Former gubernatorial candidate Christopher F. Gabrieli addresses the Home Builders Association of Massachusetts during the group’s recent installation of officers.
Former gubernatorial candidate Christopher F. Gabrieli has challenged Beacon Hill lawmakers to reconsider home rule.
In a recent speech to homebuilders, Gabrieli said strict zoning regulations in the Bay State’s suburbs are driving up the cost of housing, making it impossible for young families to buy a home and forcing some to flee the state.
“Local zoning resists new housing,” he said. “It may achieve stated goals to deal with septic tanks and roads, but it also achieves an unstated goal of little or no growth. That’s just unacceptable. We need more housing. It’s time for the state to step up and say, ‘It may be good for any one community to resist growth, but it’s not good for the commonwealth as a whole.'”
Gabrieli made the remarks at the Home Builders Association of Massachusetts’ installation of officers at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston. The resident of Beacon Hill’s Louisburg Square spent a record $8.4 million on his 2006 campaign for governor. He ran second with 27 percent of the vote in the primary last year to Deval Patrick’s 49.6 percent. The race was the third political defeat for Gabrieli, who lost a campaign for Congress in 1998 and for lieutenant governor in 2002.
Despite those setbacks, Gabrieli appeared to have the support of the more than 200 homebuilders in the audience who cheered when the venture capitalist said, “Government could address the challenges facing our housing market without spending a penny, but it will take determination and leadership. You’re not looking for a subsidy to do what you do Â… we need a market-based revolution. I know you can get the job done if we set you free to do what you do so well.”
Gabrieli’s remarks echoed a series of studies that suggest local zoning ordinances are the biggest barriers to home construction. The most recent study by the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research and Harvard University’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston on land-use regulation examined 187 Massachusetts communities.
Researchers found a set of local regulatory rules that mandated minimum lot size, growth caps, prohibition of irregularly shaped lots, wetland and septic-system regulations that exceed state requirements, and strict subdivision guidelines
Local officials insist that developers always will build housing that produces the greatest profits. If communities were to relax zoning regulations to allow for smaller lots that accommodate modest homes or more houses per lot, developers would still try to build the most expensive home they could to boost profits, they say. It is developers who are razing smaller homes in favor of mansions, they argue.
In an interview with Banker & Tradesman following the speech, Gabrieli stopped short of calling for the repeal of home rule. He suggested bigger financial incentives for home construction than those being offered by the commonwealth. But he did not know how much such a plan would cost or how the cash-strapped state would pay for it.
“I’m not a candidate for office or an incumbent, so I don’t have a proposal,” said Gabrieli, who serves as chairman of the Massachusetts 2020 Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is to expand educational and economic opportunities for children. “The challenge is immense, but so what? This is crucial for our state and it can’t be overstated.”
Gabrieli insisted that the same state to pass the landmark Education Reform Act can take similar action to jump-start housing starts. Enacted by the state Legislature in 1993, the legislation channeled billions of dollars into school districts, encouraged charter schools, set statewide academic standards and initiated the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests.
“The politics is difficult, but this is about political leadership,” he said. “Look at the [Education] Reform Act, where the state demonstrated that it is capable of bringing people together to get things done for the common good at the expense of narrow, short-term self-interests.
“We cannot afford to stand for the status quo. We need big, bold change. We need the willingness and the desire to do that. And I think that’s the same for housing.”
‘Your Special Showplace’
Mark Leff, the newly elected president of the Home Builders Association, explained why the group is up to the challenge by invoking the story of his late father, Jack Leff, the state’s first secretary of elder affairs in the 1970s. The senior Leff, a former social worker, helped launch a movement to help elders stay in their homes through Meals on Wheels lunch programs and home care.
“My father believed this would be a better alternative for the elderly,” said Leff. “It would save money by eliminating the cost of institutionalization. In short order, Massachusetts was the first state in the nation with a statewide home care system for its elderly.”
Leff recalled that his father believed a person’s identity is shaped by the home in which they live.
“The type of home is irrelevant,” said Leff. “Whether it’s a single-family home or a townhouse, a retirement community, a vacation home or a rental apartment, the place where you live is inseparable from your dignity and your human fabric. It’s your special showplace of all that you have accomplished in your life.”
Today, Leff said, the fight is against communities who are raising the drawbridge to keep young families from attaining home ownership through overzealous regulations.
“In the name of community character, communities are discouraging school-age children,” Leff said. “The result is we’re pushing young high school and college graduates away from the very communities in which they grew up.”
But Matthew Feher, legislative director for the Massachusetts Municipal Association, dismissed the critics by offering data reflecting the number of building permits issued in the Bay State.
Feher noted that the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute reported that the state’s cities and towns issued 24,549 building permits in 2005, the latest data available, a 9 percent increase over 2004 and more than double the national average of 4 percent.
“These are the facts and no one can refute them,” Feher said. “Communities are issuing permits, so I don’t understand what they’re complaining about. Builders are in it for the profits and I have no problem with that. But it’s the contractors who are not building affordable homes.”
Thomas Grillo may be reached at tgrillo@thewarrengroup.com.
