Requiring high percentages of affordable units in an inclusionary zoning policy, or a 40B development is a recipe for making them uneconomical for developers (this is why there are limits on this in the MBTA law).

Edit: I think they've also considered certain types of protected land in the worksheet and GIS layers they put out to assist local governments to determine zoning that works:

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/compliance-model-components

This is accounted for already - search for 'MBTA communities with limited or no transit station area' in this page-

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/section-3a-guidelines

The short answer seems to be 'wherever it makes sense, just meet the contiguity and density requirements'.

Well I have suburban NIMBYs in my town who do have this infrastructure who also think our city shouldn't have to allow the housing, and they're expecting rural communities to allow it instead.

The only fair solution I see here is that everyone needs to relax a little and let the market get an equilibrium... which seems to be the approach the state is going for.

For what it's worth, the state put a cap on the amount of housing required in more rural communities after getting feedback during the comment session.

I'm not going to say you can't have it- it's just that it's unreasonable to expect urban infrastructure on a rural tax base. Frequently suburbia is subsidized by taxes in denser neighborhoods. Even if you don't have sewer access, you're getting a lot of road infrastructure that isn't paid for by gas taxes.

I just can't see a developer selecting a 100 acre plot of land unless there is enough around to justify sufficient demand to make the investment worthwhile. If it's a farm near or surrounded by a city, that would be snatched up, but I'm guessing this situation is pretty rare in the first place.

I have to ask why there is a sewer system in a rural community though, that doesn't seem like it ever makes fiscal sense.

Apartment buildings bring in property taxes, believe it or not

I was surprised to read this!

The densities required (15 units/acre) hardly fall under enormous and there are a lot of people working from home now.

I've heard of people in Somerville raising chickens at home!

The development amounts required by this law are about the farthest from dense you can get. It's only 15 units per acre. See the images in this link to get an idea of what that density means:

https://mrsc.org/stay-informed/mrsc-insight/april-2017/visualizing-compatible-density

It'll matter if the state just takes away zoning rights entirely from intransigent communities.

Hopefully the MBTA Communities law results in some construction that provides that housing (and for the rest of eastern MA as well).

Change your compass

To be honest I don't even think we're building enough single family housing to meet that demand given how expensive they've become as well. Not that I am a huge fan of that type of housing anyway...

That's fair, but I would say what you are looking for is for any price gradient to not go up as steeply and hopefully wages rise to meet it in a more sane place (that paper suggests in two years you can see a clear impact).

As an example of where this is going well, Tokyo builds enough housing supply that a recent college graduate can rent without roommates to my understanding.

To add to this, parking requirements and lot size restrictions frequently add extra costs to apartment buildings such that parking has to be built in a separate building at great expense, or even worse underground at an even greater expense.

My city's inclusive housing ordinance only requires that the development not affect traffic too much, but there's no density bonus to allow the developer to make up losses on the affordable units and the parking requirements remain.

Here's a recent paper about this process (housing chains) working in Helsinki:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3929243

While this is frequently derided as 'trickle down housing', it's not like the supply side economic theory about always lowering taxes on rich people. Housing chains are more like the used car market- someone paid to have a new car and eat the cost of depreciation while selling their previous car at at a much lower price than they bought it.

Great answers here. I'd also add that single family homes are also very much luxury housing, in that they frequently have many of the same amenities as so called 'luxury' apartments while also enjoying many subsides on the public dime.

(developers: please just call them 'new' unless you're saying something truly unique, you're not doing anyone any favors)

I don't think Lincoln has much of the latter anyway, does it?

Not providing enough housing supply for the top of the market is how you get gentrification as all others have to compete against them and lose.

That's a funny way to write 'allow more market based housing via relaxed zoning rules in your community'

I read through the towns surrounding mine (Waltham) and they seemed to be concerned about losing commercial tax base to lower tax base residential (someone tell them about mixed use zoning please) but generally they appeared to be at the acceptance stage of grief.

Waltham's response was at the bargaining stage though with a lot of excuses as to why we shouldn't have to comply and some nimby nonsense about luxury housing.

That sounds massively expensive.

Also it's not where the demand is now, which is in the eastern side of the state. Why push against supply and demand in this way?

Sounds like an improvement from the gas station at least.

Your city may have stupid zoning policies that raise the cost of development such that only a bank could be placed there because they can afford it.