On July 23, the Boston Planning Department held an in-person meeting regarding its Neighborhood Housing zoning initiative for Hyde Park – in progress since early 2024 and now in its draft map review stage for the neighborhood, as well as for Roslindale and West Roxbury.

Along with Squares + Streets, Neighborhood Housing is one of two major – and separate, though related – zoning initiatives playing out over approximately the same period of time. While both have citywide objectives, the former is focused on the rezoning of neighborhood business districts to allow for residential development as a greatly increased portion of those areas’ mixed-use categories, and the latter is concentrating on rezoning neighborhood residential areas.

With Neighborhood Housing, the Planning Department’s goal is to create and map new residential zoning districts that are designed to bring the existing properties within them into compliance. The vast majority of the city’s residential housing stock is relatively old and out of line with the city’s zoning code (which is, in comparison to the city’s housing, relatively new). In and of itself, that is not an issue, but whenever an exterior change/improvement is made to one of those properties, any pre-existing non-conformity is automatically triggered, thus necessitating an application for zoning relief – in the form of a variance – from the Zoning Board of Appeal.

The new Neighborhood Housing zoning districts – with their increased and more flexible dimensional requirements generally tailored to the areas they are being applied to – are intended to better allow for exterior improvements and/or additions without the need for zoning relief.

ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) – more commonly referred to as in-law apartments – are the major component of this initiative. In different ways, City Hall has been trying to encourage their growth over the last decade, but it has not gained much traction, and the Neighborhood Housing initiative is now seeking to more effectively ease the path toward achieving that end.

Specifically, the Neighborhood Housing zoning districts proposed for Hyde Park, Roslindale, and West Roxbury would allow for the addition of multiple units to existing housing, depending on its type, lot size and configuration, and zoning district. These additions could – if they were to meet permitting requirements – take the form of internal, attached, and detached ADUs.

ADUs have also been the main point of contention throughout the initiative’s community process, with the primary concern having to do with the proposed rezoning making them as of right, thereby removing any binding community input regarding their construction.

That having been noted, last Thursday’s meeting – which was held in the Hyde Park branch of the BPL and began at 5:30 p.m. – was surprisingly smooth, with the Planning Department’s Neighborhood Housing team going through the same presentation as it had at the virtual meeting held that Monday and then fielding questions from the approximately 25 people in attendance.

As has been the case at Neighborhood Housing community meetings thus far, there were some nuts-and-bolts questions asked by homeowners interested in adding an ADU to their properties.

Advertisement

However, a much more involved question was also asked regarding the initiative’s perceived bias toward building onto the existing housing stock while punishing teardowns and new builds.

This drew technical responses from Senior Planners Will Cohen and Jonathan Palazzolo, before Deputy Director of Zoning Kathleen Onufer simplified things. “We absolutely, as a policy decision, made the decision to incentivize retention of the existing structures because we heard – through all of the engagement that we’ve done over a decade-plus of neighborhood zoning – that it was a priority across the board,” she said, adding that the City’s policy goal “was to design zoning that has a sort of preservation first approach, but isn’t punitive to new construction.”

That concept was encapsulated by Cohen early in the presentation. “We want the zoning to look like the neighborhood in the first place,” he said. “That is the goal of Neighborhood Housing.”

Community outreach for Neighborhood Housing will continue throughout the summer and into the fall, with the public comment period set to close on Oct. 31. The proposed maps for Hyde Park, Roslindale, and West Roxbury will then go to the Zoning Commission for adoption.

Upcoming Neighborhood Housing community meetings will be at the Roslindale branch of the BPL (4246 Washington St.) starting at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 30, followed by a virtual meeting focusing on West Roxbury on Monday, Aug. 3 starting at 6 p.m. and then an in-person meeting beginning at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 6 at the E-5 police station (1708 Centre St.).

There will also be virtual and in-person office hours for each neighborhood.

For more information regarding Neighborhood Housing – including access to meeting videos and presentations – visit www.bostonplans.org/neighborhood-housing.