MBTA Communities Compliance
About the MBTA Communities Act
In January 2021, the Massachusetts legislature passed the MBTA Communities Act, often referred to as Section 3A. The idea is that, if a community benefits from MBTA service, it must accommodate some level of multifamily development by right. Since passing, the Department of Housing and Livable Communities (DHLC) has released and refined specific regulations about how communities are expected to meet these requirements. You can read more about the regulations on the MBTA Communities website.
Compliance in Lynn
According to the regulations, Lynn is a Commuter Rail community and must be compliant by December 31, 2024. The City has achieved Interim Compliance by submitting an Action Plan that indicated next steps towards achieving Full Compliance. Lynn intends to fully comply with the MBTA Communities Act by the deadline.
Fortunately, the City has historically allowed by-right multifamily development near our Central Square Commuter Rail station. To be compliant, communities must submit a 3A District to the state that meets requirements for size, location, and density. In Lynn, we are proposing a 3A District made up of parcels in three different zoning districts:
- CBD: Allows Mixed-Use Street Level by right, which offers up to 10 stories of development with the ground floor being reserved for commercial uses. Because of the requirement for commercial uses in these by-right projects, this is considered a “Mixed-Use Development District” in the language of the 3A regulations, and can only contribute a small amount of units to our total requirements.
- R4 + R5: These districts allow Apartment Buildings by right up to 5 stories.
For Lynn, the creation of our 3A District is about describing to the state how we are compliant with the rules, NOT changing underlying zoning or creating a new zone. Whether or not a parcel is in the 3A District in no way changes what’s allowed on the parcel, or the process by which it is developed.
Lynn’s Proposed 3A District
Lynn needs a 3A district that allows 5,517 dwelling units by right. Based on DHLC’s methodology, this proposed district allows 9,429 dwelling units.
One Change to the Zoning Code
In order for our proposed district to be compliant with 3A regulations, we need to make one edit to our zoning code. We need to strike footnote 18 on page 14 from the code: “Residential units with greater than two bedrooms shall be allowed in not more than ten (10%) percent of all residential dwellings in the CBD.”
This provision of our zoning code is not enforced, as the City does not track the number of bedrooms per dwelling unit in the CBD. 3A guidelines require that our 3A District not limit the number of bedrooms in order to ensure that communities are not precluding housing that could be suitable for families. However, the City does–and is still allowed to–incentivize fewer bedrooms per unit by requiring more parking for units with three or more bedrooms.
Next Steps
The next step is for the City Council to adopt the change to the zoning and for the Planning Department to submit the adopted zoning and the 3A district to DHLC.
