Skip to main content

Housing availability and a Massachusetts ballot question




Looking over a pamphlet produced by the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, William Galvin, concerning 2026 ballot questions.

One here is fascinating, and not something of which I have heard in any of the press coverage of the coming vote.

Question 7, "Single Family Homes." Apparently, there is a view that local zoning has been too restrictive for the construction of single family residences on small lots, and this is contributing to the housing shortage in general. So, enough yes votes on question 7 will create a new law that will instruct municipalities not to ban, or require a special permit for, the use of land or structures for a single-family residence in any zoning district that allows residences, with some caveats.   

The idea is that in affluent suburban communities in general, families with Big Homes and Big Lots of land around them don't want neighbors with smaller homes on smaller lots.  It ruins the property values.  

If the zoning ordinance exists for just that purpose, the heck with it. I think I'll be voting "yes" on 7.  

All of which raises in my mind the question: are there other states where this sort of thing is on the ballot this year? 

Labels:

Comments

  1. HenrySeptember 23, 2026 at 7:09 AM

    Rich people may live in bigger houses, but aren't they still single-family houses? From the point of view of the rich, wouldn't it be only the size of the lots that concerns them, so that houses have more space between them? Why should they be bothered by a small house on a big lot? Some rich people, after all, might prefer a small house on a big lot -- the kids have left home and they want less maintenance. Is their real animus against people who can't afford big houses--the hoi polloi?

    ReplyDelete
  2. ChristopherSeptember 23, 2026 at 9:19 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ChristopherSeptember 23, 2026 at 9:21 AM

    Good point. The issue of size of the lot and size of the house are in principle distinct. The Question to which Massachusetts voters will refer, speaks specifically to the smallness of the lot. The fact that small lots will probably host relatively small homes is I think implied. Yes, I suppose rich people may want a big home but a lot just barely bigger than the home, because lawns require maintenance. (But can't you hire good people for that? Or has the administration deported them all?)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...
27 comments
Read more

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...
12 comments
Read more

The Growing Block Theory of Time

My own disposition, in regard to the philosophy of time, is toward the "growing block" theory. This is the view that past events remain realities, that present-moment events are also realities, but that future events are not yet real. The image is of the universe as a block with an edge on (say) the right-hand side. The block is expanding because that edge is moving ever further right, and that edge is what we call the present, or, simply, "now." Everything to the left of that edge is both static (the past is complete) and, still and forever, real. Think of the phrase "the moving finger writes." The chief alternatives to the growing-block theory are "presentism" (only the now-edge itself is real) and "eternalism" (past, present, and future are all real." I believe that time is a growing block because (1) that's what it feels like, (2) we should stick with the introspective phenomenon unless we have good reason to abandon ...
8 comments
Read more