Campbell mentioned compliance with the regulation, signed by Gov. Charlie Baker in January 2021, is necessary. Offenders may very well be slapped with civil enforcement motion by the AG’s workplace, she mentioned, and danger legal responsibility underneath federal and state honest housing legal guidelines.
“Compliance with the MBTA communities zoning law is not only mandatory, it is an essential tool for the commonwealth to address its housing crisis, along with our climate and transportation goals,” Campbell mentioned in a press release.
“While the housing crisis disproportionately affects communities of color and poor, working families, it threatens all of us along with our economy, and thus requires all of us to do our part, including ensuring adequate development of affordable, transit-oriented housing for our residents and families.”
Under this regulation, all MBTA communities are required to permit not less than one zoning district “of reasonable size,” wherein multi-family housing is permitted “as of right,” typically half a mile close to a transit station, the advisory acknowledged.
Four communities, Berkley, Holden, Marshfield, and Middleborough, are in non-compliance with the regulation, based on a spokesperson for the Department of Housing and Community Development.
“Any MBTA community not in compliance with the law will lose eligibility for several state grant programs, including MassWorks and the Housing Choice Initiative, both of which provide millions of dollars in funding to communities across the state annually,” the DHCD spokesperson mentioned.
“Non-compliance will also be taken into account for other state grant programs.”
In her advisory, which Campbell mentioned was partly aimed toward clearing up confusion over the brand new regulation, the legal professional normal acknowledged, “Importantly, MBTA communities cannot avoid their obligations under the law by foregoing this funding.”
Further, the regulation doesn’t present for any opt-out mechanisms, Campbell mentioned.
This was information to Holden Town Manager Peter Lukes, who didn’t assume the regulation was necessary, and had made the choice to forego state funding, fairly than adjust to the transit-oriented zoning requirement.
This Worcester County neighborhood lacks MBTA service, Lukes mentioned, so the final feeling on the town authorities was {that a} zoning bylaw requiring housing close to a T station wouldn’t apply there.
“We assumed that it was something that if we do not comply with, we will not be able to avail ourselves of some of the grant programs as it’s written, the law’s written,” Lukes mentioned. “Therefore, we’re just going to forgo the grant opportunities and go on our merry way.”
He mentioned the city had been ready for the legal professional normal’s formal advisory on the matter, and now that it’s been launched, “we’re just trying to figure it out with the assistance of counsel.”
“Right now, we’re evaluating the situation and deciding how we want to proceed basically,” Lukes mentioned. “I really feel that the advisory opinion is incorrectly deciphering the regulation because it stands. But the query is, do we now have the will to maintain preventing it legally, and do we now have the monetary means to battle the state legally in court docket?
“I don’t know. We have to decide at this point if it’s worth the theological fight or if it’s substantive.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”
