The final deadline for 177 cities and towns to create new zoning allowing more housing near public transportation is fast approaching.
Most municipalities affected by the MBTA Communities Act, passed in 2021, have already passed their deadline, but the final cohort — 35 small towns adjacent to communities with transit stations — have until Dec. 31.
The sometimes-controversial law has faced a number of challenges, but has also seen tremendous success in communities that have embraced it. As the cutoff nears, what difference has the law made, and where are the holdouts?
More than 90% of towns have rezoned
The MBTA Communities Act requires cities and towns served by the MBTA to have at least one zoning district where multifamily housing is allowed by right. Its goal is to make it easier for developers to create new housing, relieving pressure on the expensive local housing market.
As of Dec. 18, 133 cities and towns have been certified as compliant or conditionally compliant, meaning they will eventually be certified compliant if they implement certain changes as instructed by the state. Another 35 have passed new zoning at the local level and are awaiting approval.
Of the small towns with a Dec. 31 deadline, 33 have passed zoning, and of those, 12 have been certified compliant and one conditionally compliant.
“The MBTA Communities Act is one of many tools that Massachusetts is using to increase the production of reasonably-priced housing and lower costs for everyone,” said Housing and Livable Communities Secretary Ed Augustus. “We continue to work with the remaining communities to support them in passing zoning that meets their needs, as well as moving forward on many other initiatives to make housing more affordable.”
According to EOHLC, at least 6,000 homes are in development or under construction in zoning districts that were created under the MBTA Communities law. Many of those are in municipalities where residents and local officials were supportive of the goal to create more housing.
In Watertown, where the City Council passed zoning that allowed for over 4,000 units — more than twice what the state required — in the fall of last year, results are already starting to appear.
In October, a developer proposed a 153-apartment project in Watertown Square, which would have been much more difficult before the MBTA Communities Act. It was the third and largest project proposed in the year since the zoning was implemented.
“Housing is the secret sauce that makes retail districts stronger,” City Manager George Proakis told MassLive earlier this year. “Building up the opportunity for people to live in a place where they’re walkably accessible to those restaurants and amenities and local businesses, over the long run, is going to be the greatest thing for those restaurants and amenities and local businesses.”
Holdouts from MBTA Communities zoning
Despite the widespread compliance with the MBTA Communities Act, there is still a small subset of towns that have failed to follow it.
In January, the Supreme Judicial Court found that the law was constitutional but temporarily unenforceable due to procedural issues with how it was passed. While the state worked to resolve those issues, noncompliant communities were given an extended deadline of July 14 to get in line. Several did so, but 11 still have not.
One of those towns, Holden, has consistently refused to follow the MBTA Communities Act since its original implementation. It was the only town not to submit the required action plan in 2023, getting itself declared noncompliant almost from the get-go.
After the Supreme Judicial Court decision, however, town officials changed course. At Town Meeting in May, the Planning Board recommended passing a zoning plan that would have followed the law, but it was rejected by voters. Officials are now working on another proposal that will go to Town Meeting on Feb. 23.
Town Manager Peter Lukes said he is still opposed to the MBTA Communities Act, but that the town is trying to meet the basic requirements while “minimizing any negative effects.”
“It is terrible legislation that was poorly planned, poorly written and is being poorly implemented,” he wrote in an email to MassLive. “I think that it would be very difficult for a court to overrule a democratic process … but at this point I think most of us would rather be technically ‘compliant’ than fight the Governor and the judicial system any longer.”
He added that many residents are still “opposed to any form of compliance, so it remains to be seen” whether the zoning makes it through.
The other noncompliant towns are Dracut, East Bridgewater, Freetown, Halifax, Marblehead, Middleton, Tewksbury, Wilmington and Winthrop.
Two more are set to join that list once the Dec. 31 deadline passes. Town Meeting voters in both Rehoboth and Carver shot down zoning proposals this fall, with Carver’s plan receiving only 26 votes in favor to 394 against.
Carver Planning Board Chair Mari Ellen Williams told voters during the meeting that the board had initially voted to support the proposal in August because they believed the new zoning district would allow just 235 new housing units to be built, the minimum required by the state, but instead, the proposal would have allowed for more than 800.
“We didn’t want 200 units, we didn’t want 839 units that they came back with, nor do we want 400 units,” Williams said. “We don’t want it.”
Though the Planning Board recommended indefinitely postponing the article, which would have allowed officials to revise the proposal and come back with something they preferred, voters instead rejected it outright.
In Rehoboth, town officials had urged voters to pass their zoning proposal, saying the alternative could be losing grant money or even having the state take over to implement a zoning district without the town’s say.
“None of us like the state coming in and telling us what to do,” said Selectman David Pereira, the Sun Chronicle reported at the time. “That’s the spirit of Rehoboth.”
What happens next after the deadline?
Come Jan. 1, the law’s rollout will be complete, and the state will need to determine how to deal with noncompliant towns. Some have already begun to lose grant funds, like Winthrop, which in September lost about $1.2 million it was set to receive for climate and flooding resilience work.
Other recent funding cancellations have sparked pushback. Two regional high schools, Wachusett High School and South Shore Vocational Technical School, have lost out on grants because one of their feeder communities did not follow the law, despite the rest doing so. State Sen. Peter Durant, R-Worcester/Hampshire, whose district includes two of the five feeder communities for Wachusett, accused Gov. Maura Healey of “weaponizing” the law.
“Using a regional high school as leverage in a disagreement with one of the towns in the district is the wrong approach and an overreach of state authority,” Durant said.
The state has since reinstated the grants for both schools, with a spokesperson telling MassLive last week that it was a “mistake.”
A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities said the office is working with noncompliant towns to help them reach compliance.
There is still a legal fight from at least one town unhappy with its responsibilities under the law. Earlier this year, nine communities filed lawsuits against the state after the Office of the Inspector General determined the MBTA Communities Act was an “unfunded mandate,” meaning it imposed expenses on municipalities without also providing financial supports.
A Plymouth Superior Court judge threw out the lawsuits, ruling that none of the communities had provided evidence of any specific costs they had been burdened with.
“The only allegations and averments before the court are generalized comments about large-scale issues they foresee,” Judge Mark Gildea wrote in his June ruling.
The state has provided grants and other technical assistance specifically for towns to draft new zoning and make infrastructure improvements to support new housing.
But last month, the town of Marshfield appealed that decision, and the state Supreme Judicial Court has agreed to hear the case. Oral arguments are scheduled for February.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell has repeatedly said she does not want to sue cities and towns to force them to comply with the MBTA Communities Act, as she did with Milton. An advisory released by her office in July said she did not intend to file any enforcement actions in 2025.
But for the handful of communities with no intention of following the law, the New Year may bring new consequences. Campbell’s advisory also stated that “where a community has demonstrated that it will achieve compliance only when ordered to do so by a court, and the pertinent deadline has passed, the AGO may bring a civil enforcement action at any time,” and was prepared to do so starting in January 2026.
“Rezoning is but an initial, necessary step towards building the new housing that the Commonwealth so badly needs,” Campbell wrote. “The remaining steps will take time before additional housing is built, and we have no time to waste in addressing the Commonwealth’s continued housing shortage; nor in addressing impediments to that important work.”
