City Council - Planning Development & Transportation Committee Hearing on Dockets #1632 and #1718

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Thank you. For the record, my name is Sharon Durkan, City Council for District 8, and I'm the chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Planning, Development, and Transportation. Today is November 18th, the exact time is 1012. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being livestreamed at boston.gov backslash city-council-tv and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, Bios Channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.plandev at boston.gov and will be made part of the public record and available to all Councillors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing. Individuals will be called on in the order of which they've signed up and will have two minutes to testify. If you are interested in testifying in person, please add your name to the sign-up sheet At the entrance of the chamber, if you're looking to testify virtually, please email our central staff liaison, roncobb, at ron.cobb at boston.gov for the link, and your name will be added to the list.

Today's hearing is on docket 1632. Order for a hearing regarding legalizing triple-deckers and other two to four unit housing in the city of Boston. This matter was sponsored by Councillors Henry Santana, me, Enrique Pepén, and was referred to the committee on September 10, 2025. And the other docket is Docket 1718, Order for Hearing Regarding Legalizing Accessory Dwelling Units in Every Neighborhood in the City of Boston. This matter is sponsored by Councilors Henry Santana, Me, and Enrique Pepén, and was referred to the committee on September 24th, 2025. Today, I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Councilor Henry Santana, who's the lead sponsor of these two dockets, Council President Ruth Louijeune, and Councilor Liz Breadon. I don't see any letters of absence, but if I see any, I will read those into the record. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. I first want to thank Councillor Santana for introducing these dockets and for allowing me to be a co-sponsor. I am honored to chair this hearing this morning.

If you have any residents or if you ask any residents or any councilor here what is the biggest crisis facing Boston today, their answer may be housing. This year's Greater Boston Housing Report Card was just released and the data is clear. We have one of the tightest rental markets in the country and we are one of the most expensive cities to live in. While new housing production is slowing down, Prices are pushing up for renters and potential homeowners. This challenge stems from the complexity of our zoning code, which is far longer, more restrictive, more inefficient than those of comparable cities. As a result, it slows down development and creates unnecessary barriers to producing much needed housing, legalizing the construction of triple deckers, other two to four unit homes, and Accessory Dwelling Units as of right in Boston would bring zoning practices closer to reality as residents face today. As our Senate President recently noted when discussing how to overcome obstacles to housing production, we must be bold and keep nothing off the table.

One of these proposals is to legalize a key component of the fabric. Even though triple-deckers are a defining part of Boston's housing stock and serve as well-designed multifamily homes and neighborhoods, I represent Lake Mission Health. Building these structures is illegal on a large part of Boston's land. Legalizing two to four unit homes is and we should be asking where we can allow more density especially in your transit to create a more affordable and livable city. ADUs offer smaller more affordable options for residents and they're legal by rate in every other community in Massachusetts. If the rest of the state can do this, why not Boston? We have long advocated for thoughtful, meaningful zoning reform to improve housing affordability. But the scale of our housing crisis demands that we examine every tool available, especially tools that we know work and that have shaped the image of our city. I want to thank the planning department for your work and partnership. We are grateful to have you this morning. Thank you as well to community advocates and experts for joining us who will be joining us at the second panel.

I look forward to reviewing the data, hearing from our panelists, and having a thoughtful and robust conversation about how we can modernize our zoning code to serve our residents better and Serve Boston's Future. Thank you. I want to give this to the lead sponsor. And so for each of our, we have been joined by Councilor Flynn and Councilor Worrell. Thank you for joining us. I'm going to give each of my colleagues an opportunity to give an opening statement. But first, I'll give the lead sponsor of these two dockets, Councilor Henry Santana, a minute and a half to speak.

Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you, Chair Durkan, and thank you for chairing this and then for also joining as a lead sponsor. Bostonians have consistently ranked housing affordability as one of their top policy concerns and for good reason. Housing costs are well over double the national average. To address this pressing issue, we need to expand access to affordable housing, including both ADUs and triple-deckers. Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs, are a form of affordable housing that addresses specific community needs, whether or not yet by right across Boston. But simply, ADUs are small homes built inside or alongside a main home, They address specific community needs by allowing for intergenerational living, at-home care of loved ones, downsizing, or renting. Despite their popularity,

A discrepancy between city and state zoning makes Boston exempt from last year's statewide ADU law, making us the only city in Massachusetts where, instead of being able to build an ADU by right Residents are subject to zoning code restrictions that make their construction complicated and expensive. Currently, only one Boston neighborhood has made ADU construction by right, which is Mattapan, Despite widespread support for adopting pro-ADU policies citywide, it's time we make ADUs by right and allow for this form of affordable housing. It wouldn't be a discussion on affordable housing without discussing homeownership. One affordable method for homeownership in Boston is the iconic triple-deckers. These multi-family homes are especially popular among our immigrant communities, multi-generational families, low-income families, and families who need to pool resources to become homeowners. Currently, Boston has over 15,000 triple-decker homes, which houses tens of thousands of our residents and families.

These homes allow for long-term economic independence and our integral parts for our city's fabric. But unfortunately, current zoning codes are pushing them towards becoming a thing of the past. Despite the zoning code posing barriers to building both ADUs and triple-deckers, Boston needs affordable housing more than ever. I look forward to hearing from today's panelists about triple-deckers and ADUs themselves and how we as a city can remove barriers to their construction. Thank you.

Thank you so much to the lead sponsor, Councilor Henry Santana. Next, we're going to go to the sponsor of the other dockets, Councilor Enrique Pepén. You have a minute and a half.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you so much for holding this hearing. Thank you to the panelists for being here. Thank you for the advocates for being here, too, for all the work everyone's doing in the community. This topic is very, very important to me as someone that believes in the development of housing and the development of Making it easier to also build more housing in the city of Boston. I always say that triple-deckers are the epitome of what housing looks like in the city of Boston. Whether you're driving down Washington Street, Hyde Park Ave, Blue Hill Ave, Dorchester Ave, or anywhere, in and around those areas. And what's beautiful is that they're usually representative of multi-generational families across Boston, also of multicultural families across Boston. But doing some history Thank you. Thank you.

Just people that look like my family to be able to purchase one of them or continue to build them. And I want to make sure that we are heading in the right direction. This is why I became a co-sponsor on this docket so that When we're thinking about that next generation of families that could potentially own a home or call Boston home, or even for those that have been here for multiple generations, they can do so knowing that it is not going to be so difficult. and I've already gone through a rezoning process in my own district which took some time but we got it through and I hope that we are able to also make this a reality for the entire city of Boston. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Councilor Pepén. Next, we're going to go to our Council President, Louijeune.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning, everyone. Thank you to the sponsors for putting this forward. I think so many people in our city, in the Commonwealth, and now in our country are recognizing that we have a housing crisis and need to be doing the work of building more housing. And so these hearings are very smart and important for us to have these conversations. I said this when this was introduced. I say it now. I was very proud to support Plan Mattapan, which made ADUs permissible by right. And we see we are reaping, and we are seeing the good things that stem from that in Mattapan and neighborhood. The high rate of black homeownership but also with the high rate of seniors who want to age in place and think about what that means for them and their families. And so I think it is We also know that ADUs tend to be

It's sometimes called naturally occurring affordable housing because they tend to be below market rate housing, again, in black and brown neighborhoods and throughout the city. So that's really important. So excited for that conversation. And also excited for the conversation around triple-deckers. We have to take some pressure off of the housing market. And by building triple-deckers, which have historically been, as I think Councilor Santana stated, It's just like the stories that Triple Deckers can tell also tells a wave of immigrant stories here in the city of Boston. And so I think it's also important that we have that conversation as well. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you.

OK, thank you so much, Council President Louijeune. Councilor Liz Breadon.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for being here. And thank you, Madam Chair, and to the lead sponsors of these two dockets. Yes, we have a housing crisis. We don't need to say that. It goes without saying that we need to explore any and every opportunity to build more housing that's affordable for a very diverse group of residents in the city of Boston. In conversations with the Mayor's Office of Housing, we hear that the luxury housing will take care of itself. We have supports and subsidies for low-income housing, multi-family housing. But the missing in the middle gap is the space that we need to really focus on. So that we can provide more housing for working families, city workers, and folks who just want to make Boston their home. They're not earning big bucks and they're not eligible for subsidies.

We need to really address the housing need for that particular group of people because that's really, really critical. I know that seems like a very archaic... Pepe, SRO, Single Room Occupancies, ADUs, Triple Deckers. alluded to the fact that there's a negative history associated with the lack of, when triple-deckers became illegal to be building in Boston. It was a direct response to an anti-immigrant sentiment that was designed to try and curtail the expansion of immigrants into neighbourhoods because Triple Deckers were a very ideal family housing for intergenerational families.

And we're still in that moment. Intergenerational families need housing. And I think Triple Deckers are a wonderful solution. So thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilor Breadon. Councilor Flynn.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the administration team that is here. I'm interested in this conversation, looking forward to the testimony from the panelists and want to thank them for their work. I also want to ensure that we have, at some point, have a discussion about How we're supporting our residents that are living in Boston Housing Authority as well. We need to ensure that they are part of the discussion, that they are also respected and included. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. A number of residents living in public housing and many of them are struggling, older buildings, so want to see if there's any way that we can have a conversation about

How this benefits public housing residents, whether it's in my district or anywhere else throughout the city. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Councilor Flynn. Thanks for your amazing attendance in my committee as well. Brian Worrell.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the sponsors for introducing this. Also, thank you to the panel for all your work on building housing here in the City of Boston. I am a pro-growth, pro-people advocate. I do believe that we do have a housing crisis, but I'm also a big home ownership advocate, just knowing that The numbers are very skewed the other way, but just understanding that everything needs to be on the table to solve our housing crisis. And when we talk about ADUs, we've run into A few issues where the ADU in Mattapan has been zoned, but then they come up against need and variances for parking requirements. So just making sure that our zoning code is in line that when we Do legalize it that they can go all the way through the process. But understand the importance of it. It helps those who have high

Julia Mejia.

Thank you, Chair. And I'm excited to be here, friends. Anything that deals with housing stability is like a number one priority considering everything that is happening here across the city. I am really excited to dive into The Triple Decker Conversation, Having Grown Up, Housing Insecure. I grew up and a triple-decker and that triple-decker we lived with multiple families so we were able to all fit in one place comfortably and so I do know that There was a racial redlining situation happening because they prevented that from continuing to happen. So really looking forward to that restorative justice and I also Agree with Councilor Worrell that we have to be able to do, we should be able to create a world in which everyone feels like they're winning. And so if we can get triple deckers sold

and owned by people of color and low-income folks who have been priced out of the city of Boston. There are definitely pathways where I hope that everyone could win, and that is what I'm going to be looking for and learning more about. And then in regards to the ADUs, I'm also curious, because I get this question A lot from folks who already put together a basement and they're like, oh, I didn't know I could not, you know, I just have to add a door here and then legalize it. So I'm curious in terms of folks who have already embarked on that journey and how you can course correct. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilor Mejia. And we've been joined by Councilor John Fitzgerald. So I'd love to give you an opportunity to give an opening statement.

Thank you, Madam Chair. No, let's get right into it. Housing, let's figure it out, right? Triple-deckers, ADUs, anything that can help. Really appreciate all being here and advocating and trying to figure out solutions for this. Thank you.

He didn't need to say much because he's got a lot of triple-deckers.

That's right. Not 3Ds, though. Whoever said also referred to as 3Ds, let's not try and make that a thing.

So I'd love to give the panel an opportunity to introduce their slide deck. So I'll start with, and we are joined Today by Kathleen Onifer, Devin Quirk, and Will Cohen. Thank you all for the work that you do. We work together every day, so I just want to thank you for All that you do, I'll let you get to your presentation and introductions.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Council for having this hearing on this important topic. I just want to pass it over to Will and Kathleen here in a second, who have been the champions are reforming our zoning code and addressing everything you all brought up in your open statement. I just wanted to express my enthusiasm for everything that was already brought up. I think we all agree housing costs are a number one issue facing our city. and then our zoning code is a tool that can help us address that problem. The cost of construction, housing supply, these are absolutely part of the conversation around addressing housing affordability. But as you'll see in Will's presentation in a moment here, 99% of the homes in residential zone districts of Boston, if that home disappeared today, you could not rebuild it without a variance. entirely overly restrictive form of zoning.

And I think from everything that you've said in your openings, I think it's clear that we need to change that and move to a model where it isn't burdensome, for us to create new housing, but also perhaps even more importantly for the homeowners in Boston for not make it burdensome for them to just make simple improvements to their homes, like adding an ADO. So these types of common sense reforms, that's what we're here to do. I'll lead forward with you all and I'm excited to turn it over to Will who can walk you through it.

Thank you, Devin. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Councilors. We are very pleased to be here presenting this to you. This has been a long time coming. This has been an initiative that's gone through various iterations, and we are now Hard at work at trying to work toward a solution in a pragmatic way. And so all the things that you all mentioned just this morning in the opening statements about the priorities, I would say Fairly clearly represent exactly what we have as our goals. And so we would love your assistance in figuring out how to make sure that we are paying attention to each one of those things as we get into actual implementation. Devin just mentioned it but it's this graph is actually something which we were it was suggested during a community meeting a question of how our zoning got to be the way it is and I think we had

you know an intuitive sense as the policymakers and practitioners and you know stewards for whatever it's worth of the zoning code that there's some kind of mismatch but a very common sense question from a resident was Right, but how did it get to be this way? If you are all asserting something about existence or mismatch with the zoning code, why? Where did it come from? And so that's an excellent question. We dug into that a little bit more. And we came up with a graph that I would say was more illuminating than we expected it to be. And the simple answer is that when the buildings were built, These rules didn't apply, which is actually a very simple takeaway, but it's very clear from the information. So before 1924, there was no zoning, not as we think of it as a zoning code. So in 1924, which went into effect a couple years later, The first zoning code of the city of Boston went into effect. So before that, you could build buildings.

After that, from 1924 into the 1960s, there was a different first set of rules about what you could build. And then in the 1960s, there became a new zoning code, which sort of is the base of the zoning that we have here in the city of Boston today. There was then a process in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, much like a radio station. of additional changes to the zoning code that overlaid additional rules neighborhood by neighborhood. And so if you look at the sort of when buildings were built, this is just basic data from the tax assessor. 60% of the small scale buildings, that is to say things in the scale of two to six, really what we're talking about for these dockets were built before there was any kind of zoning. So the rules didn't apply, so the rules never had to line up. And then there was another 30% up until 1967 that really just had to follow that first zoning code of the 20s.

And really, from the 60s on, once that new zoning code went into effect, not necessarily purely causation, and Correlation, but there is certainly correlation. Really only 10% of what we see at that smaller scale went into effect after that 1960s and then revised neighborhood-based zoning code. So if we go to the next slide. Another way of putting that is exactly what many of you just mentioned at the very beginning of this. There are triple-deckers in every neighborhood outside of the downtown core of the city of Austin. Regardless of how popular understanding of a neighborhood may be, It's important for all of us to remember as policymakers that One neighborhood is not just one typology of housing. And so whether it's talking about the specific triple-decker or buildings with different numbers of units, those exist in a multifaceted and very complex way, which is I think exactly

What relates to people's descriptions of neighborhoods as having a very distinct Bostonian and yet neighborhood-specific character. And so as we're thinking about how zoning can reflect that, that principle is something we need to keep in mind. Next slide, please. Just to underscore it, it's not so much that there was a specific rule about the triple-decker, but more of a Multiple things that went to effect in the 1920s. The largest one of those was the first zoning code. And we don't need to look too detailed at the zoning maps, but there were a number, many fewer than today, of zoning districts that were put into place in that first zoning code. many of which were to take the neighborhoods or most of the neighborhoods of the city of Boston and change them to be two and a half stories in height which if you just do that basic math that makes it so you can't have the triple-decker anymore. That was the baseline.

