Boston’s Fair Housing Policy Shows Promise

After three years, how is Boston’s approach to tie fair housing to zoning reform panning out? Kalena Thomhave seeks to answer this question in Smart Cities Dive.

The context: “In 2021, the city passed what may be the nation’s first effort to add fair housing requirements to its zoning code. The new policy requires developers of large projects to assess the projects’ possible impacts on area residents historically discriminated against and take steps to reduce those impacts.”

“The Boston Interagency Fair Housing Development Committee, which has representatives from multiple city agencies, reviews a developer’s project assessment and its chosen interventions as well as the city’s own displacement risk data.” Developers can negotiate with the committee to finalize their requirements and can choose from a variety of mitigating measures that include “building a greater share of affordable units, building more family-size units or providing more units to residents with housing vouchers.” 

To date, 43 large projects have triggered the ordinance. According to Karina Oliver-Milchman, director of policy development and research for the Mayor’s Office of Housing, “it is difficult to explicitly measure success, though development projects are indeed changing as a result of the ordinance process.”