If Massachusetts were suffering from a severe shortage of food, it would be absurd to characterize a proposal to allow more farms as a scheme to enrich vegetable growers. So why do I keep seeing the ballot measure to allow more homes on smaller lots framed as a giveaway to homebuilders?  The way to address a shortage of something is to make more of it. It’s really that simple. Requiring large minimum lot sizes is legally enforced housing scarcity, and that is what Question 7 is trying to fix.

It’s fair to say that, in Lexington, new homes produced on small lots will not necessarily be affordable to many families. We have dimensional controls and other zoning mechanisms that we can and should use to help minimize bloat, but new construction is by nature more expensive. Compared to what, though, is the question. While we worry about the price of a small house on a small lot, whole mansions with 7,000-square-foot floor plans are being built and sold for $3 million or $4 million all over town. 

The housing shortage in Massachusetts is a genuine crisis. A recent Pew Charitable Trusts study exposes the degree to which it’s a major driver of poverty. It found that in Massachusetts 26% of poverty–and 31% of child poverty–is due to housing costs. Lack of affordability—again, mainly driven by housing costs—is one of the main reasons young people are leaving the state. Our inability to build enough homes is causing displacement and widespread, consequential hardship for many people. Proposed solutions need to be evaluated with an understanding that the status quo is absolutely, unsustainably terrible.

Question 7 will not solve the housing crisis by itself, and it does not promise that every new unit will be affordable. It’s simply trying to remove one barrier that prevents Massachusetts from building the homes we need. In a housing shortage, refusing to allow more homes does not protect affordability. It protects scarcity.

Vote YES on Question 7 to remove an arbitrary and exclusionary barrier to building more homes in Massachusetts.

Jay Luker

Precinct 1 Town Meeting Member

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