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MAPC

Smart Growth & Regional Collaboration

We all need a home. Young professionals, families with kids, empty nesters, seniors, workers, people with disabilities, people struggling to make ends meet – all of us need somewhere to live.

Making sure that Greater Boston has enough of those places to live for all kinds of people and for all income levels is a core part of MAPC’s work. So is making sure that those places to live are safe, sustainable, healthful, and convenient to work and transportation. Those things matter – not just to the people looking to settle down, but for the region’s equity, public health, economy, and environment.

MAPC collects, interprets, and shares housing data. We advocate at the state level for legislation to help promote our housing goals, and work with municipalities to create planning documents, local masterplans, and model bylaws. We support regional collaboration by helping communities work together to advance their goals.

Housing Data

3A Resources

Are you looking for MBTA Communities Multifamily Zoning (Section 3A) information and resources? MAPC has a webpage for that. Visit the Section 3A webpage now.

learn more about our work

Work Areas:

Learn more about the services we provide municipalities, including Housing Production Plans, housing data, zoning, and community outreach and engagement.

Regional Collaboration:

Read our Regional Housing Production Plan, learn about the Regional Housing Services Offices, and other work MAPC does to help municipalities collaborate.

Toolkits, Reports, and Resources:

Browse through MAPC’s past reports, assessments, and toolkits in our Resource Library.

Legislation:

Each legislative session, MAPC develops a list of legislative priorities for the agency, including many related to housing. Go to our Legislative Priorities page to learn more.

Housing Production Plans

MAPC has worked with dozens of communities to develop Housing Production Plans (HPPs). HPPs help localities meet their housing needs, meet state requirements under M.G.L. Chapter 40B, and proactively influence many aspects of development, including location, type, size, and design.

MAPC works with municipalities to develop a comprehensive needs and demand assessment, organize public forums, engage with community members, identify areas and sites for housing production and those for preservation, determine development constraints and barriers, and develop housing goals and implementation strategies.

Housing Data

MAPC’s Housing Division works with the Data Services team to compile and understand local and regional housing data and projections. Our work includes creating specific  needs and demand assessments based on housing and demographic information.

Our teams have created several open-access tools and datasets that municipalities, departments, individuals and others, can use to assess housing and demographic information about their communities. These include:

MassBuilds

A definitive inventory of past, present, and projected real estate development in Metro Boston and across Massachusetts. This fully-interactive website allows users to search, filter, summarize, and download information about over 3,500 residential and commercial development projects in the region. Available attributes about each project include housing units and commercial square footage, status, year of completion, parking availability, proximity to transit, WalkScore™, and other information.

Demographics and Housing Demand Projections

To help the region and its communities plan for the future, MAPC  prepares and updates projections of population change, household growth, and housing demand for Metro Boston. Projections are available for individual municipalities and the region as a whole.

MA Land Parcel Database

The Massachusetts Land Parcel Database is a statewide atlas of more than 2.1 million land parcel boundaries and associated tax assessor data. The database includes statistics about each parcel, including floor area ratio, assessed value per area, impervious surface, and other indicators.

Zoning

MAPC draft zoning changes and new bylaws and ordinances to help cities and towns meet housing need and demand and achieve other local goals, as well as meet various state requirements. Zoning is a critical local-level tool used to shape a municipality through requirements and incentives for land use. Zoning updates can include allowing for mixed-use development, adopting overlay districts, developing inclusionary zoning, and otherwise updating zoning bylaws or ordinances to allow and prepare for change.

Community Outreach & Engagement

Throughout any planning process, MAPC helps communities develop a comprehensive strategy for community outreach and engagement. We help plan and execute forums; develop, distribute, and analyze surveys; create focus groups and facilitate small group discussions; conduct stakeholder interviews; and use various forms of media to keep the public informed about the planning process and to solicit input.

Regional Housing Services Offices (RHSO)

Municipalities face common challenges associated with providing and monitoring affordable housing on a daily basis. A regional housing services office (RHSO) funded by partnering cities and towns assist with housing-related work. A RHSO is staffed by housing professionals who work with the municipalities on planning for affordable housing, monitoring, project development, and resident assistance.

