Reimagining Boston: How Zoning Reform Could Become Boston’s Most Significant Tool toFix Its Housing Crisis

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu leads a City Hall press conference. Gary Higgins / Boston Business Journal

Anyone who lives in or is interested in moving to Boston is no stranger to the city’s expensive

housing market. The Boston Foundation, a community foundation founded in 1915, published its

Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2025 on November 12, 2025, which delves into the state of

the housing supply, home prices, and affordability in the Greater Boston area. The report’s

findings are a damning indictment of how unaffordable prices already are in the city that calls

itself home to nearly 700,000 people.

The city has the most competitive rental market in the entire nation, with the Greater Boston

rental vacancy rate, which tracks the percentage of an area’s rental stock that is not occupied and

available to new renters, standing at a meager 3% in 2024. Because of a lack of vacant rental

units, the increased demand driven by population growth makes it harder for prospective renters

to find available housing, which drives up prices due to the scarcity of rental stock. All these

factors translate into Boston being the fifth-most expensive city to rent in the country, according

to Zillow’s Observed Rent Index, trailing only San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, and New

York City.

To tackle this issue, one of the most significant reforms local policymakers can make is to

change the city’s zoning policy. Often, local governments develop zoning policies to regulate

how land is used and what can be built, such as assigning land to residential, commercial, mixed,

or industrial uses, and restricting the types of modifications that can be made. According to the

City of Boston’s Planning Department website, the purpose of zoning is to “create harmonious,

efficient, and sustainable urban environments, while balancing community needs, economic

development, and safety, to shape cities and neighborhoods.”

There are compelling reasons for zoning. Zoning policy allows local policymakers to object to

housing developments that could have spillover impacts on surrounding neighborhoods, such as

the construction of a sewage treatment plant near a residential neighborhood. Theoretically, a

development process involves input from community stakeholders, allowing the general public

to raise questions about the impact of new housing developments. This provides vulnerable

communities with an avenue to push back against projects that could have negative

ramifications, such as urban renewal and highways.

However, excessively restrictive zoning policies could backfire by exacerbating the housing

affordability crisis. They slow the development of new housing, resulting in fewer units being

built. This creates a negative chain of reactions: people chase fewer homes, which drives up

prices for the few remaining. Stringent zoning rules force housing developers to follow a lengthy,

tedious process to comply with regulations, which adds uncertainty and extra costs that are

reflected in the final price. As an antidote, zoning reform is a critical element in addressing

housing affordability in Boston and other major metropolitan areas.

Zoning reform, when done right, can lead to a range of positive outcomes. The immediate

outcome would be an increase in housing development, as local governments can ease or

simplify restrictions on what can be built in a given area. This translates into newer,

higher-quality housing stock and also facilitates economic growth through increased spending

and employment. A good place to start would be to reduce parking minimums for new

developments, which mandate developers build a specific number of off-street parking spaces

with each new project.

By reducing or completely eliminating parking requirements, proponents argue that fewer

parking spaces would reduce the number of cars in the city, which leads to less congestion, less

air pollution, better transit, more walkable neighborhoods, and ultimately, more affordable

housing prices. Boston has made good progress on this issue, back on December 22, 2021, when

Mayor Michelle Wu signed an amendment to the Boston Zoning Code eliminating off-street

parking minimums for affordable housing units. Boston could further make strides in this area by

dropping parking minimums for all projects, as Austin did back on November 2, 2023.

Another area of zoning reform would be to increase zoning density to allow for more units to be

built. Much of the land in the United States is zoned for single-family use. Under these

stipulations, only single-family detached homes can be built, forbidding the construction of

multi-family residential housing such as duplexes or condominiums. Single-family zoning often

restricts housing supply, artificially raises housing prices, makes it more difficult for historically

disenfranchised communities to access the dream of homeownership, and makes it prohibitively

harder for aspiring families to move to better neighborhoods.

According to a report by the New England Public Policy Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of

Boston, the most effective way to reduce rental prices is to relax density restrictions, encourage

multi-family zoning, and increase maximum height restrictions. Report analysis shows that

zoning density reform led to rents in a Boston neighborhood dropping by more than 5% and

house prices falling by more than 7% on average. In 2021, the Massachusetts state legislature

amended Chapter 40A of the Zoning Act to require communities along transit lines to allow

multifamily construction and a minimum density of 15 housing units per acre near commuter rail

stations. By increasing zoning density, the report finds that the changes to the law would likely

facilitate the development of additional housing supply and thereby decrease rent prices.

And finally, a conventional zoning policy reform would be to set aside affordable housing zoning

by incentivizing additional affordable units through density bonuses. A density bonus is a tool

local governments can use to allow developers to expand the scope of a project beyond the

original development in exchange for reserving some housing stock at reduced, affordable prices.

For example, where 4 units may be allowed under zoning, a developer may be permitted to build

6 units, including 2 affordable housing units, through a density bonus.

Chapter 40R of the “Smart Growth Zoning and Housing Production Act” of the Massachusetts

General Laws offers municipalities incentives, such as density bonuses, to designate land near

transit stations and other areas for the construction of more affordable housing units. However,

the scope of adoption has been muted to date across various Massachusetts cities and

municipalities, due to an aversion to multifamily housing among local policymakers and

community residents.

While zoning reform would not offer an immediate fix to the housing affordability crisis in

Boston, making housing easier to build while also taking into account inclusionary zoning

principles and financial incentives for policy stakeholders would go a long way in addressing the

root problem, a lack of housing units on the market in the first place. On September 13, 2023,

Mayor Wu announced a plan to drastically overhaul the city’s enormously complex zoning code

for the first time in nearly 60 years, based on a city-commissioned report by Cornell University

professor Sarah Bronin. Hopefully, the plan will serve as a catalyst for policymakers and other

stakeholders to take bolder, more decisive action on this front.