That was then revised down in the 1960s and then further revised down in the 1980s and beyond. When we look at the maps of the 1920s zoning code, that's been very, very helpful because it's not to say that that needs to be the future. The 1920s is very, very different from, say, the 2020s where we're living today. But it's useful as we think of What got us to where we are and what it is that we want to figure out to preserve as we work into the future. So if you go to the next slide, you will get at exactly what Devon was just mentioning, which is We've had a long sense for a while that there's been some kind of mismatch between the relationship of zoning and what's on the ground. That's something that we see every time someone goes to the Zoning Board of Appeal to get a variance. It's something that we see. Every time someone wants to do something and it seems like the violations in zoning do or don't relate to whatever it is that people want to do. It had never been critical before this initiative to actually do the math, so to speak, on that.

And so through a lot of work, beginning with work on EDUs, going into this initiative, we've taken all the properties in the city of Boston in these residential areas and done a set of analysis on some of the rules in zoning. Not all of them, there are dozens of them, many of which are very, very arcane, but we took sort of the big six, if you will. It's the number of units that are allowed on any one given property. It's the minimum size of lot that you have to have. A zoning district will say, If it's a something 6,000 square foot district, the lot needs to be at least 6,000 square feet to put anything on it. We did the required amount of space between the front, rear, and side of a building related to its lot. and another thing called floor area ratio, which is basically the amount of building relative to the amount of land on any given lot. And just looking at those six things, not looking at height, not looking at parking requirements,

Everything that you see in yellow on that map is mismatched in at least one way with one or more of those rules. And if it looks like the map is almost entirely yellow, you are absolutely correct. There's a couple places where there's a couple blue dots. That does not mean that those necessarily follow all the rules in zoning. They just don't necessarily break any of those six.

And so that's what- So what does the pink mean?

Oh, beautiful. Thank you. So those are our bubbles of how this work relates to the work that the planning department is doing. And so let's start with the purple, actually. So Mattapan and East Boston have been rezoned. That was through the work of Plan Mattapan and Plan East Boston. We haven't yet updated our analysis to reflect those new zoning districts. That is sort of a retooling of that analytic machine, so to speak, but I can just say from our initial analyses that the amount of mismatch went way, way, way, way down. And in fact, this is exactly what Councilor Worrell was just talking about. There are some places where there's a mismatch, where there's room to revisit what's happening in East Boston and Mattapain as we go into it. But the sort of bar for mismatch has gone much lower. And where it does exist in some places, it's okay. It's that There's rules around a front or a side yard, and maybe one building's a little bit too close on one side to the yard, but you can still effectively repurpose and modify your building as you go. So that's the purple.

The pink is where we're actively working on work related to this presentation and this work on neighborhood zoning. So Roslindale, Hyde Park and West Roxbury are the three neighborhoods that we're doing for this first phase of this initiative. And at the same time, as you all are well aware, the Alston-Brighton community plan is also ongoing a more comprehensive effort of which these districts will play a part. And so these are the focus of today's presentation, but we know that the work needs to be applied citywide. Thank you for the question. Next slide, please. In terms of work that we did, Plan Matapan did many, many different things. It was a comprehensive neighborhood-wide plan. It achieved not just zoning goals, but things related to all kinds of different... Wait, sorry, do you want to speak? But for the purposes of zoning, we achieved two primary things.

One was the creation of districts that provide a better mismatch in terms of zoning districts relative to what's there. and created, as was noted by some of you all, the provision of EDUs in a by-right way. So those are in place. Those are now fully enacted and residents in the study area of Mattapan are able to use that zoning as they think about maintaining their properties or adding ADUs. That was with two districts. And then if you go to the next slide, What we're beginning to see, and it's only been in effect for about a year and a half, is that the effect on the need for zoning variances has been fairly profound. Again, this is 2024 to 2025. There's a lot going on in the world. Mortgage rates are complicated. Construction costs have gone up. But even with sort of those broader caveats, what we can see is that instead of having half or more of things needing to go to the ZBA for small scale renovations and maintenance,

Now we can see that 90% of these kinds of projects can breeze through and just get a permit without needing zoning relief. There is still a need for zoning relief. Things that weren't either fully addressed in Plan Matapan because there's always a lot to do or things where there are funny conditions about a specific site that require additional thought. But this has been a recalibration as we get The need for zoning relief to really be in Mattapan about things that require the additional process that a variance is supposed to give. And so what you can see on this slide is for all the things that were in small scale residential properties, the kinds of permits that can happen by right and where the variance is still needed. So seven of them, that tallest bar, that's adding an additional unit. That's not necessarily that sort of Prototypical little house in someone's backyard that people might think of as an ADU. But for all intents and purposes, it is adding a unit to your existing property.

It could be a basement. It could be a modification to your existing building. or it could be something in the backyard, which is made by Wright and Mattapan. Other kinds of structural or additions or extensions, those are changes to a building. It doesn't have to necessarily be A new actual unit with its own egress and fire code and all those kinds of things. But it achieves many of the goals that we think of when we talk about ADU. Many of the emails that go to adu.boston.gov are people wanting to repurpose their building to be more usable by them. They don't necessarily need to be renting it out. They might just want their grandmother to live there too. And so it doesn't always have to be achieved through the code of a new unit. but it's a unit's worth of space for lack of a better term. That is now largely enabled by right. Other kinds of changes, exterior renovations, Accessibility. People can and now do build ramps without needing to go to the ZBA for a variance. When you want that grandmother to live in your building with you, you can allow her to get up the stairs and into the building

and many more. Despite the fact that it doesn't even need zoning relief, there's also additional work we can do to make sure that that processing is happening in a timely manner at this kind of scale. Next slide. The same thing for East Boston. We're still working on some of the analysis for sort of the quantification of that, but the same general principle is there. We have districts that allow somewhere between two to six units, and we have two districts that make that happen. There's additional pathways for other kinds of development, and that was really heavily thought through through Plain East Boston itself. Next slide. So I suspect many of you are somewhat familiar with this. If you've been walking around and looking at the city billboards, you may have seen these flashing up on the screen.

or I hope many of your constituents have been asking you about this. One of the things that we're very, very proud of is even in advance of zoning, the planning department in collaboration with many other departments across the city put together the EDU guidebook This is something which is a printed physical document. There's at least one copy available in every single BPL branch across the city for checkout. to take home and return, as well as an online version of both the webpage and a PDF of the book on the City of Boston Plain Department's website. And what it gets us is the vision. It's not just a vision board. but in many ways it provides that inspiration for residents. We worked with architects to come up with a set of 12 different schemes for the kinds of EDUs that with all the work of City of Boston staff We think make the most sense for the kinds of properties and housing that we see in the city. This isn't zoning. This is just an understanding of what an ADU means here in the city.

It could be all the way from repurposing an existing building, just Reed, changing the floor plan on the first floor of, say, a triple-decker to have two units in it, all the way to additions on the side of a building, like you can see here in this picture, all the way to building actually a detached structure in the back. And so where this has been very, very helpful is rather than just kind of pie in the sky thinking about what we want housing to be, we have an architectural base, an architectural understanding of what we need to change zoning to to actually enable this kind of incremental housing growth. So this is already available for residents. And this is one of the first things that planning staff and MOH staff give to residents when they contact the city trying to figure out how to work on an ADU. Next slide, please. So it's not just about the guidebook. Part of it's outreach. Part of it's also that MOH has been very, very hard at work trying to figure out how to enable the financing and logistics of getting this done.

The Boston Home Center. has a competitive and highly active program of providing financial assistance loans to enable the construction of these. I think it's just worth caveating that the job of MOH in doing this is to make it more possible but one thing that we're very very aware of is that no matter what ADUs and building remains expensive here at the city and so part of that as we're thinking about zoning We're trying to figure out how we can remove as many barriers as possible so that that becomes more palatable and more achievable for homeowners here in Boston. Just as a quick stat, as of a month ago, or so. As of September 12, 226 ADUs have been permitted citywide. That's not just attached ones. That includes basements. That includes additions. And that doesn't mean they were completed, but they got building permits They made it through the regulatory process, at which point the fund began to actually getting it built.

And we've been joined by Councilor Coletta Zapata. Go ahead.

Thank you. Oh, hi. Hi, Councilor. Next slide, please. So in a nutshell, what this effort is all about is this diagram that you see here. This sort of embodies really this whole project. And so a question that has been asked by Leadership at the Planning Department, by constituents, by some city councilors, by neighbors who I know, has been, why is this so hard? Why does it take so long to enable EDUs? The rest of the state was able to do it. Why can't we? And one of the answers is I think also something that you all mentioned in your initial opening statement, which is it's critical that we get it right. We don't want to just change some rules and say we enabled ADUs. We want to make sure that we change enough rules that the EDUs are doable and that maintaining properties becomes doable. And so the shortest answer is the zoning is so mismatched, that 99% in Boston, that for EDUs,

If they're at all touching the primary building on a property, we can't just say you can build an ADU. And so one of this is another sort of basic observation that's carried us a long way as we've worked on this, Unlike many other municipalities in the Commonwealth, our lots are, well, they're Bostonian. They are smaller than a lot of other suburban and more rural communities. And so the state of their work about enabling ADUs has been profoundly important. and it operated under an understanding that lots can be bigger. And so they said, if you're on a lot, if you're in an area where single family homes are allowed, You have to be able to build a detached ADU on that lot. That's the rule. That's what the state required every other municipality to do. That's a critical rule. That achieves a lot of abilities for the towns and cities across the Commonwealth.

As we've been doing this analysis, particularly through that ADU guidebook, it's become especially clear that that ability to have a detached building, another house, a separate residence behind the primary one, just isn't going to fit in a lot of what we have here in the city today. Which means that just saying, don't worry about the zoning, build the thing in the backyard is helpful. It will result in some construction. It will result in some ADUs. But our critical task is to make sure it's doable across the majority of properties in the city. which means we have to think about the zoning as it applies to existing buildings. So right now the zoning says your building, according to zoning, has to be smaller, shorter, and in a different place from where it currently is. And as long as you don't meet those conditions, as long as your building is not within the green box, you have to seek a variance zoning relief from the Zoning Board of Appeal. which means all those changes that become an aggregate up to an ADU or even just maintaining your property, you get got by the zoning.

And so our job, if you go to the next slide, is to change that box. Make the box bigger, make the box taller, make the box fit the housing that we currently have, give it some flexibility to move so it actually can sort of wiggle along with where existing buildings are. But additionally, and this is the challenging part of it, Change the size of the box so it can have enough space for reasonable modifications to existing buildings to allow for renovations and ADUs. That is our task. We're hard at work on it, but we need your help. Next slide, please. So to actually do that right, we need to actually know what's happening on existing buildings. And so what we've spent a lot of the last couple months doing has been to really look at it actually parcel by parcel. This is a very small piece of the map. We analyze the conformingness or nonconformingness, the mismatch between zoning for every single residential property in the city of Boston. We printed these out on ginormous maps. We went to Hyde Park. We went to Roslindale. We went to West Roxbury.

And we printed it out so everyone could find their property. and we have it mapped out, one to six. What does the zoning get right on your house and what does it not? Where's your front side, where's your side yard, where's your rear, where's your FAR, where's your unit count, where is your, One other thing I can't remember. How do you get all those right or wrong? And what we see is that 99% really mapped out, at which point it becomes clear, I think, in our community process, as well as to us as practitioners, that these are the things we have to balance in our new zoning district. We've done a lot of work getting the word out about what we're trying to do. And now the work from here becomes how we get it right. And so our job over the coming year is to come up with new districts, talk about them in the public, revise them, have a public process, and then get this enacted in the zoning code. Next slide, please. So that's our timeline. Right now, we're getting a lot of outreach from constituents. We've had this initial set of public meetings. We have office hours that are virtual. We're meeting with community organizations.

And then from there, we're taking that feedback and putting that into a first set of districts that we can go back out to the public with and figure out how to get it right and then get it encoded. And with that, I will stop talking and give it over to Kathleen and Devin.

Great. I mean, this is one of our top priorities as we look into 2026 for the planning department and our work on zoning across the city. So we're really excited for the way that this can have an impact like we see in the results in Matapan, right, for residents for housing in the city. It represents about 20% of the volume of ZBA cases we see, so it also could be a major contribution towards the efforts we're all working together with ISD on permitting reform. And so we're just excited to hear your questions and your feedback as we take this work into 2026. to make sure we're both getting the policy right and making sure that we're talking to your constituents and your residents, the businesses that reach out to you so that they are all participating in this process and equipped to benefit from it when the new zoning goes into effect.

Thank you so much. This is really, really helpful and exciting. I think for some of us, at least maybe the ones sitting here, I think we have been filing and talking and wanting to have a lot of these conversations. about this important work. I guess I'll speak for myself that I really truly believe that it's not just about fitting the contours of the current neighborhood. It's about pushing beyond that. I just want to open up with one question and then I'm going to let everyone ask their questions. How does this work push beyond the contours of the current look of the neighborhood? We know that, I think, even the word, I talk about neighborhood character and preservation. Those neighborhoods that are sort of known as sort of the historic. But we know the history of this work. And we know, I mean, I think Councilor Pepén hit the nail on the head.

and I think this presentation hit the nail on the head of like when was zoning coming to pass? Interestingly enough, there's a lot of other things that were happening at the same time. So I just want to be very clear that I guess my, especially as the chair of this committee, We need to be pushing beyond the contours of what exists. And when I first saw this hearing order, I mean, it doesn't, you know, triple deckers doesn't get at the type of density that we need in District 8 and that we need in other neighborhoods. So I'm just curious, sort of, How much political capital, how much is the administration and the planning department willing to move beyond what currently exists and make things happen?

Yeah. We and I am looking to Councilor Breadon and the Alston Brighton community plan is a really great opportunity where we're going to be planning and zoning for this scale in some areas in the neighborhood where ADUs are the path to growth all the way up to maybe the most drastic scales of growth in the city. But as part of that process, we really are looking to figure out not just the sort of two to four unit housing that is really contextual across our neighborhood, but also that sort of six to 14 space that really forms the missing middle where we get inclusionary units delivered, where we get more particularly handicap accessibility across our neighborhood and might still be able to fit in parts of the neighborhood. We are doing a second, have done an RFP, have a consultant working with us on a guidebook specifically looking at that scale of six to 14 like we did for the ADU guidebooks. We could have an understanding of

Frankly, accessibility code in particular and modern building code, how that impacts and be able to take that into account in zoning and in parts of neighborhoods where that and so on. I think a second piece is that every neighborhood of the city does have small multi-family buildings. Sometimes they're adaptive reuses of schools or other and one of our key principles when we go to rezone is to make sure that like the housing is legal that we have in our neighborhood. It's a major component of anti-displacement. So we are going to be looking carefully at how we make sure that we're both legalizing what's there on the ground that is larger and potentially having A special or discretionary process when something like that does need additional review.