In 2011, MAPC helped the towns of Acton, Bedford, Burlington, Concord, Lexington, Sudbury, and Weston form an RHSO to advance collaboration on affordable housing preservation and development. The RHSO was awarded the Kenneth Pickard Municipal Innovation Award from the Massachusetts Municipal Association in 2011. Member towns receive housing services for an annual fee, which covers  staffing and administrative expenses. Resident services include eviction prevention, loan modification, fuel assistance, capital improvement, and home repair. To learn more, visit the RHSO’s website.

Subregional and Regional Reports

MAPC’s housing staff have prepared fair housing plans, affordable housing plans, and various reports for groups of municipalities and entire subregions. Looking at problems and solutions regionally allows towns and cities to coordinate by implementing common strategies and accessing federal funds. 

Past reports include:

Regional Housing Plan

In 2011, MAPC prepared a comprehensive housing needs assessment and Regional Housing Plan (RHP), which serves as a roadmap to guide housing development and policy within the region over the next two decades.

The RHP consists of a regional housing needs assessment, regional growth report, and regional housing action plan. Specifically, the RHP:

  • describes the nature and extent of the region’s unmet housing need, and identifies evolving challenges based on an assessment of current market conditions, existing affordable housing, patterns of foreclosure, and combined housing and transportation costs;
  • develops an inventory of existing affordable housing in the region;
  • determines the suitability of existing affordable housing relative to need, opportunity areas, and transportation-efficient locations, and articulates alternatives that would better meet needs and serve people in these locations;
  • analyzes the relative success of specific Housing Production Plans;
  • develops specific actions, including, policy and programmatic changes at the state, regional, and local levels that will assist in meeting identified housing needs; and
  • builds a constituency to advocate for these actions.

TOOLKITS

EXTERNAL SOURCES

 

MAPC REPORTS

  • Living Little (2022): Living Little explores different types of small housing that would be well-suited for suburban communities throughout Greater Boston, where larger homes are more common. Smaller housing can provide options for a variety of smaller households—from millennials just starting out to baby boomers looking to downsize—helping towns meet need, retain household diversity, and take a “little” step towards addressing the region’s housing crisis. Learn more here.
  • Housing Submarkets (2021): A housing submarket is a collection of neighborhoods—some next to each other, some not—with similar housing stock and housing market characteristics. These characteristics determine who can find, afford, and remain in suitable housing in that neighborhood. The neighborhoods in each submarket share common needs and challenges, regardless of geographic location. MAPC’s study revealed seven distinct housing submarkets in the Greater Boston region. Read it here.
  • Zoning Atlas (2020): The Zoning Atlas is MAPC's collaborative inventory and interpretation of municipal zoning data in Massachusetts. This dynamic online resource will improve over time as municipal staff and other contributors refine the data and provide updates. View it here.
  • Crowded In and Priced Out: Why it's so hard to find a family-sized unit in Greater Boston (2020): MAPC set out to learn who is living in the “family-sized” units in 13 cities and towns in the region’s Inner Core. We looked at the number of people living in units with three or more bedrooms and the age of the head of household. We broke that information out by whether the unit is rented or owned, what kind of building it is in, and how these characteristics have changed over time. We also examined overcrowding in smaller units to better understand the full demand for larger places to live. Read full report.
  • Fair Housing and Equity Assessment for Metropolitan Boston (2014): The FHEA examines regional demographics and patterns of racial and economic segregation to understand how activities, resources, and policies at the local and regional levels impact fair access to housing opportunity, including access to affordable housing. Read it here.
  • MetroWest Regional Affordable Housing Trust Report: This report identifies opportunities for the MetroWest Regional Collaborative to advance housing activities and opportunities. Regionalization of housing activities and services is a valuable approach to implementing affordable housing strategies. By assisting communities with achieving their goals to create permanently affordable homes for individuals and families with low-, moderate-, and middle-incomes, the MetroWest Regional Affordable Housing report aims to facilitate production and preservation of diverse housing options. View the report here.
  • The Use of Chapter 40R in Massachusetts as a Tool for Smart Growth and Affordable Housing Production: Chapter 40R encourages cities and towns to zone for compact residential and mixed-use development in smart growth locations by offering financial incentives and increased control over design. This report examines how Massachusetts communities have used Chapter 40R since March of 2005 when the program was authorized. View the report here.
  • Middle-Income Housing Demand, Local Barriers to Development, and Strategies to Address Them in Select Inner Core Communities: This report explores the housing demand of middle-income households in select Inner Core municipalities, performs a gap analysis, reviews national best practices, and makes recommendations for implementing strategies locally. Learn more here.