One of the goals of the Newton Village Center Rezoning project is to increase affordable housing options in the city.
A strategic and systemic plan for increasing density is a powerful and necessary tool for achieving this critical housing affordability goal. Other cities across the country have realized this fact.
Minneapolis and three other municipalities were able to substantially slow rent growth in recent years by allowing far more multi-family housing than before:
“Although rents remain fairly high in the four places examined, they are certainly lower than they would be if the cities had not allowed more housing. And the fact that rents grew faster, often much faster, in nearby towns and cities, shows that no city can solve regional housing affordability on its own.”
Indeed, the scale of the growing regional housing affordability issue in Greater Boston is why the MBTA Communities Act was passed into law.
Even in the face of housing costs generally increasing because of a whole host of factors, it is evident that it is possible and necessary to intervene and reduce that rise.
The do-little development status quo over the last thirty years has not been kind to Newton households with the lowest incomes.
Damien Croteau-Chonka