The third piece of that I'd say is we're looking really closely at townhouses, particularly in the outer neighborhoods, the opportunities they offer to both Allow for growth but to have that growth serve larger households and more easily serve a home ownership opportunity. Understanding how that fits in across our sort of zoning and as an opportunity even as it's a different typology than some of our historic buildings, help serve those big planning goals that we have and need.

Thank you. And I just think it's important to mention that We have very intense opposition to zoning changes and variances given that real estate has become one of the most expensive and owners want to protect their asset. A lot of us know that term as rent seeking. Essentially, that is a lot of the folks who come to this process. And I know through efforts like the Planning Academy and other efforts. We do need to get more people involved in this conversation. So I am excited to hear from the second panel. So first, I want to go to my colleagues in order of arrival, starting with the lead sponsors. So we're going to give everyone five minutes, and then we're going to see if there are additional questions. But we do have an incredible second panel, so I want to make sure they have time to fully flesh out their arguments. We'll start with Councilor Henry Santana. You have five minutes.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being here. Well, I think amazing presentation. I mean, I learned so much and looking forward for more conversations. With you and I think you need to be out more in community educating folks or more people like you. I think it was an amazing presentation. I think one thing that, you know, really stuck with me as you kept saying, we want to make sure we got it right, right? And balancing getting things right with also the crisis that we're in of getting people housed Right, I mean, so what's the balance there, right? Because with getting it right, it sounds like it's a very long-term approach. You mentioned, I think you were at West Roxbury, Hyde Park, and what was it, Rosendale, right? Those are the kind of, The priority right now, I mean, what's the timeline of like the whole city, right?

Or do we, have we started those conversations? Or maybe it's not to you, I'm seeing,

I mean, I think we're really hoping we can deliver both this phase one and the Alston Brighton community plan and its rezoning in 2026. That's going to be really ambitious with the work on that. We're going to have a six to 14 unit guidebook at the same time, which is going to be really important as we look at some of the areas of Dorchester, JP, Mission Hill, Roxbury that already on the ground have denser buildings. The plan is to sort of roll into 2027, moving on to that second phase of neighborhoods and being able to bring this forward.

And then I know I missed this during the presentation, but I mean, Why the neighborhood by neighborhood approach? Is it because of just the specific needs of every single neighborhood? Or is it because we want to make sure that's a community process?

Yeah, I think, honestly, we just have learned that when zoning is such a wonky and dry and kind of boring sounding topic to advertise a public meeting on, Folks tune out when we just talk about it as like sort of zoning writ broadly that many of our community partners, of our civic organizations, of our residents are just really used to engaging on a neighborhood basis. They tune in when they hear their neighborhood name as part of the meeting. So we're trying to make sure we're taking a citywide approach, that we're doing multiple neighborhoods at the same time so that we're really benefiting from that analysis, that opportunity to share with each other. but also are giving people the ability to engage at the sort of neighborhood level where they're more likely to sort of show up and be comfortable.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I mean, and how do we balance that then with By the end of this process, let's say 20, 25, 35, whatever, how do we balance that? I mean, we have citywide policies in place. It sounds like we're going to have different policies in every single neighborhood.

I think one of the things we think is most important about this is some of what we were showing you on the cases in Mattapan is that we are really and many more. We are working to track data and understand how property owners, the market, housing is responding to the zoning changes so we can pivot if we need to. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The rezoning we did for you didn't contemplate like the townhouses take up different space on a lot than buildings and ADUs. Do you guys want to talk about that? Do you want that to be an update that we consider? Or are you like, we're exhausted?

We've been talking about zoning for too long already. And there, because of the desire for homeownership in particular and that sort of opportunity, they're like, no, we want to talk about townhouses. So I think a culture of sort of like, always be amending like really keeping track of what's happening and understanding how to keep zoning up to date is how we're going to make sure that this process sort of in some ways like doesn't end. It's something that we're constantly monitoring and able to adjust as needed.

And I just want to add that while it's super important to engage at a hyper-local level and engage neighborhood by neighborhood the way that Kathleen just mentioned, We're also thinking more broadly about the way we author the zoning code so that the zoning code itself is not neighborhood by neighborhood. It respects the character and uniqueness of each individual neighborhood and district and square in our city and enforces that, but it is written in such a way that there are citywide type districts. So part of the answer to the question of why the three neighborhoods we selected is because in those three neighborhoods, they're the largest lots. So there's a lot of commonality in terms of the housing stock and residential areas between Hyde Park West Roxbury and Roslindale. and then when we go to the next phase, we'll think of it in the same way. Think of many neighborhoods of our city that have these sort of shared fabrics and that's how we'll address that. Creating templates in our code that are respective of those character districts, but it exists in a citywide way.

Awesome. My time is up. So again, really appreciate it. I want to have another conversation with you to learn more. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Chair.

Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much, Councilor Santana. Councilor Pepén, you have the floor in five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you again for the presentation. It's always very beneficial for me to hear these presentations and look at these books As you keep hearing, Hyde Park and Rosendale and Mattapan are three neighborhoods that I looked at a lot, which is literally my entire district. So thank you for this. I wanted to ask you, do you foresee this really helping Our zoning book becoming more streamlined and less complicated because when you do a simple Google search and you look up, hey, what city has the most complicated zoning book in the entire country? It is Boston. and it's over 4,000 pages and it's very complicated for anyone to really navigate and to do any changes to the house so that's part one of my question is how is that going to fix it become more Legible for just residents who are looking to do some changes.

And then two, how is this going to really streamline more projects down the pipeline that are currently stuck in the ZBA or through trying to get With, you know, variances and different requirements, have we looked, analyzed the number of projects that this could benefit from?

Yes, so this is about 20% right now of the caseload that... is at the ZBA is of this type of scale of project in these sort of three neighborhoods. So that's a potentially really major win for residents for the overall scale of the docket at the CPA for permitting times across the city. I think to the first person, yes. It is going to make the zoning code a lot easier to understand and to use. And eventually, we're going to get fewer pages. We are reforming the zoning code by addition. It's like it gets longer to get shorter in the end. Someday we're going to get to start making it shorter and it's going to be a really great moment for the zoning team and everyone who would love for it to someday be under, you know, shorter than the city of New York's zoning code as an aspiration.

But by this move to utilizing citywide districts, we can really avoid replicating the same text over and over and over and over again. with minor differences that end up just making it really complex and really hard to understand sometimes. The zoning lines can feel really arbitrary. There are residents who are Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. When we had our squares and streets conversation was the mapping sessions, allowing residents to really play around of how the neighborhood could look like with this new zoning or with more triple-deckers. How is Washington Street going to look different? Are we going to have that type of engageful conversation with residents? And I ask this, I know you're going to have more meetings in my district specifically, and that really helped people understand what this is.

Yeah. We are hoping that in the sort of probably spring of next year, we're going to be going out to have mapping sessions with each one of the neighborhoods.

Okay. Well, that's good. Something that I really want to keep in mind is ensuring that existing homeowners, especially those that are BIPOC, part of the BIPOC community, benefit from this because what I'm scared of is that, yes, we do push this forward, but It's a different generation of people that are going to benefit from it. I want to know, do we have that? in mind when we're doing this? What have we talked about? Something that I really like that was part of your presentation is that in the ADU process, I think I mentioned that 26 of your projects received funding from the Boston Health, Boston Home Center. So I want to know what kind of funding that was. Who did they go to? If you don't have those numbers right now, I would just love to get those in the future. I just want to see how our BIPOC community is benefiting from this as well. to ensure that multi-generations of family could continue to benefit from living in the city.

MOH is the right person to ask for all the precise details. I can generally characterize it as they have a combination of a loan as well as financial assistance. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. is that they may get some initial assistance but the overall process remains complicated and onerous. And so we can't solve all the problems through a zoning change, but we do absolutely hope that having this be and many more. So I think the biggest lesson that we can make more systematic, more commonly done and easier to do is the single biggest way that we can make it so that contractors, architects and everyone who's involved in that process for homeowners can do it in a more efficient kind of way. when it's sort of bespoke, when it's a one-off, when it's unique to every single situation, that's what makes the cost go up.

And so this is one piece of that bigger puzzle.

Thank you for describing it that way because it's just very helpful to understand like How this is a way, part of a bigger picture compared to that one-off situation that it is. But I know my time is up. Thank you so much for your presentation. I'll hold my questions for the next round.

Thank you so much. Council President Louijeune.

Thank you and thank you to the panelists from the administration for being here and for your testimony. I think continuing on that line of questioning, has the city thought about putting together like a vetted contractor list or standardized scopes of work or somehow made like tailor packages made to folks who want to build out these ADUs. I think both pricing partnerships.

I know that MOH has been working on what might be ways that some of the prefab options that might be possible under updated zoning. I will say one of our big goals is to get these zoning rules in place because then it allows the building out of those types of programs because there's an understanding of what's possible. and that's in place. So in some ways we're maybe focused on that as the first step of the problem and then keeping our colleagues engaged that everyone is able to build off of that work.

And I think complementary to that, and you're probably going to say you're not there fully yet as well, but to get at the sort of missing middle housing, I think that we want to really attack. You don't really get at that without supporting small and local developers. So I'm wondering what it looks like. for us to do that, especially black and brown small developers in our communities where hopefully we get a lot of these ADUs built.

Absolutely. That is one of the pieces of that six to 14 unit guidebook is actually interviewing the small developers that are I'm operating at that scale to talk about what are right. What keeps you at this scale or what chases you out of it? And open appeal to any of you if you talk to a small developer, particularly minority developers and local developers that are operating in your district at that scale. We'd love your help getting connected to them. They are sometimes the hardest for us as the planning department to chase down compared to big developers and really important for us to hear from them as part of this process so we really understand what the obstacles are and are really thinking about it holistically.

Thank you. And then I know New York is also looking at like ADU legalization and pairing it with reducing residential parking minimums. Are we looking at it in that way here? And do the models that you have suggest that making The legalization of ADUs, how would that or won't that affect parking pressures from what you've been able to see in your models?

Yeah. and not just ADUs like just in general yeah like multi-family homes triple deckers yeah it's so it's really interesting um I guess I would say to your first one they are are they are right correlated many times where a current driveway or garage right spaces is the best place for an ADU to go both in terms of the fire department having access to it for safety and because it's already sort of disturbed area a lot. So some of the best ways to preserve tree canopy is very important as the city's urban forest plan. There is a little bit of like a U sort of shape on that parking demand question. So in some of our least dense areas where these lots are larger, there's both space for parking to be built or there's on street parking that's available and we expect will continue to be available even with these changes. As we get into higher density areas, that's sort of also true because our rates of car ownership

Go down, they're more located by transit. In the middle, we are absolutely working really hard on studying that question, both to understand how we get and so on. So I think it's really important to balance the needs to have housing, to have trees, and to have parking, I know we're coming back to talk about parking minimums in December. but it's definitely something that we're digging kind of into that thorny middle.

We had to do it before the end of the year, so. Do you foresee that as probably like one of the bigger challenges in community regarding

Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on the community, right? Generally, I would say that like parking and concerns about parking are evergreen in every community, even as they're different. Yes, that will be one of the big challenges.

And we can talk more about this at the December hearing on parking minimums. But I think in general, there's a lot of common sense reforms here that the team is talking about that I think have a pretty broad consensus. And we could use your help. Establishing where that consensus is. Maybe we can move some of those things forward as first chunk. And are there places where we have too high of parking minimums? Yeah, that exists. And do we need regulated parking? Yes, we absolutely do.

Thank you. And then the last question is that the guidebook designs, a lot of them have expensive interventions. And so I guess this goes back to what we were talking about, right? Like the stairs, the dormers, basements waterproofing, structural retrofits. We're not even talking about the fire department requirements, which add costs and add to the barriers of the construction of the ADUs. Do we also provide cost estimations for homeowners in terms of what they could predict?

Yeah, I note that as part of some of the work that's happening through the sort of ADU at Boston.gov and the Boston Home Center, the office hours that they have with ISD staff, including plan reviewers there, They're able to help explain to people the different cost tradeoffs of some of the different models of doing an ADU. A basement or attic conversion is always going to be significantly more affordable than building a whole new structure. to the side. At the same time, all of these requirements stack together. Part of why we're doing that small multifamily guidebook study is to better understand where some of these thresholds regarding fire and regarding building code exist so that our zoning can be mindful of them because they're likely going to continue to exist as significant cost drivers and so that way we can take into account what modern construction looks like

and the ways that that drives different homeowners' decisions when zoning.

The team that's up here is thinking sort of proactively about the future and how to get our zoning code in place. I think it's important for us to mention that at MOH, there's a group of people who are trying to help people through the now, right? And if you want to build an EDU now and you need Financial Assistance. We have programs for you. You're going to have to go through the expensive CPA process because of everything we're talking about today. But that team does exist. They are helping people get their ADUs permitted, helping them get them financed, and happy to bring back data to the council on that team's work. Thank you.

Thank you. Hard to hold my tongue on the parking minimums one, but I'll just say we have a housing crisis. We don't have a parking crisis. Many people have said that, but I'll just repeat it. So, okay, we'll go to the next person. Councilor Liz Breadon, you have five minutes.

Thank you. So the ADUs, it's our thought that there has to be an owner-occupied Home to add an ADU. I know that's not the requirement across the state, is that correct?

So currently in Boston, the ways that we've enabled ADUs require it to be an owner-occupant. Folks are going to the Board of Appeal when they're not an owner-occupant. And generally, those cases are getting approved because, as you noted, every other community in the state doesn't have that restriction. So I think we are looking to make sure that our housing policy is aligned with statewide housing policy there going forward.

I think in neighborhoods like ours in Alston, Brighton, where we have a lot of absentee landlords who Thank you very much. And then with regard to the triple deckers, the iconic Boston triple decker, They modified the zoning code to make it that they wouldn't comply because they were too high way back when. So we should probably get back to that. We have seen a few built. I must have, down in Alston, I've seen a few triple-deckers being built probably on an empty lots. It lends itself very well, just filling those infill spaces.

I'm wondering about just in terms of just the expense of building any home but the The triple decker lends itself particularly to probably a prefabricated type construction. Are we doing any work? I know way back when we have Sears bungalows in Alston. I don't know whether Alston, Brighton, but I'm sure other neighborhoods have them as well. Prefabricated bungalows that you ordered online. You didn't do it online. You got a catalog. But the prefabrication thing, I know these smaller scale constructions We don't have the same concerns about union labor or whatever, but I'm just wondering where we're at thinking about that.

Yeah. I mean, we're hopeful that by having updated zoning dimensions and also by having that right and many more. So I think it's important for us to be able to provide citywide standards that that will make that more of an opportunity. While at the same time acknowledging that our good Roxbury Puddingstone and the topography The infill conditions are tight in a lot of places when you're doing construction. You're very much having to talk to your abutters and your neighbors because we're a city and together. We're trying to get our zoning set up to try and take advantage of that where it's going to be possible, but we're also trying to be realistic about the ways that that might have limited impact in some of the tighter sites we have in Boston.

Yeah. The famous stones. The hills of Alston.

Exactly.

The hills of Brighton. There's the floodplain of the Charles and then there's the hills of Brighton. I'm curious about just, and I know it's going to be a segue, another form of housing, just thinking about the SROs, and I know the Alston Brighton CDC has developed some Older buildings that they've reconverted into SROs for folks It's a wonderful project and it actually works very well. Are we looking at that as well in the menu of options for housing? Those folks that have got very low income that wouldn't qualify necessarily for other types of housing but still need homes. Are we looking at that as well?

