Special to the Record
Earlier this month, Governor Maura Healey announced a plan to cut environmental regulations to make it faster and easier to build homes in Massachusetts and bring down housing costs for all residents.
Chelsea City Manager Fidel Maltez said this process will help with the affordable housing issues in his city and beyond.
These new draft regulations will speed up environmental review times from one year or more down to 30 days for housing projects across the state, according to the administration.
Earlier this year, the Unlocking Housing Production Commission (UHPC) presented a report indicating that lengthy environmental reviews for new housing developments can delay projects for months and years and can result in significant, unexpected added costs which have the potential to render projects financially infeasible.
The Healey Administration is proposing to cut the environmental review period for qualifying housing projects down to 30 days, potentially lowering the cost of housing development by hundreds of thousands of dollars and leading to faster, more affordable housing development.
“We are bringing urgency to addressing this housing crisis, and this is a game changer for the development of more housing in Massachusetts and bringing down housing costs for everyone,” said Healey. “It’s our job to make sure government moves at the speed of business, and cutting these regulations will reduce review times from more than a year to 30 days and supercharge the building of homes across Massachusetts.”
Maltez said he is excited about the revisions to the housing regulations.
“Particularly when it comes to what can be the very complicated state process,” said Maltez. “We are in a housing crisis, and that means that we need housing units today, not housing units three years from now. Removing any kind of red tape, removing any kind of timeline helps us, helps our residents get access to housing now.”
The new regulations will facilitate and speed up the review process, but Maltez said the process will not be any less rigorous or diligent.
“As someone who is listening to residents who have housing issues today, I love what the administration is doing,” said Maltez. “We are all about efficiency in Chelsea and making it easier for all of our residents and we applaud the administration for taking this on.”
Projects that meet the qualifying housing criteria will be able to move quickly through review by the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) Office. Rather than requiring developments of a detailed Environmental Impact Report (EIR), the proposed rules will allow qualifying housing projects to complete MEPA review with only the simpler Environmental Notification Form (ENF). This change will allow qualifying projects to cut the review process down from 1 year or more to just 30 days. Requirements for advance notice and community outreach will be maintained to ensure transparency and engagement, as supported by the UHPC.
Additionally, an appeal of a local wetlands order would no longer trigger MEPA review for single-family homes. Review of urban renewal plans that do not propose individual projects will also be reduced to a 30-day ENF filing.
Overall, these draft regulations go beyond recent changes to environmental review processes in other states by allowing developers to qualify for quicker approvals while still addressing critical climate and environmental concerns. These MEPA reforms emphasize a simpler and less restrictive self-verification process, which will enable faster approvals, according to the Healey administration.
“The proposed amended MEPA regulations are carefully designed to help the Commonwealth address a housing shortage and affordability crisis, while seeking to only affect the process of the existing environmental regulations, not the substance,” said Rafael Mares, Executive Director of The Neighborhood Developers, a local community development corporation. “We need a way to find ways to streamline permitting processes to boost housing production, while continuing to minimize environmental impacts. This is a step in that direction.”