Making 40B More Friendly

"Legislative leaders, responding to a Massachusetts-wide housing shortage, unveiled a bill yesterday that proposes substantial changes to the state's anti-snob-zoning law in hopes of spurring suburban communities to approve homebuilding projects. The bill...targets some of the most restrictive aspects of the law, known as Chapter 40B....the biggest alteration would allow towns to artificially double the number of homeownership units in a development. That will give municipalities a much greater chance of reaching the 10 percent affordable housing threshold....For example, a development with 25 affordable units could actually count 50 units for the purposes of meeting the threshold....Advocates of the affordable housing law yesterday said they were 'less than thrilled' with that aspect of the bill, but overall were guardedly optimistic about the legislation as a whole."

Thanks to Connie Chung