Yes, so that's absolutely one of the housing types we're studying as part of that 6 to 14 unit guidebook. It's a similar sort of scale. Building frequently. And lodging houses, as they're sort of known in the zoning code, are one of the allowed uses in all of the squares and streets districts. in Councilor Pepén's district. He's got Roslindale and Mattapan and places where we can continue to innovate on that model.

You know, there's a certain level of I'm not prejudiced about lodging houses, but I feel that we had one a few doors up from us in our street. When you get to know the folks, they're just trying to get by like everybody else. If it's a well regulated home and well maintained, it doesn't seem to be a problem in most cases.

I appreciate you flagging these examples, and we'd love to talk with you more about how we could make this part of the conversation about what the residential zoning looks like in the Alston-Brighton community plan. So we're using examples that will be relevant to Alston and Brighton residents. Would be great to be able to highlight those. Very good. Thank you.

And thank you so much, Councilor Breadon. I just wanted to say that I knew we have Jillian Wall here who will be a part of the next panel regarding Santana thought of everything. So we are going to go next to Councilor Brian Worrell. I did want to acknowledge that one of my predecessors, Josh Zakem, is here. So he's been milling about, but I just wanted to announce that he was here. Go ahead, Councilor Rowe.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the panel for your presentation. I know we touched on it, but do we have a range of costs of what it would be for creating an ADU? And then also, what kind of assistance did the city offer in terms of dollar amount?

I'm going to defer to Will on the dollar amount. The range does vary a lot. And I think to the point that one of you raised at the, Councilor Mejia raised at the beginning, Some folks are coming through sort of legalizing work or making minor changes to work they may have done already. And so those show up as very low-cost ADUs. And then some folks are doing major construction projects, the right scale of a major addition. It just very much varies based on the condition of the existing sort of home and the scope of the change that's happening.

Yeah, I've talked to homeowners and You know, some homeowners minor changes and some have to, you know, dig down, right? Exactly. If the fire hydrants across the street, that could be like an additional, you know, $50,000. But just wanted to kind of get like an idea of that range.

It's higher than we want it to be for sure. and the assistance that the city provides is well-deserved and needed by everyone who qualifies for it. But what we're seeing across the board, and this is something that you should ask MOH about in more detail, I'm sorry, I don't have the exact numbers, is that it's never quite enough. A very common thing that people are finding is that they get the assistance and they got a lot of the way, but it's still not quite there all the way. One thing which We're working on to that end is this is part of what the guidebook was about and there's also a fair bit of interdepartmental work to try to and so on. And so part of what Kathleen was mentioning all that other work that goes on there's a monthly workshop that homeowners You can go talk to a sort of a combined panel of planners, ISD people, MOH people, is when they are reaching things that aren't just sort of Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. We have a strong suspicion that EDUs are likely going to be part of a primary structure so that they don't have to have that full sprinkled condition under three units. Oh, yeah, under, but if it's three units more, then you have to sprinkle the whole thing. Right, so once you hit three units, that's a primary trigger, and then if it's a separate structure, that's another one. That's one piece. Another piece is related to reworking your site to allow for fire access. If it's a detached structure, you have to be able to get the truck there. That requires maybe rethinking how your parking is laid out. And so a combination of the notes in the guidebook, additional flagging from city staff, additional guidance that we have that's part of the broader ADU checklist that's been much more work than just the planning department. This is Lake City Hall coming together.

has been trying to lay that out as much as possible before people get too deep into it so they get a sense of not just what's hypothetically possible on their site, but what is actually realistic and what's the lowest cost way to get the job done.

And is it, maybe this is a question for MOH, is it a grant or is it reimbursable?

Oh, God. I don't want to speak on the record because I'm going to get it wrong. I think it's a combination.

I think it's a grant that burns off with the homeowner occupancy. I think that's how most of the homeowner loans work.

So as you complete it, you take it down. Yeah, it starts as a loan.

If you're there for longer, then you have to repay less of it.

Got it. Awesome. And then I know that we, the mayor, there was an executive order for affordable housing to be expedited. And I guess what I've heard from affordable housing developers is, that it does help, but how much it helps is probably not as intended as executive order wanted to be of all the building permits, right, that ISD, you know, we're still getting slowed down there. You know, can you tell me what you've heard around that process and then how we're coordinating with the building department and ISD to...

So I think the good news is we've been able to cut the time that it takes to permit affordable housing by about 25 or 30 percent. which is excellent, they're moving in the right direction. I think the Mayor's Bowl was cut in half, so we're not there yet. And part of this is the zoning process that we're talking about here, adding months to go to ZBA, So the more that we move toward housing being allowed and the type of affordable housing that we want to build being allowed in our zoning code, we'll cut that time out entirely. but you're absolutely right that there's lots of things that even after you have your article E entitlement and you're trying to pull your permit that might slow you up in terms of courts and commissions and other ways that The proponent is supposed to navigate the process. The way I would describe our permitting process today is that it's proponent-driven.

The proponent needs to determine their own way of navigating from concept to permit issuance. There's a lot of work going on at ISD Planning Department, MOH, even Fire Parks and other entities that review to change that to being more city driven and to have a more customer responsive approach that says, hey, if you want to build this triple decker, then this is the process that you must go through rather than you figure out the process that you must go through. So that's work that's very much in progress.

Right, and just one more question and comment, because to your point, because it's proponent-driven, some proponents have better relationships and know how to navigate, but if it's a homeowner doing ADU and their first time there, that one time down at 1010 Mass Ave could be Discouraging. Exactly. And one thing that I've always wanted to, you know, and I don't know if you have these numbers now or probably could pull them up. is just to kind of give more of a picture on Boston's production, right, housing production. I know we're a small city and I expect, you know, you're always here, You know, these big goals for such a small city. But I think, you know, per square mile, right? Kind of seeing what the housing production was and compare that to other cities. So if that's something that, you know, the PPDA can provide.

We absolutely have those numbers. Happy to share with you. than what you don't have off the top of our head. The basic answer, though, is that we continue to approve housing pretty rapidly in the city of Boston, but getting it built is another story. Right. Thank you.

Thanks, Councilor Worrell. Councilor Mejia, you have five minutes.

Okay, so again, I'm super excited to have this conversation and I'm looking forward to hearing from the next panel as well, because I know this is a learning journey here. I'm curious if you happen to have an understanding of the potential units that we can add here throughout the city of Boston with the ADUs and also triple-deckers. Do you have a projection of what potentially that could look like?

I don't think we do, and part of the reason for that is a lot of this is about ensuring that the housing that exists today is something you can construct and maintain over time. So the residential rezoning that Will went through is less about massive growth and more about a more appropriate regulatory code which I would contrast that against the rezoning we did in my neighborhood in Charlestown where we said, hey, that industrial neighborhood If we change the zoning, it could be a place for 10,000 housing units, and we did that, right? So this is a little bit less growth-focused and more government-focused. So I know my colleagues have a number, but the number is not what's driving this.

So the reason why I asked the question is because we're talking about a housing crisis. And so to just have a threshold or some sense of kind of we have You know, these particular streets in Dorchester, we have this in Jamaica Plain. I'm thinking from a sense of like anti-displacement and where the growth opportunities exist so that we can kind of Yeah. Encourage that type of ADU development.

So I think right in Mattapan in the year and a half, that's been in effect. And that was just essentially allowing folks to add an ADU or two or three unit infill. There's been one two unit infill in this area and then I believe it was seven additional units that were added. That's important, but to Devon's point, I think also the flip side of that is that we paired this residential zoning and all the impacts of it with the Rezoning of Mattapan Square and Blue Hill Ave that is much more focused on growth. So it's an important piece of the puzzle, but probably not as huge of quantity of the puzzle as some of the areas that we're planning for growth.

Got it. And then my follow-up question in regards to any consideration around the affordability of these ADUs. Are we looking at not to, you know, We can't be middling in people's business, but what kind of encouragement are we offering to people in terms of keeping these units affordable?

Bringing an equity lens to this, like Councilor Santana did in his question, and I think the affordability lens that you're bringing is really important to this. One thing we know is that the way that we're approaching it today does not lend to affordability. If you have to go through A multi-month, oftentimes multi-year ZBA process. Hire architects and lawyers to get you through that. And then would that then

Trier, the whole idea of like, we're going to make it easier for you, but in doing so, we're going to ask you to then also be mindful of the affordability factor.

I think that absolutely, I mean, that's part of why we're doing this, making it more easy for a homeowner to add an ADU to have their aging parent move into. Are we thinking about adding income restrictions? No. Next slide.

And then I'm curious about those folks who have already been down the journey and they're like, oh, now the city has funding so that you could actually legalize your basement or legalize your attic or Make Your Garage More Home Friendly. What does that look like for folks who have already gone down that path? And there's issues around course correcting to the point that Councilor Worrell just brought up in terms of like, If the house was zoned for two family, but now you have a basement, That was not even your intention of having anyone even live there. What does that look like? Do they have to start all over from scratch? What does that look like?

One of the great things about updating zoning is everyone benefits from the update at the same time, including folks who've gone and maybe got zoning relief for exactly what we legalize. I will say at the start of every At every public meeting, someone who has an idea or a dream of how to do this for the family asks us, well, should I just wait to file? And I said, no, because you will benefit the minute this zoning passes, and I don't want you to to write processes get delayed. Something might happen. I want you to be in progress. And the minute that update happens, you'll be able to take advantage of it.

And I just saw that my light went up, my sound. and I'll just end because I know we won't have a third round or second with you all is that my thing is and I want to be super mindful as we continue to have these conversations is the not in my backyard syndrome that Boston has. And making sure that whatever we do, we're always centering and making sure that we're building to keep residents here. And I think that that tension is real and as we continue to have these conversations is kind of grappling with that sentiment which I know that different neighborhoods are gonna have different opinions.

Thank you so much, Councilor Mejia. Councilor Fitzgerald.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I have several technical questions, hopefully we can get through quickly, and then two more philosophical questions, I guess you could say, that would probably take up most of the time. One, do we have any number from the state on their ADUs that show any positive trends of what the rest of the state has done that, you know, we could sort of look to at this point?

They do issue a report on it. I don't have the number off the top of my head.

Do we know if it's positively impacting the other towns?

It's 100% positively impacting. In fact, we were proud, even though we're not part of the ADU law, to work to get those numbers into the broader state sort of set of statistics. One of the big takeaways that we have internally across that is that we're a bit of an outlier in the sense that one, we're bigger, but also that issue of the attached versus internal. We have to chase a slightly different goalpost than their kinds of metrics. So even as we're working on it, the general principle's there, but we have a different job to do.

Understood. Thank you. I think I know the answer to this one, but technically the defined differences between, when I'm looking at this chart, this bar chart, between addition slash expansion and additional unit, what is the technicality where it's saying, well, I'm just going to expand my house and it'll be an ADU or I'm going to put on an ADU slash just make myself a new living room.

So your new living room or your new expanded kitchen is your addition slash expansion and your additional unit is that you reconfigured space to make an additional unit.

So the technicality is in the like clearly stated in the reconfiguration of the physical.

The adding the unit as a use versus the expanding the size of your building.

A kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom, and many more.

A butter's rights to the proposed developments? Do we see anything? I mean, I know, like, if my neighbor said I'm putting a fence up, I don't have a lot of recourse, right? It's like, it's your property, you want to put a fence up, so be it. If this goes as of right, I assume that sort of follows sort of the same, John, I'm putting up an ADU. You know, you really can't fight this or anything, but is there any concern there about taking voice away from abutters where I know we, to Councilman Mejia's point, we can be a very nimby town a lot, especially when it directly impacts our own homes.

We have been talking with both ONS and the city's permitting reform team about what type of a good neighbor meeting might look like under an as-of-right system and also just Better, making it easier to understand what's happening in your neighborhood as part of updated permitting software so that folks aren't going around and taping 8x11 printouts to people's doors. So while you as an abutter aren't necessarily going to be able to prevent that project from happening, that you would Thank you. Thank you. That conversation has been exciting to think about because if we really do cut down on the amount of city staff time that's spent on

The sort of a butter meeting process serving the ZBA, we can redevote that staff to being able to have sometimes these more constructive conversations between a Butters and someone building an ADU or another construction project.

Thank you. Probably only get to one of these. This is something I just figured I'd ask because I have you all in front of me, and this would be the folks that could give me a good answer here. I'm struggling with the, in the family, I call them They're all residential neighborhoods, right? But we're residentials where it's mostly single and two-family homes, maybe some three-family homes. A developer will come in. He'll buy the single-family unit and say, I'm going to put six townhouses and whatever with only four parking spots in this. Some can be egregious because I think about your comment about the 6 to 14 plus units and some are even, you know, I say 14 plus because some have even proposed the 24 units and things like that, where the character of the neighborhood is not that. and so I get concerned because I'm saying one you're trying to put 10 pounds on a five pound and two You are instinctively changing the character of the neighborhood where a lot of these houses are generational, long-term families.

A lot of people's dreams just own your own home with your own front yard, your little piece of the rock. and then typically these six 14 plus units I would think historically are very transient and they're not so much people that are and I don't know this, right? I'm just saying the people I could see living in a 14 unit building and not someone saying, we got it, we're here for life. Typically, I see the people there as turning over a lot. I just wonder about, because that's what's being proposed a lot in some of the residential neighborhoods here, and I don't know how to approach it because I know housing is a need, and so you're saying, well, here's 24 more units, but it's instinctively changing the character of the neighborhood and what's involved.

So I will say, right, this is also something we've heard really clearly in Alston-Brighton, which has a really large amount of rental housing and very comparatively low homeownership housing compared to the rest of the city, is how much folks want ownership, but also just housing stability. And I think a flip side of transient is displacement. So one of the things that when we're looking at this six to 14 unit scale, we're asking really intentionally and studying it. is what are the moves that make that more likely to be an ownership product? And are there policy changes that we have to do in order for that to get delivered as a home ownership project? In order to meet the need we have for home ownership across the city, we don't have enough vacant lots to deliver it all as one and two unit buildings going forward in every neighborhood.

It's a very explicit question we're hearing in every neighborhood and that we're trying to take into our understanding of every housing typology that we're planning and zoning for.

And I think we could have a really robust and many more. 99% of the houses that exist in our neighborhood today can't be rebuilt. They disappeared today without going to a variance. So I think a way to address the concerns of a constituent that might raise it the way you just said, Councilor, is to say, When everything is up for debate, then it's in the eye of the beholder of what to propose. So we leave the door open for wild proposals when we don't have an enforceable zoning code. We like to get a zoning code that is enforceable, And so it constrains the discussions to things that we've already said are appropriate within a neighborhood. and I think that would help with some of the proposals that are out of scale for particular districts.

