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

Michelle Wu delivering her 2025 State of the City address. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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, detailing the state of the Greater Boston Area’s housing supply, home prices, and affordability. 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. The lack of vacant rental units, combined with 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. 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. A development process typically 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.​

Proponents argue that by reducing or completely eliminating parking requirements, policymakers could reduce the number of cars in the city, limiting congestion and air pollution. This would improve transit, create more walkable neighborhoods, and ultimately, lead to more affordable housing prices. Boston made progress on this issue 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 on November 2, 2023.​

Alternatively, it is important to note the role NIMBYism (the phrase “Not In My Backyard”) plays in stymying zoning reform efforts. According to a 2018 paper by Katherine Einstein, Maxwell Palmer, and David Glick, political scientists at Boston University’s Initiative on Cities, people who oppose creating more multi-family housing developments tend to participate in public meetings at a higher rate than those who support it. Opponents of local zoning reforms often cited concerns about neighborhood conditions and character, property values, environmental considerations, density, affordability, noise, parking, and traffic.

The study found that homeownership ultimately played a significant role in opposition to new housing developments. Based on the study’s data, while 40 percent of the town of Arlington, Massachusetts, were renters, just 22 percent of renters were active participants in local community meetings, which often delve into topics such as zoning. Many of these homeowners are older and more likely to be white and male, and to own property. While women comprised just 43 percent of participants in local community meetings, women were more likely to oppose new development.

Another factor is that white-collar professionals had higher participation rates than other groups. The study notes that many commenters from this background often cited their legal, architectural, engineering, planning, and other professional backgrounds to demonstrate their understanding and familiarity with land-use and zoning regulations. In addition, those who spoke at meetings were more politically engaged than the general population. The study found that those who spoke at meetings voted roughly twice as often compared to those who did not. Given the multitude of factors at play, this poses further challenges for pro-zoning reform advocates and policymakers seeking to convince skeptics.

​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 catalyze policymakers and other stakeholders to take bolder, more decisive action on this front.