The average single-family home price in greater Boston is almost $800,000 and a housing shortage is deepening. That's got regional and state leaders turning to the potential of vacant, publicly owned land as a place to build more homes.
State or local governments own more than 110,000 acres of land in the region that could be developed, philanthropic group The Boston Foundation said in its 2024 Greater Boston Housing Report Card published this month. If development happened on just 5% of the land, the organization calculates, the region could produce more than 85,000 new homes. That would make a dent in the state of Massachusetts’ goal to produce 200,000 homes by 2030.
The opportunity presented by vacant public land isn’t an issue only at the state or local level. During the recent presidential campaign, both major party candidates said they were interested in developing housing on land owned by the federal government, particularly in the Western U.S.
A goal of building 200,000 new homes in Massachusetts by 2030 to address a housing shortfall is often cited by state leaders and business officials. It could also help curb price growth: The Warren Group, a Massachusetts-based real estate data firm, reported that the average price for a single-family house in Greater Boston was just shy of $795,000 in August, up from $760,000 one year earlier.
Standing in the way of developing public land around Boston is a state procurement law that makes it cumbersome for cities and towns to sell land. The Boston Foundation's report card also highlights the challenge of community opposition to new housing, especially if it is designated as affordable. Some towns have used state funding to buy land for the stated purpose of blocking housing development, the foundation said.
“Streamlining processes and ensuring public dollars intended for the development and preservation of housing cannot be weaponized against housing would be major steps in the right direction,” one of the report card’s authors, Katherine Levine Einstein of the Boston University Initiative on Cities, said in a statement.
The procurement law was written to prevent local governments from engaging in corrupt acts, such as selling land cheaply to favored developers. To comply with the law, two-thirds of a city or town's elected leaders have to agree to declare that certain public land is “surplus” and that selling it is warranted.
Streamlining land procurement
If that happens, the leaders then issue a request for proposals to develop the land, but they can’t consult with any developers to understand what would be financially viable on a property. Sometimes the result is that no one makes a bid to buy the site. If buyers emerge and are successful, they still have to navigate the town or city’s regulatory process without knowing if their project will be approved.
The report card calls for the state to tweak the procurement law so that a simple majority of elected officials can decide to sell land. Once developers’ detailed proposals for affordable housing are chosen and they acquire the land, the foundation says they should be assured that their project will go forward.
Twelve towns and cities in the Boston area have bought land since 2010 to ward off housing development, according to the report card. In half of these cases, they used state funding through the Community Preservation Act, a law that encourages localities to acquire land for housing, recreation and historic or open space preservation. The foundation urged the state to amend the law so that towns can’t use CPA funds to block affordable housing.
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“In general, public land presents policymakers with challenging tradeoffs that weigh a number of important goals, including conservation of valued greenspace, commercial redevelopment, and housing, among others,” according to the report card.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed the Affordable Homes Act in August to allow $5 billion in spending on housing over the next five years. Among the act’s provisions is identifying state-owned land appropriate for development at a density of at least four units per acre.
The figure ought to be 15 units per acre, the foundation argues in the report card, matching the minimum in the MBTA Communities Act that the state passed in 2021. That law requires 177 cities and towns in greater Boston to permit more housing close to public transit.