Thank you. I know my time is up but I would say my fifth question was the philosophical approach of upzoning versus losing leverage in the zoning when you which I think is a classic debate and I know you and I have discussed that in the past as well but I'll save that for my second round. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Again, I have such a hard time moderating this because I want to like chime in. But I know Councilor Coletta Zapata, I'm going to let you go next. But I just want to say that we are absolutely losing investment. In the city of Boston, I run into developers who live in my neighborhood who are developing in Austin, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, where I'm from. And the idea that, you know, we've had a lot of families that have made a ton of money off of the, you know, off of their 200K one family house that sold for $2.1 million. It is unaffordable to live here. And I think folks like me, I represent a very specific voice on the Boston City Council. I moved here 10 years ago. I think I should be able to live here just as much as anyone else. And I know when I moved here making $45,000, there was no way for me to afford to live here.

without a lot of stress. I mean, cards declining at restaurants level stress. And so I think that we need to be bolder. I think that we need investment. that we're in a moment in our city where we have to decide who our city's for. And so I take these conversations really personally only because Thank you. Thank you. A lot of folks look at the seaport and they look at other investments and they say like, oh, that's not for me. But the reason that my apartment is affordable is because the seaport was built. And so there is no development without displacement. There is also no displacement without development, or movie saying that incorrectly.

Essentially, development displaces, but the lack of development also displaces. And so without continuing to build housing and continuing to have these conversations and continuing to make hard decisions, We stand to not have the ability for the next generation of Bostonians to live here. And so I meet folks, and I think this is all very personal, but it's like we meet folks that lived in our neighborhoods and now live in the suburbs. And they've had to make the hard decision of no longer being Bostonians. To sum, that was like, you know, a great They made a lot of money off of that decision, but it was still a really hard decision to make. So the question of zoning is one of who do we want to exclude from the city? That's really how I feel.

and so it's tough because ZBA met this morning and we have to make hard decisions every single day about our neighborhoods What's appropriate for a specific block. Representing five very different neighborhoods. We're having to make those decisions every day. But it would actually be nice if we had to make less of those decisions, if there were less things that needed variances. If more things were as of right. And I know the way the administration has approached this is by trying to make The most reasonable things as of right. But I just do want to push to say that we should go bolder than just making the reasonable things as of right because we don't end up with this affordability crisis If we're actually leading and we have other cities that like are already doing or have already eliminated single-family zoning have already made you know up to six as of right and

and we're supposed to be a big city and yet we're we're behind and I think when I look in the eyes of you know the Northeastern Student Government Association and the you know the folks and the students the 12 colleges and universities in my district of folks that want to you know we are going to have a huge problem with brain drain because it's it's These $5,000 one bedroom apartments in my district are not going to cut it. And without, I don't know, that's just my advice. I have so many questions, but I will send those to you for the record. And I know that my colleagues want to get, I know I have one colleague that's left, and I know we need to get to the next panel. But I just want to say that we need to think bolder. We need to do more.

I think the planning initiatives that I've been able to support I have supported but there are times in which I have already supported something and the administration has gone back and watered it down after I was already in support and I think We need to just push ourselves to think about the future of our city. Who is it for? Is it for people who? And I think people often conflate glass towers and tallness with unaffordability. But the reason that it's unaffordable is because we haven't built enough housing, any type of housing. So I'll just leave it at that. And Councilor Coletta Zapata, you have five minutes.

Thank you so much. Thank you all so much for being here. I'm sorry that I was late, but I was listening in. Housing, it's been said already a million times, and I know we only have a certain amount of time, but housing costs are skyrocketing, and I do think that this is Thank you for your work on that. I do have to say and put in a point of my own where East Boston saw exponential growth between 2010 and 2020 and our rents went up 224% and there was considerable amount of displacement. So you still, I mean, we, I think that was because of the fact that we did not plan for the inclusion of people that were there, did not have the affordability criteria that we have now. And I think that that was a missed opportunity. demonstrates too in East Boston in particular where folks from many different backgrounds, especially the immigrant community, was displaced because of the building that was happening there.

and unless we are super intentional about the affordability and keeping affordability and I've gone on record already talking about we need to have the 20% IDP like that is enshrined. I think we can't move away from that. while also acknowledging that the zoning code is outdated and we do need to continue to build the supply to ease the demand. So I'm of two minds on this and I think, again, Plan East Boston and Plan Charlestown was a demonstration of A great community process. And while I didn't necessarily agree with all of it, I do think that it was a step in the right direction. Homeownership especially remains one of the most accessible pathways to building generational wealth, especially within Black and Brown communities and you know ADUs expand on that opportunity that is to say that there is home ownership even within families in East Boston and I know in other neighborhoods a triple-decker can now go for and many more.

And it is so difficult to compete against developers who are well resourced and have a lot of capital that aren't from Boston that are of a certain Homogenous demographic that doesn't reflect Boston. And I know that there is a new program with the administration where there's shared buying power and being able to put money down with a friend or a partner for a mortgage, which I think is great. I think it does get to the point where if you don't have access to the sort of capital resources that even the process itself could be onerous and we've already talked through it so and I appreciate my colleagues questions and thoughtful responses I think when this was brought to the floor, I remember speaking about how onerous and burdensome it is to get to the point where you're ready to submit with structural engineering, architects, general contractors,

and I do appreciate my colleague, I think it was the city council president who had said about having a designated list of preferred good actors, people that we can pull from that will provide concierge service for people. for lack of a better term, right? Have you looked through the legalities of that? What does that look like? Can you expand on it just so we can talk through it a little bit more? Because I think it's another opportunity. It's a dual benefit where we could utilize it to bring in BIPOC businesses too so that we're meeting certain goals there. So just expand on it.

It's a great question. Will, if you know more, please feel free to jump in. But I think it's probably a question that's a little bit more appropriate for the MOH team who's out there trying to permit these things every day today and we're thinking a little bit more in the future about how to get them to be as of right. But I think in general, the answer to your question is yes, that does exist for applicants through our Loan and Grant Program, where if you're an income-eligible homeowner, There are tools through the Boston Home Center to help you get connected to your preferred contractors. There's a construction supervisor that works through the city that helps be that middleman between the homeowner and the contractor to help ease the permitting process. And I know that MWH does a lot of work to supply our diversity and to ensure that the contractors that they're working with reflect the demographics of the city.

but that's it's all that being said that's sort of niche because that's for a small number of applicants that are going through an income eligible program and we should be working together to think about ways to expand that to make it broadly accessible to everyone.

To paraphrase the guidance that I've seen MOH staff give on one-on-one feedback, the city, as you noted, it's sort of a tricky thing where it's not the job of the city to play favorites and sort of anoint specific architects or contractors to solve that problem. And exactly at the same time, it is absolutely a goal of the city to help expedite this for people who are confused about it. And so in the meantime, I know that there are many private groups, the Boston Society of Architects, has a list that they advertise where they work with their members to come up with organizations that work on EDUs and the city happily sort of directs homeowners to consult some of those resources. But I can at least affirm that that question is one of the questions people ask.

Okay, and I'm so sorry, I just have one quick question that you may or may not be able to answer. The 226 ADUs that have been permitted citywide, are we gathering and do we have demographic breakdowns of who is benefiting from these programs by race? Ethnicity or?

Not currently. In fact, I would say even getting to the 222 has been a Herculean lift. One of the trickiest things is something which all of you mentioned, which is the difficulty of getting from the idea of an EDU to actually building the thing to some sort of regulatory process around it. That is an evergreen effort. We will continue to try to find more information as we can.

But MOH, of course, has that data for their recipients of their loan and grant programs. So folks who are receiving sort of city funding there, they can provide information on you for that.

Okay, thank you. Thank you so much, Councilor Coletta Zapata. Okay, so we're going to move to the next panel. I just want to thank you all, relieve you, and just thank you for all the work that you do for the city.

Thank you all very much.

So next we have an incredible second panel. I just want to thank Councilor Santana's team. It's clear like he's got the panels down for his hearings. I'm really grateful for all the work that they did to Thank you so much for coming and putting together such an incredible and knowledgeable group of panelists. So feel free to come down and sit. We tried to put as many chairs as we could, but I'm sure you guys can figure it out. I'm missing Josh, but he's coming. He's going to come back. He had a call. OK, perfect. So I'm going to let you all introduce yourselves. So we're going to go left to right.

But again, I think I told everyone A minute and a half. But try to go as quickly as possible because I know we're running a little bit behind today. But just want to thank you for your leadership and just introduce Yourself, and where you're coming from, and what you're bringing to the panel. Thank you.

Go ahead. Left or right? Yeah, you got it. How you doing? My name is Melvin Aviar, Jr. I'm the past president of Greater Boston Association of Realtors. I've also been selling real estate for over 38 years in the city of Boston. I've watched Boston go from one level to the next, and I've watched how these three-family homes have become where they were generational homes to now where they've been broken apart and turned into condos. because of lack of real estate. Also, I've taught urban land planning. I'm also part of ULI as well. And there's many other things I can talk about, but I'd rather pass it down to my other esteemed colleagues so they can go ahead and say who they are as well.

Okay, perfect timing.

Good morning. Thank you, Madam Chairman and members. I'm Jackie McCarthy. I'm the new Director of Government Affairs at the Greater Boston Real Estate Board. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. So we've got members like Mr. Vieira, our past president, who can provide expertise and resources as you embark on this really important effort to legalize What I've seen described as workhorses of real estate development and homeownership and an iconic architecture. So looking forward to the discussion and staying engaged. Thanks. Thank you.

I thank you, Madam Chairman and Councillors. I'm Jesse Canson-Beninoff. I'm the Executive Director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts. We're a statewide pro-housing advocacy organization. I'm also a Boston resident. I would say our organization was, I would say, the organization probably most responsible for the We're currently working on a bill on Beacon Hill to institute an affordable housing trust fund to help low and moderate income property owners across the state access funding to build ADUs on their properties. We've also spent a significant amount of time over the last three years on the implementation of the MBTA Communities Act, which requires by right triple decker level density, zoning for triple decker level density, in 177 cities and towns outside of Boston. We know that Boston residents are ready for these implementation of these policies as well.

Everyone on the Council saw some polling that we did earlier this year that spoke to that, with 80% of Boston residents supporting ADU zoning as of right. 77% actually support Cambridge-style six-storey buildings citywide. certainly if folks are ready for six-story buildings they're ready for triple deckers as well. Really looking forward to this conversation and how do we make sure that we can do these implementation of these policies expeditiously because we have a housing crisis and we're losing as Boston.

Okay. Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for having us here today. My name is Wani Pashkual. I'm a program manager at the Boston Society for Architecture, leading our organization's housing efforts. Organization is the region's local chapter of the American Institute of Architects and also a charitable foundation. And a number of years ago, we led in partnership with the City of Boston, the Mayor's Office of Housing, and the Mayor's Housing Innovation Lab, an initiative titled Co-Creating Boston's Future Decker, where we studied, examined the design of the historic triple-decker and then looked at small parcels across the city to determine where We could envision the future of this building typology.

Hello, my name is Jillian Wall. I'm with Reframe Systems. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here as well. We are an off-site modular manufacturer based in Andover, Massachusetts. We focus on the kind of Small ADU to Missing Middle 6 to 12 unit housing scale in Andover. And I'm really excited to kind of advocate for Offsite Construction as a tool in the toolbox to help unlock these infill sites. We currently have two triple deckers going in in Somerville at various stages of construction. We set the first one in four days, which drastically reduced the amount of time in this very dense neighborhood of equipment on-site. So really excited to advocate for off-site solutions as a consideration in rewriting the zoning rule sets.

I'm Lynn Sanders. I'm a steering committee member for Dorchester Growing Together, a neighborhood-based civic organization with over 150 members. founded in 2018 to alleviate the housing crisis and preserve our diverse community by advocating for building abundant housing at all price points throughout Dorchester. Dorchester Growing Together believes allowing ADUs and up to four story structures to be built as of right would be an important baseline for more common sense development. and creating affordable options for long-time community members to stay and for new neighbors to continue to raise families. I'm a 20-year Boston resident and have lived for the past 13 years in a Dorchester condo that is the second floor of a triple-decker. built at the turn of the century when they were allowed and on a street full of similar buildings that have allowed generations of immigrant families to establish economic stability.

I purchased my condo in 2012 through a mass housing first hire home buyer program while I was working for the administration of Boston Public Schools. And this is an opportunity I do not think a young professional in a similar financial situation could have it in the current housing market today. And Throughout my career, I have worked in public administration policy and research, including working for Codman Square in DC as the director of overseeing first-time homebuyer programs, housing, and for foreclosure counseling, and home repair loans, small business programs. I have also served as the chair of the development and historic preservation committee for Greater Oshawa Main Street for five years. and engage extensively in local civic association and BBTA meetings served on impact advisory groups.

I see a dire need to cut red tape and regulations and create more diverse housing that works for people in a variety of situations in our neighborhoods. Dorchester, but all over the city and this is one first step to do that.

Everyone can just scoot down a little bit and make sure you have room for everyone.

I was just going to squeeze in here. We're managing our own kind of density right over here, aren't we?

See, we can exist together.

We sure can. I'm Anthony Flint, senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. We're across the river in Cambridge providing technical assistance and policy guidance on affordable housing, zoning and code reform, Innovations like community land trusts and facilitating manufactured and pre-assembled homes. Our Center for Geospatial Solutions uses GIS mapping to identify buildable land for affordable housing, buildable public land, including public land, and a recently reinvigorated website online resource called Visualizing Density, which I encourage you all to check out. It helps everybody understand what 15 units per acre actually looks like in reality and how it functions.

I bring a bit of a historical perspective as I've published Several articles on density and design and specifically triple-deckers. My quick observation was that The development of triple-deckers is really a remarkable, elegant, and practical response to the need to increase the supply of housing at the time. and I think represents a real opportunity to sort of go back to the future to not only preserve and update that kind of housing but develop the missing middle housing that you've been discussing today. The triple decker is a model for this type of gentle density and I would argue a real treasure basically invented here in Massachusetts and as and quintessentially Boston as a medium hot Duncan.

So I know a lot of people are very excited about everything that you're doing here and I'm here to answer any questions particularly related to design and density and how this kind of housing can easily fit into the fabric of existing neighborhoods.

Good afternoon. and thank you councillors for convening this hearing and being here this morning and afternoon. Brandon Stanaway, I am a social scientist by trade but I am here because I am an Alston Brighton resident of five years and and part of an organization called Alston Brighton Housing Action, which is a neighborhood based group advocating around building more housing, housing affordability, mobility, and general community joy and prosperous living. And we formed this group last year, almost a year ago, a couple of weeks ago around building this positive vision, not only for Austin-Brighton, but for the city at large. And that comes with a couple of things. We want to see more housing density,

More Housing Up, More Housing Out, reforming the process for permitting and developing that housing, getting rid of onerous setbacks, As well as height restrictions, other things that prevent housing from being built that don't really make any sense. As well as fixing some of our mobility infrastructure. We can't build the dense housing that we want if people have to drive everywhere. If there's too many houses for cars, then we can't have houses for people and they can't get to the places they want to go. And then also building for a green future or in a warming world. We have a lot of sidewalks that don't have any trees or awnings on buildings because of regulations that the city puts in place that prevent those things from happening. And we also formed around holding the city and the planning department accountable. There are many questions about how many units were being built, and are rents going down, or what's happening with rents?

We hear every year about the number of housing units that are developed, and it's always lauded as Grand achievement that we permitted, I think maybe like 2,300 units last year when comparable cities across the United States developed so much more. Places like Minneapolis and Austin find their rents going down or not increasing as fast. And we're sitting here saying 2,300 units and rents increasing. I'm looking forward to hearing what other panelists have to say and what questions you have.

Thank you so much and great to have these community organizations and experts and folks in real estate like all in the same panel. in the infrastructure component. So just want to thank you all for being here. I'm going to take it to the lead sponsor. We're going to do five minutes again, but we may have time for a second, depending on how many counselors go. Santana, you have five minutes.

