Civil Politics (10/23/26): Debates and Questions Six/Sevennn...

REMEMBER TO VOTE!!!! Mass residents can vote early RIGHT NOW!! Unfortunately at this point you cannot register or change your voter registration before election day.

Thoughts on Q7 from Mike Moriarty, someone with knowledge about housing in Massachusetts:

I support Question 7. I'm voting yes, and I'd encourage others to do the same. For far too long, local planning boards, select boards and city councils have stood in the way of new housing through restrictive zoning, oversized lot requirements, and local bylaws and permitting requirements that add cost and delay. The Affordable Homes Act of 2024 helped by overriding some of the worst excesses, notably by allowing accessory dwelling units by right statewide. Question 7 does more of the same, and it is badly needed as long as the housing shortage keeps driving people out of Massachusetts.

On the specifics: it would allow a single-family home by right on any lot of at least 5,000 square feet (a bit under one-eighth of an acre) with 50 feet of frontage, in districts already zoned residential, as long as the lot has public water and sewer. There's no depth requirement, so it isn't strictly 50x100, though that's the practical effect. Towns keep control over height, setbacks, parking and short-term rentals. Today, more than half the single-family-zoned land in the state requires lots of roughly an acre or more.

Your environmental instinct is right, and it cuts in favor of the question. Smaller lots on existing water and sewer mean less land consumed per home, shorter infrastructure runs and less sprawl. The sewer requirement steers growth toward places already built to absorb it.

The best of it: smaller lots lower the land cost per home, which makes room for modest starter homes for first-time buyers and for seniors who want to downsize, instead of pushing builders toward big houses on big lots to justify the land. The small homes I helped bring to Holyoke with UMass DesignBuild (the Hygge House, Paper House and 8th Sister) show what a well-designed modest house on a modest lot can look like.

The honest caveats: it doesn't guarantee affordability, and in high-cost towns new homes may still be expensive. It does nothing where there's no public sewer, which covers much of Western Massachusetts outside the cities. In older cities like Holyoke, where much of the housing already sits on small lots, I'd expect the bigger change in the suburbs rather than here. And critics, including the Massachusetts Municipal Association, raise fair concerns about local control and whether a sewer hookup means the system has capacity. None of that outweighs the cost of standing still, because of the impacts of the housing affordability crisis on struggling families . Single-family homes aren't the whole answer; we need multifamily housing, ADUs and the MBTA Communities law working too. But this is one more door we should open.

Beginning Music: Glenn Gould - Goldberg Variation #5
Ending Music: Electronic - Getting Away With it (Instrumental)

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