Housing speech to Belmont Town Meeting

Belmont needs to zone to support more housing development. In my speech to Belmont Town Meeting on May 29, I shared the evolution of my perspective on the issue. As a former local official, I understand the Town’s reluctance to take on increased housing density. But my perspective has broadened through my service of a larger region as senator. From a regional perspective, housing development is the central priority and we will fail to meet our regional goals unless every community does its share.

The following is the official transcript of the speech lightly edited.

 SENATOR BROWNSBERGER: Thank you, Mr. Moderator.

Will Brownsberger, State Senator Town Meeting Member at Large.

I want to look — talk a little bit tonight about the personal journey I’ve made through my years in politics since I first started as a member of Town Meeting. I want to talk, in particular,about how I’ve grown on the issue of housing.

When we moved to Belmont in 1992 , with our young children, housing was a solved problem for us. I worried about traffic safety for my kids. I worried about the quality of schools. I generally was concerned about preserving the quality of life in Belmont.

My first role was on the South Pleasant Street Land Use Committee, and we recommended against doing any housing development on South Pleasant Street, as I recall it, because members of the committee, and I went along with this, felt that that would mean too much traffic.

And then as a member of the Select Board, I — my biggest issue for the first few years was opposing development at the McLean property, and I am glad that we saved woods and meadow there, but that was my concern. I wasn’t thinking about building housing.

Then on the Select Board and continuing as State Representative, I fought to preserve the land at the Uplands. As State Representative, I passed legislation to — and Governor Deval Patrick vetoed this, but the legislation would have had DCR purchase the property for park use.

And I tried to weaken the 40B process by making land conservation a goal that would be cognizable in the 40B appeals process.

I’m actually a little ashamed of my indifference to the issue when I first — I remember — I sat down with one of — it was early in my State Rep. career. I sat down with Paul Guzzi, who was then head of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, and he talked about from a business perspective the need to build more housing, and people were leaving the State, and my reaction was kind of well, you know, it’s a free country. They want to leave; that’s fine.

When I became Senator though, I got exposed to new things, representing Watertown, representing Fenway, Allston, Brighton. In Fenway, they’ve got new 20-story buildings, marching down Boylston Street, one after another. They’re building housing everywhere, always increasing scale, always arousing opposition, but just doing it, behind those 20-story buildings, little brownstones.

In Brighton, in every neighborhood, four-, five-, six-story buildings going up next to single-family and two-family units.

In Watertown, there’s been a bit more respect for zoning space, but there’s been huge areas open for redevelopment, huge production of housing, and huge increases in the community vitality.

I came to appreciate the consequences of the different approaches, the political structures in the communities. In Boston you have a very strong mayor, and if like the last few mayors, they want to build housing, they’re going to build housing without any real consideration for local opposition.

In Watertown you have a strong manager who cannot act unilaterally, but who has the power to drive a strong planning agenda for development.

And I came to understand how our form of government, our strong Town Meeting form of government is, by nature, unlikely to achieve the same rapid production of housing. I get it. It’s wonderful to have quiet streets at night. I love this community just the way it is. I understand the vision of a Town of Homes. Housing is a solved problem for those of us who are lucky enough to be here.

But the other thing that — another thing that happened to me as I became a State Senator is my perspective as I got exposed to people of all ages, but especially young people struggling to afford housing. I hear from them all the time. My district is about two-thirds renters, rent increases, building conversions, constant turmoil.

My own daughter got an apartment in Fenway for a little while. She had to move out to Brighton. She went through three different roommate groups in Brighton. She gave up and moved home. Then she moved up to Portland, Maine; and then she moved out even further in Maine to find housing that worked for her.

And I’m no longer okay with the idea that let the young people leave. And let’s not forget the seniors who have no cost-effective options for downsizing within this community.

More broadly, loss of workers is an economic development issue, and it frustrates important public policy goals. We’re not going to achieve our climate goals without expansion of the construction industry from electricians to carpenters to HVAC workers. We need them all. We can’t staff our hospitals. We can’t care for our elderly and disabled. I work and I hear from many disabled people who can’t hire the home care that they’re entitled to hire and that they desperately need. Name the field, we’re having trouble hiring.

We just have to pick up the pace on housing construction statewide, and we can’t get it done in Boston and Cambridge and Watertown and Somerville alone, which they account for a majority of the housing production in the State.

Every community has to welcome housing and do their share. And I honestly believe that some meaningful apartment production would be great for this community, which I do love. Lack of housing options contributes to transience and loss of community and connection in Belmont. Our kids can’t live here. People who work here can’t live here. People leave Town when their kids get grown because they have no downsizing options in Town. I’ve watched so many senior citizens, active people in the community integrated into the community just leave, because there’s no option within the community.

The MBTA zoning proposal, which you will consider later this year, is an important step, and I’m hopeful that after debate you will approve it. I think as of today 80 communities have approved plans removing zoning barriers to housing.

However, there are many other barriers to housing. Zoning is just the one that we can control. Interest rates. Until the Fed. lets up, we’re not going to build much housing. Labor. No labor, no housing. But, hey, no housing no labor. It’s a tight cycle we’re going to have to try to break out of. Supply chain issues. And this is the one that never goes away, site assembly. There just aren’t necessarily sites that are ready at any given time to build housing on no matter how they’re zoned.

So that’s why I hope that in years ahead, Belmont and the State as a whole will embrace even stronger liberalization of zoning to open up more sites. We just have to open a lot of sites, so that some of them will work.

So I can tell you that essentially all of my colleagues in the State House — and by the way, most legislators that I talk to in other urban states that have the same sort of planning model where the zoning restricts housing, everybody has housing at the top of their agenda.

We’re about to pass a $4 billion bond bill to support housing development, but it’s going to be a drop in the bucket, a drop in the bucket of housing need.

So we need to liberalize zoning much more broadly and free up the private sector to build more housing. It is at this time my fondest public policy hope that together we’ll find a way to build a lot more housing in this community and allow a lot more — give more people the opportunities to live here. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

MODERATOR WIDMER: Thank you, Senator.