Thank you, Chair. and thank you to those amazing panelists. I really appreciate you all being here.

Oh, sorry, before I say that, just wanted to say that we have so many people on the panel and I know I've said this, Not everyone has to take every single question, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to allow five minutes, and if you guys are still finishing, I'm going to allow you to finish your thoughts. Sorry, I'll start your time again.

No worries. That's a good flag there. Again, thank you for being here. I think I actually just want to start just because we just heard so much from the administration, right, and back and forth. Just kind of maybe if a few of you, maybe Jesse, would like to definitely hear from Abundant Housing and just the thoughts on the first panel and what was discussed and if anything, kind of stuck out or things that we should focus on.

Yeah, thank you for the question. And I have great respect for the members of the planning department, who I know have been doing some really hard work to unroll, unravel our incredibly complex zoning code here in the city of Boston. Early in the mayor's administration, the planning department worked with Sarah Bronin, a national expert on zoning, creator of the National Zoning Atlas, to do an examination of the Boston Zoning Code. and I believe it was Councilor Pepén who referred to it earlier in this hearing about how long, complicated, inefficient and inequitable that zoning code is and I recognize that it is again very difficult to unravel that. It's many, many years of very and many more. where it's incredibly difficult to build the homes that Boston residents need.

Look, I think that there is something to be said for the fact that on the topic of ADUs, The mayor announced in her State of the City address in January 2023 that they would be rolling out ADU legalization. It is now November 2025. We don't have that citywide yet. In that time, the Governor proposed ADU legalization. Our notoriously slow legislature passed a comprehensive bill that included by-right ADU legalization residential properties across the state where single-family zones are allowed, and the State Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities has written and promulgated regulations implementing that law. So now property owners in the vast majority of residential land across Massachusetts can build an ADU as of right, yet most property owners here in the city of Boston cannot. I recognize there are a lot of

small pieces of zoning that need to be rolled back. I don't think it's necessarily true that Boston is such a unique outlier. There are other cities around the state that were covered by the ADU legalization. I think Worcester, think of Worcester or Springfield or Lowell, some older cities like Boston that have small tight lots where They are now required to allow ADUs as of right, and they need to clean up their own zoning code to make it happen. So I would like to see certainly ADUs and missing middle housing. I think we all know it's a problem. I don't know that I feel like it was these important zoning reforms were top of the agenda over the last four years and I'm really hopeful Thank you, Jesse. I think it would be great if

You can come in here, right? I mean, I think the first panel talked a lot about the small, tight lots. And I don't know how familiar you are specifically with Boston neighborhoods, but kind of want to hear your thoughts because of the work that you're doing in design in Andover and you mentioned also in Somerville. and you can touch about the four, you said the four day, you did something in four, can you just elaborate on that?

Yeah, so we, you know, obviously we're factory based so we focus on kind of what can we make efficient in the factory so that the site itself can also be as efficient as possible. So we're able to deliver energy efficient boxes to a site. And for our first triple decker set in Somerville, it took us four and a half days total, if you're being technical. to set the entire three-story building. And then beyond that, because the boxes are coming from the factory nearly complete, it really reduces the continued time on site for the building, right? Which I think can be a real benefit to a lot of Boston neighborhoods.

All right, great. Thank you. And then, Anthony, is that? Okay, I just wanted to make sure. There's so many people here. But you talked about, You can provide some insight in terms of historical context here. And can you talk about, historically we've heard here in Boston, triple-deckers, AUs, especially benefit again working-class families, immigrant families. Do you see that same thing happening now moving forward if we're able to legalize those?

Today, we're seeing, like I mentioned, it's kind of a back to the future moment. The triple-decker was a response to the obvious need for worker housing, workforce housing, as we would call it today. We're seeing today, in a lot of cases, in terms of developers of multifamily housing, kind of the go-to model is, say, a 100-unit building or even a 200-unit building, the so-called 5-over-1 model. They tend to be big structures, but there is such a clear opening for something on a smaller scale. Decker, Four Plex, 12 Unit Building, if only The land use regulations and zoning and in some cases building codes could be adjusted to allow them.

One study found Easily 5,000 parcels in the Boston area that could accommodate this kind of so-called gentle density. So I think we're at a similar moment. where this kind of housing should be welcomed and not feared. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Awesome. Thank you so much. And Council President, you have five minutes.

Thank you. I'm happy to take them now. I just, I don't know if, but before Councilor Pepén.

Oh, yeah, sorry. Go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to this panel. I actually have a A bit of a continuation, I think, Jesse, you were talking about. The state legalized it. We're behind because we don't have ADUs legalized as a right, although we have two neighborhoods, Mattapan and East Boston, where that's happening. I'm curious whether, and you stated that the, which I'm also very surprised that the state has also promulgated regulations around it, have they done the work of And I asked this a bit on the prior panel, and I'm sorry, you just spoke to it when you were talking about the models, but has the state done something similar? Have they provided regulations? They've made it as a right? Have they gone the route of providing models or guidebooks or suggestions on how ADUs could and should happen, recommending contractors? What else has the state done?

Great question. I would say no. Certainly having the ADU guidebook here in the city of Boston is a step beyond what the state has done, although the state has taken care of the underlying land use. Legal issues. Right, legal issues. I do know that there are conversations within the administration right now about some sort of ADU design competition to encourage designers to create plans that would be sort of judged, there'd be prizes. I think more to come on that from the governor, most likely in the coming months. I'm hopeful that that will get into a sort of state-level guidebook or set of plans that communities across the Commonwealth can adopt as sort of pre-approved plans. But there isn't yet on the state level, to answer your question, Mr. Ray.

Okay, thank you. And so the work that you did in Somerville, we were asked to do that by Somerville. Did they have ADUs as a right prior to the state legalizing ADUs as a right?

We've done triple-deckers in Somerville. We did an ADU in Arlington. I actually can't speak to what the rules were before.

So you did an out-of-box triple-decker in Somerville. Okay, thank you. Going back to our lengthy zoning process, I know today we're talking about ADUs, we're talking about triple-deckers. A lot of my colleagues, we've highlighted how A lot of zoning, especially when it comes to communities of color, was done to restrictive confidence to prevent black folks from being able to buy homes in certain neighborhoods. And so there is that sort of racist history towards zoning. I'm wondering when you are sort of building a coalition around what it looks like to build more and to do more of the work of abundance, how are you doing the work of coalition building across communities of color, where it's sometimes, you know, one of the things that I see is you can see resistance across all types, right?

Like I purchased my home and now I'm a homeowner and therefore I want my street to be a street full of single-family homes. How are you sort of using the history of that and coalition building to sort of help make the arguments around why housing abundance or legalizing triple-deckers as a right or ADUs, ADUs a little bit less so. Why that's the right path forward.

You're asking me that?

It's actually open to anyone who wants to answer. And I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name at the beginning.

A. Vieira Jr. We've met, Ruthie, many times. Nice to see you again. It's a pleasure, counsel. Just the thing is, when they talk about the zoning reform, The zoning reform has actually been passing across the country. And many places, such as Seattle, Washington, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Boise, Idaho, Minneapolis, New York, Florida, California, and many other places have looked at different zoning reforms in regards to ADU. And I do believe if we would go ahead and take and look at what they're doing and kind of adopt it to us and then explain that to our actual constituents or the people who live there. Give me an example. I'm born and raised in Dorchester. and then moved to Mattapan, now I live in Hyde Park. Still there. I'm probably the oldest person in this room Yeah, I am, I'm 61 years old and I don't look it, but I am. I'm sorry, Liz, I'm sorry I wanna leave you and I, but my whole point is this, if I've watched the city of Boston change, I've watched the three families, when my grandmother bought a three family,

for $12,000 on Michigan Avenue. We still own that property. I'm only saying this for the fact is that I've watched generations grow up in that house. I've also had an opportunity to sell properties Immigrant families who actually took and raised their families with inside those three families and then those families went out and bought other pieces of property. So we got to continue to think about that and how do we continue to grow our economy and grow our city by doing that because without an inclusiveness there will always be exclusiveness.

I know that the time is up, but just to answer that, I think it's important to how we talk about this is in terms of how do we provide opportunity for people. recognizing that we believe strongly that the character of our city and of our neighborhoods is created by the people that live in it, not the buildings, not the way that we store cars, but it's the people. The people in our communities from Mattapan to West Roxbury to Orient Heights, everywhere in between, are suffering because our extreme shortage of homes has led to cutthroat competition for housing. And that is leading to the displacement of the people that our communities rely on, our childcare workers, our teachers, The people who serve us coffee at Dunkin's in the morning, many of our municipal employees.

We need to take action that will allow not just those incredibly large double-loaded corridor style buildings that we've seen in recent years, but we need to unlock a variety of types of homes in every corner of the city and all price points in all shapes and sizes by allowing backyard cottages, basement units, town homes, other types of missing middle housing, we can and many more. But without that would be in direct competition with UNI for triple-deckers in the neighborhood. And that's the type of thing that's going to unlock opportunity, unlock the opportunity for greater homeownership, and help build up current and future generations.

And so talking about the people, I know that Councilor Fitzgerald mentioned it in the last panel, The families. Can those families, can those kids continue to live in this city under the way we have built over the last 20 years? And I think the answer is no. So that's how we have to build a coalition. Focus on the people and the people are suffering today.

Thank you so much, Council President Louijeune. I'm just going to build on that for a second. I went to this amazing panel at Nutter about Massachusetts competitiveness, and I was so surprised that One of the top issue of hospital executives were workforce issues, which they attributed to our housing crisis. So what I realized is that I'm in this room of conservatives, progressives, Democrats, Republicans, very mixed group of folks. Their top issue was Massachusetts competitiveness. That was the topic of the panel. And the thing that they attributed to our lack of competitiveness was housing. That to me, it made me realize because so many times we tried to put all these issues into a very clear-cut box of this is progressive, this is conservative, this is... whatever it is.

I would say that the top issue for conservatives and progressives in Boston Thank you. Thank you. I was shocked and surprised that I think it really opens up our minds sometimes to have these conversations and realize that and many more. Unfortunately or fortunately the city of Boston has the tools and the ability and impact to be able to fix this issue by making it easier to create supply.

I just think of I really went down to think about sort of all the processes that we've created to make this harder and it's just been interesting as a district councilor we have a unique power we're Very in the weeds, not just in the not just in the local you know obviously in the local zoning process but also in these broader conversations about the city and so to be able to zoom in and zoom out on our own personal impact on making and so on. I think it's really important for us to make sure that we're not potentially housing harder. There are definitely some decisions that I've had to make in communication with neighbors that I haven't been incredibly proud of I just wanted to ask a question to the panel. You're all folks who have dealt with the community process and seen the conversations that are taking place there. What do you think the city of Boston could do to make those conversations more productive?

And if there was like one thing that you could wave a magic wand and do, what would you do?

I would replace the three families that burnt down back in the 70s and the 80s. Yeah, they were sitting on 3,000 square foot lots, but how come we just didn't replace those? If we replaced those, we would then Dig into this housing shortage. Yes, we did an overlay of 5,000 square feet. But we should have left it and said there was an existing home there. We should think about this. The Water and Sewer Department, just after 2024, decided not to do the sewer hookup, okay, to charge for that, for those vacant lands. At one point, they did, and that was for the watershed. My point is, if they were charging then, and they knew they were vacant land, they had houses on them, how come we did not replace them? And that's about, you guys having your parcel right now, There are 3,500 square foot lots. You have about 1,793 lots that the city of Boston has in their actual portfolio. That's not including anything that's under, I mean, excuse me, anything under that.

35,000 square feet or more.

Yeah, so one of the things that I feel like I would definitely stress is the quality of the homes themselves. I think that in a lot of our conversations with folks about their experiences living in Triple Deckers, we did a whole series of community conversations During COVID, we used to host these Triple Decker Thursdays, sort of like sit-in office hours, and folks would talk about how, because they were built so long ago, that the quality, the buildings themselves have been deteriorating, and so we talked about have some tea landlords and not be able to maintain those buildings. And so I think that there's been a lot of efforts that the city has put into for rehabilitating triple deckers, existing triple deckers, and then for any new construction, really talking about, you know, can there be, We're having conversations about mass timber construction and the benefits of even using really green materials and talking about there's so many folks who are climate oriented and talking about how we can lower our building emissions by building more efficiently as well.

And then on the affordability sense, I think that one of the things I haven't heard yet here today is the sort of economies of scale. and when we were doing our future decker initiative we were really talking about scattered site approaches because maybe building one triple decker might not be the most affordable triple decker but if you're looking at a couple of small parcels then you have an economies of scale to really work with.

I would add, and I think Madam Chair, your question also was about the process, the community process. I think that we have ample evidence that the community process, although important, is not representative of of Community Voice, as you were saying. There's actual academic research, the Neighborhood Defenders research out of Boston University by Katherine Einstein and her colleagues that demonstrates that the people in Greater Boston, in Metro Boston, who show up to community meetings about new housing development, are disproportionately whiter, wealthier homeowners who are opposed to new housing. then their communities at large so we need to start by recognizing the community process is not representative so when you go to a community meeting and you hear overwhelming opposition that is unlikely to actually represent Your constituents. I would like the city to Well, let me first say that I know there was a lot of attempts for new types of engagement particularly squares and streets and Pepén's district, open houses, some mapping sessions.

Those also were not incredibly representative, despite the best of intention, although I think they got a little bit more representation. So the traditional community meeting I think polling is a way that the city should begin to We conducted a scientifically valid poll with the Massync Polling Group looking at 550 residents across the city conducted in English and Spanish. and we found these results that 81% of residents in the city want the city to set a goal of building 30,000 new homes. 80% of them want ADUs. If you went to any single Community Meeting, you'd be unlikely to uncover this type of result. So I think we need to think

What other statistically valid ways can we get community input rather than just requiring someone to show up in person or on Zoom on an evening one time?

Thank you. I totally agree with that. I actually had probably the most emblematic office hours of that effect where I had A person come in and they brought in a picture of a building that I had helped support and they said, this is atrocious. And then my next meeting was, I can't afford to live here. And so it was emblematic because if I looked at the six meetings that I had that day, some of the meetings were about affordability, others were about and so obviously we have really hard decisions to make as a city about design and aesthetics but all in all it's The actual folks that I talk to on the street are looking for affordability. They want to be able to stay here. They're having to question that every day. So I just want to thank you all for the work that you do.

so next we're going to go to Councilor Enrique Pepén who's a co-sponsor thank you Madam Chair and just thank you to every single one of you for the work you do for The fact that you're here today, sharing your different perspectives and different solutions of how we can get to a more affordable Boston, and a Boston where our zoning is a lot more streamlined, and something that I'm very... to a fault sometimes very much in support of. I mean, I was the councilor that dealt with squares and streets, as has already been mentioned, really since literally day one after getting elected is probably the one thing that I spoke about and just learned a lot about how we need to improve it across the city. I keep looking at Melvin just because what our neighborhood is currently looked at as the next potential squares and streets rezoning effort which is High Park and Cleary Square to be specific and knowing that

Thank you. Thank you. When you look at other municipalities and cities across the country and the numbers in terms of prices for either rent or home ownership, how do they compare to Boston, especially those that have already updated their zoning to be more inclusive?

