[MassHistPres] S.993: An Act Accelerating Housing Production

[Dennis De Witt]

Jenn has provided an excellent commentary.  

Most members of this listseve will be directly concerned about the impact of section 6 on LHDs.  

As she suggests, section 2 looks like it might impact the operation of state tax credits for housing in historic buildings — an important program producing quality results, sometimes in communities where local initiative preservation may be a difficult sell.  What is unclear to me is how much this language might also impact other state review actions relating to historic resources — archaeological sites, for instance?

The vague “reasonable rate of return” language in both sections is an absolute tar pit of future litigation — or alternatively of deep pocket developers bludgeoning towns into submission with threats of expensive litigation.  The history of 40Bs is instructive in this context.  Initially, developers outrageously gamed the system’s accounting to make huge profits, despite 40B's 20% profit cap on projects built for sale and 10% on rental projects.  Eventually the state improved oversight and apparently got it under control.  Here there is no numerical cap or audit, so who knows what developers might claim is “reasonable.”  BTW, 40B also suggests another potential hidden threat here.  Often a developer will use the threat of a 40B as a bludgeon to get  rezoning it wants for a non-40B project.  What, for instance, would prevent a McMansion developer from using the threat of this law to force greater leeway during design review for inappropriate changes they might want?

It is also interesting that this proposal and S1428 both incorporate the idea of “orders of conditions,” suggesting that both were drafted by people — perhaps the same people? — who did not really understand the mechanics of how MGL 40c actually works.

Dennis De Witt
Brookline



> On Jun 26, 2025, at 7:13 PM, Jennifer Doherty via MassHistPres <masshistpres at cs.umb.edu> wrote:
> 
> The wording in this legislation is a bit garbled, but the intention seems to be to limit or remove the ability of the Massachusetts Historical Commission and local historic district commissions to review projects involving the creation of housing. I've submitted the attached comments.
> 
> Thank you for alerting us, Jessica!
> Jenn
>