Recently, my wife and I were having dinner with some good friends from our neighborhood and enjoying our conversations. Our friend had just been elected as a first-time delegate at last month’s caucus meetings, and knowing of my long background working in local and state government, was asking me about some of the candidates and their positions on issues. Most notably for me, he asked about this issue of “the state making all cities increase high-density housing, and how they would be punished if they didn’t.” Wow!
I asked my friend where he had heard that, and he said that several of the candidates were talking about it in their campaign materials and at meet-the candidate events. That got us into a discussion about just what the Moderate Income Housing Plans were, and how they worked. I explained that the requirements in state legislation laid out a number of options for communities to consider as strategies to increase affordable housing, but he didn’t really buy that. He said, “what if we don’t want to do any of that in our city?” I attempted to explain the housing affordability issue, but he noted that he is quite familiar with the housing market, having bought and flipped a number of homes in recent years. So what’s the solution then, I asked? His response was, the market will take care of it. Bottom line, he felt it was entirely inappropriate for the state to be taking a role in telling local governments what to do in their local land use planning. Again, I tried to explain that some (not all) of the problem with housing affordability has been the difficulty of building anything other than single-family homes in many communities because of local land use regulations. That should be handled by those local officials, was his response.
I found myself agreeing in part to what my friend was saying, but also disagreeing with a lot of it, too. Bottom line for me about this conversation, however, was that the issue of “zoning reform,” or mandating action for housing affordability, appears to be climbing the political awareness ladder. I have heard from several different sources now the thought that, “the state is making cities allow more high-density housing, and local elected officials can’t do much about it.” This is usually accompanied by an implication of, “that’s just not right, it shouldn’t be happening.”
I also explained to my friend about the incentives-based bills that were passed in the last legislative session, intended to “persuade” communities and developers to build more owner-occupied affordable housing, but this didn’t seem very palatable to him either, as it was an interference with the market.
While we have been much less “top-down” in our approach to dealing with housing affordability in Utah compared to other states, as I’ve written about in previous blog posts, apparently the MIHP is being seen as a bogeyman by many, particularly since the reporting requirement has been beefed up and actions tied to eligibility for certain state funding programs. All this has the hallmarks to me of the beginnings of a citizen pushback.
I have also written about such pushbacks in other states in previous blog posts, most notably citing an article about this by Anthony Flint in the Lincoln Land Institute’s Landlines publication: The State of Local Zoning: Reforming a Century-Old Approach to Land Use. I am seeing increasing indications that the issue of zoning reform is becoming a broader, almost national-level, political dividing marker. The latest such evidence is a story recently in The National Review. The writer tries to make the case that top-down, unwarranted and unwanted zoning reform is flooding through various states, and is about to become a national-level issue as federal agencies pick up the cudgel. It cites the example of what is happening with a recent referendum and subsequent lawsuit filed against the city by the state attorney general in Milton, Massachusetts as a harbinger of things to come, but the message is definitely mixed. Some would argue that this is an expected response from right-leaning conservative, older owners of single-family homes in most communities. Massachusetts, however, is certainly not considered a typical conservative place, yet opposition to zoning reform at the neighborhood level is strong there as well.
The tenor around the country appears to be that the housing affordability crisis is leading to bi-partisan cooperation in state legislatures to enact zoning reform measures. However, when things get to the local level for implementation, things often don’t go so smoothly. Think of recent lawsuits brought in Montana, Minneapolis and California over such measures, and Arizona’s Democratic Governor vetoing a bi-partisan measure adopted by the legislature there.
The particulars of the Milton saga seem especially concerning.
Many Boston suburbs, however, don’t want dense housing or TOD. In 2023, the politically progressive suburb of Newton voted out several councilors who aimed to go above and beyond the zoning requirements of the MBTA Communities Act. Instead, the new council majority approved a watered-down zoning plan that only barely complied. One of the defeated councilors reportedly said, “We’re not going to have backyard swing sets anymore,” to which the opposition leader replied, “Are you kidding me? That’s why people move to Newton. We want the suburbs.”
The rebellion really took off last February when the suburb of Milton called a referendum on the zoning plan developed under state pressure, rejecting it by a 54 percent majority after a bitter campaign. Potentially more than 500 new homes had been slated to be placed (or stacked), not where Milton’s leafiest high-income single-family lots were located but in a denser middle-income section of town. This precinct — where drivers are already plagued by severe bottlenecks upon entering the nearby expressway — provided the margin of victory.
Milton’s open defiance of the new law quickly brought down the wrath of the state. Funds for shoring up the town’s seawall were revoked, and Governor Maura Healey has threatened funding for many other purposes, including Milton’s schools. Meanwhile, Attorney General Andrea Campbell has hauled Milton before the state’s Supreme Judicial Court to demand that the town either be fined for refusing to pass a state-approved zoning plan, or be saddled with a court-appointed “special master” to draft a compliant plan and force it on the town.
The spectacle of the state imposing a zoning plan on a town that has just soundly rejected that plan in a high-turnout democratic referendum does not sit well in a commonwealth whose tradition of local control antedates the American Revolution. Despite (or because) of that, supporters of the MBTA Communities Act are calling for Milton to face swift and severe punishment, lest other localities follow its example. Lydia Edwards, who chairs the State Senate’s Housing Committee, expressed “disgust” at the referendum, saying, “The state has to crush Milton.” Although she later apologized for the remark, the message was sent.
Yet Milton’s defiance does appear to be sparking a wider rebellion. Several localities are now hinting at noncompliance, proposing hyper-minimalist zoning plans, and collaborating with each other on strategies for opposing the law — both in court and out. The Healey administration is walking the fine line between letting recalcitrant suburbs slide, and pushing back hard enough to trigger broad defiance.
My point in raising all this is to warn a little bit that all this move toward zoning reform may not go as smoothly or easily as everyone is hoping, even as a number of state legislatures (including Utah’s) have been approving such measures, often with bi-partisan support. As my conversation with my friend described at the beginning of this piece may indicate, when it finally gets down to action at the local level, all bets are off.