Thank you very much for that question. We are the highest price as far as single-family median price. We are also one of the highest rental prices as well, and that's all due to the fact of lack of housing. It's called a supply and demand issue. If we can fix that one thing as we're trying to do today and have that conversation, I do believe we can drive the prices down. What people don't understand is also we have a situation where we've had the silent generation. Matter of fact, I want to say thank you very much for giving my father his veteran's career thing at the Post the other day. So I appreciate it. You met him. But anyway, I also want to say, because he's 91 years old. He's part of the silent generation. He's still living in a single family house. Thank you for joining us. We're trying to build for everybody else.

If we build for that silent generation and the baby boomers, because they're about to go ahead and exit out as well, then in turn, the millennial generation and Generation Z Okay, and also the, it's another alphabet now, Alpha, yeah, Alpha and it's A. They're coming along as well. And the point is then we'll go ahead and make room for them. So if we had thought about this, because technology's keeping the older generation alive, and we're not helping them. So we help them, we can then help out some of our housing supply. Only thing, and I'm going to leave one other piece to it. Another thing is, we have a trade school here in Boston called Madison Park. We can control a few things, but we can't control the actual cost of material, but we can control how long it takes. For anything to go through the permitting process and speed that up and also get our young men and women in the trades, we can control two things, labor cost and getting through the permitting, and we can lower the cost. on top of it.

So you ask, how do we make it happen? We got to think about it's a multi-tier prong approach. It's not one approach. And we have to figure out how to solve it all together. And no, are we going to get it right the first time? No, we're not. We can use other parts of the country and use them as examples and see how they're building and doing their ADUs and doing their things and how they're lowering the prices of homes at that.

So as a follow-up, can I ask you, do you see a correlation of prices dropping with updated zoning and ensuring that there is more inclusive zoning in general?

Yes, I do, but the thing is it's not going to happen overnight. We're not going to have a silver bullet. We have to understand this is a 10-year, maybe a 15-year process because it's taken this long to get these old antiquated zoning laws which have been in place since the early 1900s. I mean you think about it, when they turned around and said we couldn't build a second story because of a fire, and that really wasn't because of that. And what happened was Arlington, and those areas where they were able to build single-family houses and they didn't have to build the multi-families. Those multi-families were built for the generation coming home from the war.

I know my time is coming up, but I want to I always like to pin the light on something good that's happening in our community, especially in my district is what I'm seeing is The Pride keeps getting mentioned because that is a good example of housing. We're about to do a ribbon cutting the first week of December at 1201 River Street, which is right next to the Muny in Hyde Park. and that is going to be in all affordable housing for anyone that's 55 or older in the community. And then we also have another project in Roswell that's coming down the line that hasn't been approved yet by the planning department, but I believe it's 1471 Washington Street, with the same mindset of all affordable senior living in the heart of a district. That what we're doing here is allowing there to be an opportunity for folks to downsize people that want to downsize because I'm hearing it they want to downsize from their big single-family home

and allowing them to open up that home to a new generation of a family to take that home and then for downsize. given them the opportunity to stay here in the city of Boston. So that's the pipeline that I see happening in the city of Boston that I want to see more examples of and that's why This is so important. I mean, every single part of our conversation is important. So just thankful. I don't know, I keep looking at you just because I feel like you're from Hyde Park. But thank you, everyone, so much for being here.

Thank you, Councilor Pepén. So we have Josh Zakem, our former District 8 Councilor and also Executive Director of Housing Forward. He was supposed to be on the panel, but I'm going to let him just read his testimony because I know he has a couple of things he has to get to today. We pay respect to our former councillors. So go ahead, councillor.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And just to make my excuse a little better, I had to step out to take a call in support of an all-affordable home ownership project in Councilor Worrell's district. That's my excuse for being a little late here, but thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Josh Zakem. I am the Executive Director of Housing Forward Massachusetts. and a former chair of this committee when I held the District 8 City Council seat. I really want to applaud the chair, Councilors Santana and Pepén and their colleagues who are here today for the hearing on this bold action. on legalizing multifamily housing of any kind in the city of Boston, which is long overdue. In our work at Housing Forward where we focused on providing data-backed solutions and research regarding the housing market and impacts of policies, regulations, and laws on the production of housing of all types across the Commonwealth

We see over and over again how important it can be to legalize housing, to make it as a right, to take it out of a subjective discretionary approval process that adds time and costs. And time is cost. and many situations that is ultimately leading to a housing shortage and rising prices and rising costs across Boston, across the Commonwealth, and quite frankly these days across the country. Making a triple-decker illegal once again, and I know there was some conversation about why it was made illegal initially. If you go back and look at the history, so much of our zoning regulation in the city of Boston and certainly in our suburban communities was based on exclusion, racism, classism, xenophobia. Now, in many ways, Those impacts are still apparent from the zoning even if the intent is no longer there and I think it's important to recognize that and to do what we can to eliminate that.

As I've said in this chamber before, I'm a bit of a housing absolutist. I think we should be making it housing as of right on anywhere in the city of Boston that we can. We need to be building more. We need to be making it easier and less expensive for builders, whether they're for-profit developers, non-profit developers, affordable housing, middle income, market rate. So much is needed. What this council and the Wu administration did about four years ago in eliminating parking requirements for all affordable projects was a huge step forward. It's been four years. Let's do something else. Let's do something else big in the zoning code to make it easier to build more housing. I'll leave it at that. I certainly am available. to any of the members of this committee, the city council, or any others to talk more about this. I understand the importance of being deliberate about this, but there are a lot of things that are causing the high price of housing that the city of Boston has no control over.

zoning and approval process the city has complete control over and can take real steps to make a difference here so thank you very much madam chair members of the committee for your time and consideration

Thank you so much, former Councillor Zika. Always great to have you here. So next, we are going to go to Councillor Breadon. You have five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and it's really good to see you all and be part of this great conversation. Way back when I was first elected, my maiden speech was on the need for family-friendly housing in the city of Boston. because I think we reflect any of our neighborhoods, it's so distressing to see young families leave. There's many factors in this, but one big one is the cost of housing. and the fact that in our neighborhood, in particular Alston Brighton, families are competing with groups of students who can club together and pay $5,000 a month for a unit. So that's really a big issue. And to your point earlier, housing shortage It is a supply and demand issue and the housing shortage actually incentivizes a speculative investment in our neighborhoods. Folks who want to buy a family home have to compete with a cash buyer who comes in with a million dollars in cash.

and in 2023, I think that 20% of the homes that were sold in Massachusetts were bought by private equity. So it's a very uneven playing field for ordinary families, ordinary folks to buy a home. And I think one of the reasons I'm a city councilor is we saw huge large-scale multifamily developments in Alston Brighton. and when we asked about family size units, he says, oh, we're not planning on We're not building this for our families. Well, first of all, that's illegal. But second of all, the level of affordability in Alston Brighton back then was 70% of the area median income When the median income for most people who lived in the neighborhood was 45 to 55% of the area median income. So the housing wasn't being built for the people who actually live there.

So again, I'm delighted to really get into the weeds on this missing middle concept and to really try and see if we can build more two and three bed units and have the infrastructure that supports that like quality schools, transit, grocery stores, access to pharmacies. We've been through all of this. So in terms of just, Someone raised the question, well, we have to build luxury housing so that we can afford to build I don't necessarily agree, but how do we fund more middle-income housing? I think the transfer tax was an obvious place to Any thoughts?

I don't know about the feasibility necessarily of new subsidies just for middle income housing. We as a city have invested a lot in purpose-built, affordable, low-income and moderate-income housing. I think certainly our conversations to be had about do we have the financial resources on the city or the state level to create new programs? I'm happy to engage in those conversations. both as a city and state facing a difficult fiscal picture. So that's gonna be hard. What I would say is that we are disincentivizing the creation of missing middle and family size housing in this city by having and many more. to the cost of building new homes.

And so the developers who have to make a certain profit to pay back their investors, because that's the way a lot of housing is built in our society today and always has been, They need to make that income. And so when the costs are high, because it takes them a year to get through the permitting process or they need two dozen variances just to build their project. they're passing those costs on in the form of higher rent or home ownership prices to the future renters or buyers. They're also making choices about the project that they design to do smaller units with fewer bedrooms to fit more in so they can make back the cost of permitting. Former Councillor Zakem just made the point that, what was the point he just made that I was referencing?

Well, I've lost the train of thought on that one, but essentially we're incentivizing through this broken process, we're adding costs and making that sort of added on to future costs.

I think that's why it's so important to do this, yeah. And that's why the modern concept of a triple decker is such an elegant concept in spaces and places where it works, so we can add a lot of extra housing without undue Breadon.

I just wanted to mention that there's a couple of really, really big developers that own housing or own Things that they want to build housing on where housing is a forbidden use. This is particularly in Councilor Breadon's district along where all the automobile shops along North Beacon Street are. So there's like actually places where it's a forbidden use to build housing and big developers have already bought this land knowing that they can carry the cost because they're a big developer. of having forbidden, owning something that is a forbidden use. And so I just wanted to build on Councilor Breadon's questioning. We actually incentivize

Luxury, and bigger developers from doing work by having, we actually made, and thanks to Kathleen Onifer for all of her work with us on this, but we made housing an allowed use in the Bullfinch Triangle And now we have three current proposals to do housing after making that small shift within three months. So I want to thank my colleagues for supporting that change. The Bullfinch Triangle is across from TD Garden. It's a precinct of our district that had been known as like an industrial area so in the past hadn't been considered housing but ended up, it's brick, everything's about 100 feet tall. It was the perfect place for office to residential conversions. And for small business owners, they were worried about the risk. So I actually got a call in the middle from an anonymous, not anonymous, but it was a friend of a friend, saying, hey, I have someone who wants to buy something in the Bullfinch Triangle. When's this zoning amendment going through?

Because we're trying to now think of building housing here where we had never thought about housing in the Bullfinch Triangle. And now, literally within six months of this, zoning change, which was a small change, I know. But these are the types of small changes that need to happen. And I looked at, you know, I went to the planning department and I said, what if we made everywhere that was forbidden as housing, conditional. And everywhere that was conditional allowed. And they were like, you're making it far too simple because there's maritime uses, there's industrial uses, obviously. And then I said, OK, well, tell me where we can't allow housing. So these are the types of conversations that we need to be having in the city of Boston, because without these types of conversations, People that are smaller developers that aren't like these huge companies that can land bank, they are taking advantage.

They are buying forbidden uses and maintaining the property. Don't want to at the company, but you guys know who they are. So Councilor Mejia, I want to give you five minutes. Sorry I had to go on that one because it's just such a passion project of mine.

Thank you, Chair. All right, so let's dive in a little bit deeper around community engagement. You know that's my favorite. And Melvin, I just want to say hello to you. Your dad is such an active member of the Senior Mass Action and whenever he shows up. In any space, he definitely commands it, so I can see where you get it from.

Thank you.

So let's start off just really quick, going back to, I think it was Councilor Louijeune had asked the question around finally becoming a homeowner, looking at the makeup of her neighborhood. And I think that there was definitely Something there for us to unpack a little bit further when we're talking about displacement and we're talking about gentrification and we're talking about who has the right to stay. And so can we talk about what this could look like in your personal and professional capacity? in ways that people particularly historically black and brown people who are the first to have to pack up and go kind of like how can we have these conversations and provide assurance to those folks who who tend to be the ones on the front lines that are going to be displaced. How can we have this conversation where people aren't in fear of their own stability?

I have something and I remember the city of Boston had mentioned that they're going to do the study of the ADUs in the West Roxbury, Brighton, Roslindale slash Hyde Park area. I ask please do not just do it in those areas. Those areas are already very expensive right now for anybody really to move in. Let's do this study where it's inclusive of all of Boston, Because we need Mattapan and Roxbury to get the same boost because once those properties sell, and you're asking how do we do it, that's one thing. We've got to stop segregating and integrating. and bringing the same process throughout the whole city. I understand you're trying to get sample sizes, but we've already did a sample size. Mattapan. What more do we need to put in the test tube?

Thank you for that. Anyone else? I'm just curious. I mean, you guys are doing this work day in and day out in these streets. So I'm going to assume you have a lot of great ideas for us to be able to unpack here.

Yeah, sure. I'll go. From a design and sort of architecture perspective, sitting down and talking to people directly about what their needs are directly shapes how a building is designed. I think that we've had conversations about We need to build more family housing. And I think that there's even new forms of families that are also here and that want to stay. I mean, even the Triple Decker itself as its sort of historical model was an intergenerational sort of building component. Directly talking to people about how you can go from owning the entire building, having your grandmother on the first floor, have that be an accessible unit, and then having the possibility of somebody who's on the second floor move upwards, right? I think that there's lots of those like direct choices that would impact how the building itself comes online and then folks would be able to determine that they have a choice in what type of housing is available.

The reason why we talk about building housing so much is so that people also have options to stay so that they're not subject to only one typology or one form of housing that exists.

Thank you for that. Go ahead, Jesse. I was going to say something real quick, but you can go. Well, I was going to say that I purchased a home and my mom lives on one side and my brother and our kids live on the other. That was the only way we were able to, you know, stabilize our Housing and Security was by creating this intergenerational co-purchasing situation. And before co-purchasing was even a thing, that's what I talked about, that we were able to stay here because of that. So yes, yes, yes.

I alluded to this a little bit in answering Councilor Louijeune's question, but I think asking people about their own personal experience, can your children who were born and raised here in the city of Boston afford to stay in Boston? Or are they looking to go elsewhere? either in Massachusetts or out of state, or your, Melvin was talking about his father. Can your parents who are maybe living, your seniors in your family, who are maybe living sort of in an oversized house for their needs at this stage in life, able to find a place in their neighborhood where they can downsize. And the answer to most of those is no. I would also add all means all, right? And so we need every neighborhood to play a role in this. So we're not just going to talk about this in Mattapan and Hyde Park or other areas.

We also need West Roxbury and Moss Hill and JP and every neighborhood, the back bay to play a role in this as well.

And you know I love that right because not only are you invoking my spirit in this chamber but It really is to everyone's point here is that everybody benefits when everyone can stay in the city that they love. And the only way we're going to get there is if we can streamline it. And it's not different strokes for different folks. It's everything across the board. has to be equal and fair. And I think that we get into these, you know, this is how you do it in Back Bay, and this is how you do it in Elson Bright, and this is how you're going to do it in Mattapan. It's going to make it harder for people to stay here, so it has to be across the board.

People are the character of this city. That's right.

I was just going to say, Jesse mentioned some of the other cities, dense cities, maybe gateway cities, places like Lawrence and Lowell and Somerville that have had some success with this kind of infill building. I think they've also, along with the state, had some success in creative and innovative financing through tax credits and combining municipal and state incentives for these kinds of developments. The City of Boston could certainly use its significant political capital up on Beacon Hill and with the administration to foster this alongside your planning innovation.

I want to leave one more thing on financing. FHA actually turns around and uses 75% of the rental income to qualify when you're buying a house with an ADU. So if you're buying a single family house as an ADU, you can use that to buy that single family house with that ADU. Now, if you go through the 203 program, And it's not even built. FHA has a piece where they'll take 50% of that income and use it to qualify. So there we go. Councilor Ray, you asked some of the questions about finances. There are some things right there.

