In an essay inspired by a town administrator’s recent post on LinkedIn, Judi Barrett dives into fair housing, exploring housing as a human right – or as the Fair Housing Council of Metropolitan Memphis says, “We Belong. We Ain’t Beggin.” Her expert perspective challenges us to rethink our approach to community development and social equity. We invite you to read her full reflection and join the conversation on creating a more just housing landscape.
Article by Judi Barrett
“Whenever you diminish the poor, you diminish everybody else.” (Martin Luther King, Jr., paraphrased)
“For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for bread, would give a stone?…” (Matthew 7:7-9, NRSV)
I read a commentary recently by a municipal official I respect and admire. His essay was about the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Law known as Chapter 40B (or simply “40B”), and since a lot of my work for cities and towns involves Chapter 40B, I try to pay attention to what is said about it.
As I read on, I realized he was using an experience with a large, unwanted Chapter 40B development as a springboard to talk about something bigger and in some ways, more important. He wrote about collaboration, understanding the tools at your disposal when you have a problem to solve, and thinking and planning strategically to avoid being boxed in by circumstances you think you can’t control. In Massachusetts, most communities think they can’t control Chapter 40B, that it’s forced upon them, and that once “a 40B” knocks on the door, their municipal officials are essentially boxed into a corner. This is true, sort of, but it’s only part of a more complicated picture.
The essay left me uneasy. The short version is that his town chose to buy the proposed Chapter 40B site and a neighboring property, placing both under conservation restrictions to protect the land in perpetuity. These steps put an end to the proposed housing development. The case he described is not the first time a Massachusetts community purchased land to block a Chapter 40B development. It will happen again, too. Far less prominent are accounts of communities acquiring land specifically for affordable housing, even if it makes existing neighbors unhappy. I don’t mean land for a couple of single-family homes tucked away from public view. I mean land for a development of many units – not large apartment buildings, but enough neighborhood-scale homes that can actually put a dent in housing insecurity. Something that means lots of new friends and neighbors. Homes that change the trajectory of a child’s life. What kind of society are we if we don’t take care of our children?
My positions on housing justice won’t help me win a popularity contest. What most people don’t know about me is that 42 years ago, I left a journalism career I loved and jumped feet first into organizing a community-wide effort to save 60 acres of watershed land from being developed into a large, very high-end continuing care retirement community. The site abuts forests owned by the Massachusetts Audubon Society and other large tracts the town had acquired over several years. The “Audubon A” award I received afterward hangs in my office today, and it still matters more to me than any other recognition I’ve earned over the years.
What I learned from that experience 42 years ago is that protecting open space and creating affordable housing are really hard. In the early 1980s I attended a workshop on “limited development,” i.e., when a municipality or land trust acquires land and sells some of it for house lots to pay for preserving the rest as open space. The case study featured four enormous homes (“McMansion” hadn’t been coined yet) set against a magnificent open field. The enthusiastic presenters said the sale of those four lots paid the entire cost of saving the land. While other workshop attendees applauded, I flinched. Wait a minute. Developers already build houses just like that on their own. They don’t need town-owned land – right? In my naïve way, I thought if a town wanted to pair open space acquisitions with housing, the housing ought to be reasonably priced, something that opens the door to people who couldn’t begin to afford the homes in that case study. What about basic social fairness? Isn’t housing a public benefit, too?
It was an epiphany. It changed my life.
Fast-forward to today, I don’t think most towns consider housing a public benefit. Yes, some communities take affordable housing very seriously. They have used Chapter 40B, zoning, land acquisitions, and other tools to their advantage. However, those towns are not the norm. When I consider my own firm’s experiences with the MBTA Communities Law, very few towns took seriously the chance to identify and upzone places to encourage new housing. Most picked places where nothing will happen. They achieved what we call “paper compliance,” i.e., they adopted zoning for already-developed sites with no infill possibilities. Here was an opportunity to identify areas where communities would zone for housing growth, unlike the Chapter 40B process, where most projects show up on the town’s doorstep at the developer’s initiative. Instead of taking the ball and running with it, communities willingly dropped it. And they will holler loudly when the next Chapter 40B development arrives on the scene.
As planners, we don’t want multifamily housing to end up in half-vacant office and industrial parks and we don’t want to see cookie-cutter “snouthouses” dropped in the middle of established neighborhoods. We want communities to plan where and how to meet their fair housing obligations and be thoughtful about how to get there. We want to see them acquire sensitive land to protect their water resources rather than wait until a Chapter 40B development lands on their doorsteps. In this month when we recognize the Fair Housing Act and the persistent roadblocks that prevent people from being your neighbor, I hope to read a different essay by a municipal official who asked a lot of good questions, pushed forward with a plan for housing fairness and, through hard work, got the neighborhood and community on board. That, in my view, is victory.