PLS-Surveyor-US t1_jd7ia0t wrote
Reply to comment by 9Z7EErh9Et0y0Yjt98A4 in They’ve Been Warned: Attorney General Says Suburbs ‘Must Comply’ With Transit-Oriented Housing Law by psychothumbs
so you want to pay for building 100 new WWTPs and school additions in all these communities to "fix" the problem? It's not nimbyism that is fighting against this...its reality. A wastewater treatment plant costs millions. For a few hundred units this adds tens of thousands to the cost of each unit. Whereas Deer Island has plenty of capacity to add these same units at no additional cost. Same with the school problem. Most of the fix is in the urban core where the infrastructure already exists to handle it. An alternative is to pick one town to become a city and grow it...not little mini villas all over the state.
9Z7EErh9Et0y0Yjt98A4 t1_jd7l9ac wrote
I'm not one of these people who thinks NIMBYs are solely motivated by racist motives like "neighborhood character", they often have very strong, material interest reasons to oppose further development. Investing in infrastructure improvements is expensive and inconvenient, no doubt about it.
That's the thing though, everyone recognizes the need for additional housing and other associated infrastructure, but nobody wants to deal with it.
There's a growing recognition that the need is simply too great to allow this game of every town saying "not us though" anymore and to just ram this shit down everyone's throat at the state level. That's a good thing, tough shit about how much of a pain it's going to be for you (and honestly everyone).
The population is growing, infrastructure improvements are desperately needed and it's good for the state to make towns do this whether they want it or not. You're always free to move away if rural living is that important to you, but creating de-facto zero-growth, gated communities is not in the public interest.
PLS-Surveyor-US t1_jd84k99 wrote
For what it's worth, I have never advocated creating zero growth communities. This state brags about how smart it is but on this issue, how smart is it to build out farm land in Holden when you have much better options near actual MBTA stations? The roads are overloaded. Putting more apartments farther from the jobs is a bad strategy. Building hundreds of new wastewater treatment plants out side the MWRA system is also a costly mistake in my opinion. I recognize something is needed to be done, I work on housing projects all over eastern mass.
Two elements fix the supply bottleneck. 1) Zoning reform. Approve any building permit request that matches the zoning of any lot within 100' of the subject parcel. This would cut permitting times into a fraction of the time now. 1 year becomes 30 days. This would include dimensional and use reform (multi vs single fam). 2) Any site within 1/2 mile of an MBTA rapid transit or commuter rail station could build with the same density of any other building near an MBTA station (this would ramp up the TOD successes that have helped increase supply.
Anything else should be incentivized through the tax code to increase supply and not beat down people's throats. Carrot is better than the stick.
three-ple t1_jd9heiv wrote
> 2) Any site within 1/2 mile of an MBTA rapid transit or commuter railstation could build with the same density of any other building near anMBTA station
Do I understand then, you agree with the direct MBTA-adjacent-community portion of this law, just not the neighboring community portion? Your statement is very similar to the meat of this law, with the only caveat of "same density of any other building", which could vary greatly from station to station.
PLS-Surveyor-US t1_jdaigzp wrote
That is not what is in the news. The town of Holden is being threatened by the AG and it is miles from an MBTA station. I definitely agree (and have posted a few times in this thread) that we should build very densely near existing MBTA stations. The original TOD law did a good job at this and should be continued. I don't allowing a Prudential Tower at each station should be the result but something large enough and dense to both help plus allow direct access to the MBTA system.
three-ple t1_jdalkp4 wrote
Sure. But just to be clear then, you disagree with what the AG is doing because of the adjacent communities part of the law, but agree with all other parts of the law?
Holden isn't included because of some mistake. They qualify under what was put in the law itself.
AG is being heavy handed because there is a large risk a bunch of communities try to defect and ignore the law.
PLS-Surveyor-US t1_jddr4xh wrote
I disagree with law affecting other towns and not simply land within a short walk of a T Station. The AG may simply be doing her job. I have a problem with the law itself extending too far beyond the practical side of how best to create denser housing that has great options of mass transit. Forcing holden to build hundreds or thousands of units puts those people on the highways and not the MBTA.
three-ple t1_jddyiw6 wrote
:shrug: I mean I disagree with aspects of plenty of laws. Many still have a positive impact.
But your characterization is wrong. Holden doesn't have to "build hundreds of thousands of units". It has to *zone* 50 acres to allow up to 750 units to be built [1]. That is it.
The city doesn't have to build a damn thing. Private enterprise will do that.
Holden surface area is 23,000 acres. 0.2% of it will need to be designated as higher density. There is so much hand wringing going on over ultimately a minor change to zoning in the area.
Every other discussion point here is completely speculative. If Holden is such a terrible place to build, nobody will build the density. If Holden has problems with water/sewer, that will have to be figured out, but there won't be some magical fairy that comes in and forces them at gunpoint to build a new wastewater treatment plant overnight. If some other thing happens to Holden as part of this, I suspect they will have the intelligence and wherewithal to deal with it.
Let's. Move. Forward. Create the zoning. Work through the next steps.
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PLS-Surveyor-US t1_jdek8vh wrote
I said hundreds OR thousands. A small hyperbole as I wasn't aware of the 750...
How do you pay for the wastewater treatment for this project? You have two options: a large septic system (note that this uses a lot of land area) or a plant. Millions to build a plant. Divided over the 750 units will probably make the units cost prohibitive. Your ideas on "figure it out" ignore reality.
Most zoning should be local driven not state. It is better that way. We can certainly agree to disagree and I don't expect any change in peoples views on this but most people prefer local to state or national control for a reason.
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