So I just want to say I wish we had a better track record on Beacon Hill. Though the State House is in my district, I have very little influence on what passes there. and neither do we as a body. I think many of our home roll petitions have been sitting. So if anyone from the State House is listening, Please look at what we've sent up to you this year. Because I know they'll go into informal session and there's definitely an opportunity to support the City of Boston initiative. So I just want to thank all of my colleagues for their work. I do want to give my colleagues a chance for closing statements very briefly because we do need to get to I do want to give the panel if there's any last words I think if there's any sort of summarization of maybe what we've learned today or what you'd like the City of Boston to continue to work on Please let us know.

Speak now or forever hold your peace.

I think one thing I would like to point out, and I've talked about this polling that we did, but I think it's really one of the first times that we as a city got a deep dive into what do people, residents across the city, think about this. have taken some piecemeal approaches, whether squares and streets, where after a couple years we only have Roslindale Village rezoned, and we're talking about ADUs and triple-deckers, and that's advancing the conversation. We know that 78% of Boston residents want to do what Sarah Bronin recommended in her report on the zoning code in Boston, which is comprehensive citywide reform. to make sure that every neighborhood is playing a role in meeting the housing needs of our residents now into the future. So I'm really grateful for this conversation That's helped advancing that and recognizing where the vast majority of Boston residents are. They want comprehensive action.

They want it now. And so I appreciate this conversation.

Thank you. Anyone else?

A lot of the conversation was centered around home ownership. I think we should build housing so that people could own it if they want to, but we should also make sure rental is viable as a long-term option The duration of someone's life. Owning a home is a lot of work. I don't know if you've ever, like, I grew up in a very rural area, and when the power went out for a couple days, you didn't have water. It was cold. And then you've got to bail out the basement because it's flooding because it just rained a lot. That's a lot of work for young people, a lot of work for old people. allow people to live in places where they don't have to take ultimate responsibility over their living conditions. They should be able to call someone to help them. and also I want to make a point about the community process.

A lot of times what I see in a lot of the community work is that the voices that come to put a brake on development and change are typically usually the ones that the city takes very seriously. And when I come, I mean, they take it seriously. What people in my group take it seriously. But when we say, oh, we want more, they're like, oh, we already think we want more. You know, the planning department of the city is development focused. That's stewardship of the city. And so they take the people who are wanting a break or want us to consider, they give them a little bit more credence. And I think we have to, Level the playing field a little bit more and actually hear what people are saying for what they're saying. When we write a bunch of letters that say, we want this development to go through, I want to see the tally. I want to see that there's 30 letters for and one against. you know, the planning board or ZBA denies it. Well, are they actually listening to community process and community input?

Or are they really just a vessel for that break on change that we desperately need?

Thank you so much. That was a really good insight. I also just want to say that there is absolutely no benefit I'm committed to being supportive of growth in the city. And I'm charging it back to you. When I've supported tough things, there's been no one to come to my aid and say, oh, I agree with you. But I do want to thank, I have one constituent here who's testifying who would have been one of those people to come to my aid. Hayden, thank you for being here to testify. I do think that it's really important that that also any advocacy orgs know that they need to get more organized because it is completely ridiculous to sometimes be out on your own when you are solving the city's biggest issue. I'll just charge it back to you. I'm sorry, that might be a really tough critique, but I think it's really important that if the majority of voters and people and you've polled and they think, This is great.

We should be hearing from those people, and we often don't. So more organization is always necessary in every single sense.

Back at that. I think we have gotten pretty organized, and I have seen, actually, Tally's of comments from community meetings where there are equal support and opposing comments. And we've been told the opposition is the one that is listened to. So I think as we talk about community process, We need to think about who is showing up and who you're listening to. And when you're saying get more organized, people who are working parents, who have less money are the people who cannot show up to these meetings. So we try to get organized, but the people who keep showing up again and again are these Homeowners who don't want to see change and have time to go to the meetings and I just think the community process and focusing on that is something that really needs to Change the way that it happens because what I have seen is people obstructing development who have resources and want to keep their resources.

Yeah, and thank you. And I do think that maybe it's because there's really not an active organization in my district doing this type of work. So I want to thank you for the work that you do in your Districts. Also, I think this is so important because I've noticed in community process that certain types of people like certain types of rooms. The times where there's been rooms hosted by the city where people can't hear each other like there's a map and there's a charrette and certain types of folks don't like those rooms where other young people and folks that are Maybe more open to change love that type of format because they get to explore and then we've also know that there's a silencing in the community process where when one person speaks it can silence a lot of other people so I just want to thank you all for all that you do.

I do still think there's work to do, but I appreciate all the work that you all have done in your individual Places, and your neighborhoods. And that's where this should be started. It should be a neighborhood-focused thing. So I just want to thank you for the work that you do. So I want to give my colleagues who sponsored this a chance to close out this meeting. So Councilor Santana and then Councilor Pepén.

Thank you, Chair. I just want to thank this amazing panel. I know we have a lot of you and just really appreciate you all providing the insights. I want to thank the administration earlier for their panel. You know, I think we We've all said it, we're in the midst of a housing crisis. I think, especially Jesse, right, what keeps our neighborhoods, what makes our neighborhoods great and our city great is our people. And that's my focus, making sure that our people can stay here, can thrive here and that can't happen without affordable housing. So that's going to continue to be my focus. I think triple-deckers and ADUs is not going to solve by any means the housing crisis that we're in. but it's about continuing to add to the toolbox and I think that we need to you know I think act with more urgency when it matters like this I'm looking forward to the parking minimum hearing that we will have I'm sure there will be

A lot more people, maybe. But I'm looking forward to just continuing to do this work alongside my colleagues, again, who want to keep our people here in our neighborhood. So I really appreciate all the efforts that you all do. I'm looking forward to the continued conversation. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Councillor Santana. Councillor Pepén.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And again, thank you all so much for being here today. Thank you to the panelists from the city administration as well. I feel like we're heading in the right direction. I think that to a gentleman's point here of being back to the future, of taking a look at what used to happen and what we did wrong as a city. and how we can learn from those mistakes and from our history and move towards a brighter direction of actually building more housing for folks who want to stay in Boston and those that want to move into Boston. have learned also that these topics, it takes courage. It takes courage as elected officials to lead on them. I was very worried to talk about this in my district, obviously, because of the fact that the voices that would come to the community meetings were not fully representative of my district. And what I learned is that I got reelected despite being so supportive of these efforts. And it just gave me a sense of like, okay, we're doing something right here.

And I do want to give, in the essence of community organizing, I do want to give a shout out to Rozzy for More Residence. Andrew Murray started that up. They just showed that there's a voice on the other side as well. And to your point of the people that are impacted by this, They're usually can't show up to the meetings and we have to find a way to hear them out and make sure that they have a voice too. So I take this very, very serious because I do see this all. If it's ADUs, if it's triple-deckers, if it's more senior housing, if it's rezoning different pockets like the Bullfinch Triangle, These are all part of the solution to make Boston more affordable. And that is the only way that we can truly say we're heading in the right direction. And I want to make sure that I'm part of that solution as well. So thank you to my co-sponsors. Thank you to the chair for having us here. Thank you all for the work you're doing in the community.

Thank you so much, Councilor Pepén. I'm going to let Councilor Mejia as well give the closing statement.

Thank you, Chair. And I want to thank you all for being here I echo the sentiments of what it looks like to not really have a voice in any space to be honest with you because oftentimes those who are most impacted are the least heard for all the reasons why you named and I think that we as a city need to do a better job at taking an accurate account of who's showing up and where do they live. And if you have to show ID to prove that you are from the immediate neighborhood, then you do that too. Because what is happening is that you're right. There are a lot of folks who are just storming into spaces and places and occupying the voices of folks who who can't speak for themselves. And so I think that that's really great feedback. And you're absolutely right. Before becoming a homeowner, I was a renter, right? I think I will always feel like a renter because being housing insecure is traumatic.

And so even when you have a home that you own, you're still worried about whether or not you're going to be able to pay the mortgage. So I think all of this is really part of the conversation. as we continue to navigate. It should not be one or the other. It should be always and. All means all. Everyone needs to have a voice at the table. And so I look forward to working in partnership with you all and the administration to figure out how we manage that tension but who we are, how we center the voices of those folks I think is gonna be my number one priority in making sure that we are building with that intentionality and making sure that nobody is literally left behind. So thank you for your leadership in this space and I look forward to continuing our partnership.

Thank you, Councilor Mejia. So now we're going to move to public testimony. I just want to thank the panel. Thank you for all you did today and the time that you spent with us. So the first for public testimony is Fred Watts. or Waltz. I'm not sure if it's Waltz or Watts. And you can come to either of these. either of these and then I'm gonna start a two minute timer and when it goes off you're finished. Okay, Fred, go ahead.

Thank you, councillors. Thank you, panelists. I'm Fred Watts from Dorchester, also a member of the AHMA, and I support both reforms. Much of Boston's greatness is its prosperity, but prosperity comes and goes. The cities that survived the rough years are the cities with roots. ADUs and triple-deckers are the natural nests for those tight-knit extended families that anchor a neighborhood. Our civic anxieties always return to child care, elder and disabled care, homelessness, mental health support, and pension systems. It is necessary and good for public safety nets to address these needs, but neighborhoods of high trust, multigenerational families can bear much of that burden. keeping public programs solvent. I have additional arguments for ADU specifically. First, liberty. It's a tenant of the American legal tradition that we may use our property as we wish absent overwhelming state interest interfere. Experience across the state and nationally has not demonstrated concerns that would justify interference at the level that we have witnessed in Boston.

Finally, pragmatism. and ADU causes less of the disruption that provokes critics of new development. 60 basement renovations won't attract the bile of proposing a 10-unit apartment building. If the city wants to add housing without providing singular targets for resistance to unite around, this is the way to do it. I appreciate your time.

Thank you so much, and thanks for your brevity, or conciseness, it was great. Dillon Keating, Kelting.

Hello, I am Dillon Kelting. I live in Beacon Hill. You know, a neighborhood that was built before zoning, a neighborhood that was allowed to grow to meet the needs of its residents in its time. A neighborhood that is four stories, five stories, six stories, sometimes even taller with no side setbacks. And a beautiful neighborhood with beautiful trees that people love living in. I'm here to support the two items on the agenda today, but I'm also here to encourage the council and the administration to push forward and push further as soon as possible. You know, we're living in a historic time in our city and in our nation. And if we are just talking about mild zoning reform,

that we are going to take one year, two years, maybe even delayed to three years to implement, then are we really going to be able to meet the demands of our time? And I believe that this moment, it demands change. It demands that we be bold, and I implore you to do so. Thank you.

Thanks, Dalen. Always great to hear from a constituent. Hayden Seeger, another constituent.

You can use this one if you want. Yeah. Sorry, I messed up my foot. Sorry I'm so slow. So I think Jesse mentioned, oh, thank you for having me. I'm Hayden. I think Jesse mentioned the representative structure of these meetings is usually not representative of people, but it is what I'm talking. So that's, you know, representative. I'm a resident of Back Bay. Back Bay can't be built today because of our zoning laws. The panelists that came up here, they said, 99% of the buildings in the city cannot be built. And people then talk about historic character of these buildings. Yeah, okay, I mean, you talk about historic character. We can't build these places anymore. So it doesn't really make sense to me to reference that. In general, ADUs are

They're a community thing. It's not like some big developer is coming in to put this ADU on your property. This is your parent or your grandparent or something like that. And I know there was a recent reelection campaign where, you know, congrats to the people who got reelected. Housing was the number one issue on this campaign trail. I assume. I didn't run. I think we all can agree that we shouldn't have a coal refinery next to the Boston Common. And this is where the original zoning reforms came from. But then after that, it should be a free market thing. If you want to be able to build six story high things like Cambridge does, you should be allowed to. And hopefully, I'm here to represent 70% of people who agree with this opinion.

As a last point, I'll say housing is the number one problem. ADUs are not going to fix this problem, but it's a tool in the toolkit that we can use. It's not going to fix it overnight, but we should be doing something, and by not doing things, you're complicit in the current situation. Thank you so much, Hayden.

Nick Block. And then Elvira Mora, you're also in here. Oh, he's gone? Oh, okay. Okay, perfect. Elvira Mora and then Ava Strauss. And then we're going to move to any online testimony.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to all the councilors, city staff, everybody that worked hard to make this happen today. My name is Elvira Mora. I am a Boston-born resident, born and raised here, and I am the Greater Boston Organizer from Abundant Housing Massachusetts. I come today to not reemphasize what has been done from the expert panel from the administration and all the advocates that have come with organizations as well. I want to share a little bit of my own personal story. Having grown up in a triple-decker myself, having had an ADU built on my lot as well, I kind of had a first view experience of what that was like from previous administrations and a lot of jargon, a lot of steps, a lot of variances, a lot of back and forth appointments to BHA on Mass Ave to be able to get that done.

My parents were not easily accessible to be able to have a property when they first came here, when they immigrated from Ecuador, but they were able to seek and find that goal of home ownership that they had. and ultimately achieved their own American dream because of the density that was allowed here that allowed my parents to stay. And after fighting the covert racism, immigrant to immigrant, they were able to have A down payment on this triple decker and make it into a home which I still reside in. It's fully multi-generational. My mom lives on the first floor. My aunt lives on the third, and my brother lives in that ADU. So this is very deeply personal to me, not just in my professional capacity, but also in my personal, as somebody who has lived through this in different iterations of what has been talked about today. I hope that we take this time, take the conversations, not delay. The time is now. There is a perfect opportunity to do this now.

We need homes now. Plain and simple, cutting the red tape and regulations for residents here is just common sense. It will give us more opportunities to thrive, more opportunities for families to stay, and more opportunities to see Boston thrive. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Elvira. Eva Strauss, or Eva? Yep.

Hi, I'm Eva. I'll keep it pretty short. I support both of these reforms we live in JP in Jamaica Plain and we really hope it can remain affordable for everybody thank you so much for your hard work

Thank you so much. Okay, so, and I know we have at least one person testifying online, so if we could go to them.

Yes, good afternoon Madam Chair and fellow Councillors. My name is Craig Martin with the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association and I own and live in the three family in Hyde Park. I'm a little troubled by some of the testimony I heard today. First, I heard a counselor, and I didn't find out who it was, I heard a voice, mention that this is a time to allow for unreasonable construction. as of right. And then I heard one of the panelists, one of the expert panelists saying, time to get rid of setbacks. They make no sense. That troubles me. Zoning, even though it's being portrayed as strictly designed for exclusionary zoning, it was actually, exclusionary living or what have you, it's actually designed for safety and to ensure quality of life. and the safety being, for instance, fire risks.

Every time I see a fire in Dorchester or whatever, East Boston, I'm always waiting for the fire chief to come on and say, you know, we had trouble, we couldn't access because the buildings were so close. And that's why we have zoning, for safety and, again, quality of life. So it troubles me that it's being portrayed as strictly for inclusionary zoning. It's not. Finally, I wanted to mention a concern I have. There are ramifications when you try and really limit the zoning regulations. Um, completely allow for as many two as four more units on a parcel. It's that, and there was a recent segment, pardon my diatribe, a recent segment on 60 Minutes where the federal hedge funds

Federal Hedge Funds were coming in along the Bible Belt and buying up every single family because they had their own national development companies come in, do some work, and then start renting it. So no one else could actually buy and purchase. These people were grabbing them overnight. Boston, with the highest rents around the country. Thank you so much. They're looking to come in and take advantage of this, that there are ramifications.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So that will end public testimony. So I know we're going to keep this in committee. These are both incredibly important initiatives. And with that, Our hearing on docket 1632 and dockets 1718 will remain in committee.