A Plan For Harvard Street and More
Disclaimer: I’m about to talk about zoning. Apologies if it’s a little wonky and I encourage you to do more research rather than relying solely on this summary.
The Fall Town Meeting starts in a little less than a fortnight and the Town’s deliberative body will be tasked with voting on nearly 20 articles. The topics range from prohibiting the sale of mammals, birds, and amphibians in pet shops to renaming the Heath School to rezoning parts of town to comply with the MBTA Communities Act (MBTA-CA).
The MBTA-CA is a recent state law that requires municipalities that are served by the MBTA to create a zoning district “of reasonable size” which must be less than 0.5 miles from public transit. This is referred to as transit oriented housing as it encourages the development of new housing in areas where people are less likely to own cars and more likely to use public transportation. Compliance with this law is a tremendous opportunity to address the region’s housing and climate crises and Brookline can play a small part.
The original plan proposed by the Town was to utilize Harvard Street for MBTA-CA compliance. Many people expressed concerns that the MBTA-CA would not allow the Town to mandate first floor commercial or our full 15% Inclusionary Zoning requirement, which would have meant fewer affordable housing units. The Select Board responded by appointing a committee to study other options for compliance. This resulted in a warrant article created by the Select Board, a “Consensus Warrant Article”, for approval by Town Meeting. The Consensus Warrant Article includes a new Multifamily zoning district (M+) that includes many existing multifamily zones. While M+ technically complies with MBTA-CA it will not result in much new housing as the district is largely built out. The Consensus Warrant Article also includes the Harvard Street proposal with mandated ground floor retail and our full inclusionary zoning. The Harvard Street Proposal with the M+ compliance plan will result in “meaningful compliance” with the MBTA-CA.
The Consensus Warrant Article has been amended according to an agreement between “Yes! in Brookline” (a coalition of Brookline for Everyone, the Brookline CDC, and the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization) and Brookline by Design. These amendments protect some buildings (which were not likely to lead to new housing) and increase setbacks for certain properties. The amended Warrant Article has also been endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and Mothers out Front, among others. Many recognize the environmental impact of transit-oriented housing as well as the economic benefits to Harvard Street with more residents meaning more customers for the businesses on the street. That said, there will be some impact on the existing businesses on Harvard Street who currently occupy buildings that will be redeveloped. Some will naturally close, falling victim to the business cycle. Others will relocate within or near Brookline. A few may be forced out of business as they will be unable to find a suitable new home but this is less likely. All of this will take time as business leases tend to be 5-10 years and the current interest rate market makes new projects less likely to be developed in the near term.
So what does this all mean? Town Meeting is faced with the decision to meaningfully comply with the MBTA-CA which would result in a gradual increase of housing on Harvard Street and new business activity. Failure to approve this consensus plan could still result in compliance if the M+ zone is approved independently. Each of these articles will require a ⅔ majority for approval and it is unclear at this time if either plan has enough votes to get to the ⅔ approval, though the recent agreement between Yes! In Brookline and Brookline by Design certainly helps. The Town must be in compliance by December 31, 2023 or else we will lose important funding for affordable housing and road work as well as the risk of a lawsuit from the AG’s office among others.
I endorsed Yes! in Brookline’s call for meaningful compliance with the law and I intend to vote that way. It is estimated it could result, over time, in approximately 900 new housing units of which over 200 would be affordable. That is meaningful, but it is only the first step to addressing greater Boston’s housing shortage.
Checkout the League of Women Voters recent forum about our compliance efforts:
