This article originally appeared in the July 7th, 2024 edition of Banker & Tradesman.
A lack of new housing production has sent housing costs soaring in Massachusetts. It’s also leading to increasingly contentious fights in numerous communities over school funding while residents continue to use school enrollment fears as a reason to oppose new housing.
The potential negative impacts of new housing on local schools are consistently mischaracterized and overblown in housing debates, and the benefits that new homes bring to a community largely ignored.
Perceptions that new housing equals a flood of new students aren’t new. What is new, and perhaps more intense, is the misinformation in towns’ and cities’ debates around how to comply with the 2021 MBTA Communities state law.
Fear-Mongering with False Claims
In Marblehead, threats that a “zoned capacity” requirement of 900 units – measuring both existing units and new units allowed under new zoning – would result in 900 students flooding the school system rang out at Town Meeting and in mailers and ads leading up to the vote.
These claims, and similar ones in many other towns around the state, completely misrepresent not just the concept of zoned capacity, but the relationship between housing construction, school enrollment and the resources available to deliver exceptional educational outcomes to the children of Massachusetts.
In a 2017 Metropolitan Area Planning Commission report and a 2024 update to it, researchers found no link between the change in student enrollment and the change in housing production between 2010 and 2020: “in statistical terms, the association between the two variables is not different from zero.”
This report looked at both urban and suburban school systems, those adding lots of housing and those largely stagnant in housing production and found similar results.
For example, Newburyport has seen its housing stock rise by nearly 6 percent between 2010 and 2022 while seeing a 5 percent drop in school population. In Swampscott, a 4 percent increase in housing supply was accompanied by an 8 percent decline in the school-age population during the same period.
It’s Harming Local School Districts
Despite the fact that Massachusetts has gained nearly 800,000 people since 2000, Massachusetts’ public-school student population continues to shrink. In 2003, Massachusetts schools had 985,000 students. That number dropped to 955,000 in 2019 and today, there are 914,000 students registered in Massachusetts public schools, an 8 percent decline.
In many suburban communities, school populations continue to shrink despite some producing small amounts of net new housing. MAPC’s study showed that “developing suburbs” – places like Ipswich, Franklin, Bolton and Norwell – saw an average 8.2 percent decline in their student populations while adding a modest amount of new housing.
As suburban Baby Boomers continue to age in place in large single-family homes, and as very little in the way of new housing is produced to allow for downsizing or ”aging in community,” the median resident’s age in many suburbs will continue to increase. This places the burden of increased municipal and school costs, whether or not the school population increases, on a smaller number of residents.
Marblehead, a town that’s lost nearly 1,000 residents since its peak in the 1970s, illustrates this point well. The median age there has increased from 41 to nearly 48 over the last 20 years. In the 2010s alone the number of households led by someone over age 55 increased 21 percent while the number of households between ages 25 and 44 decreased by 63 percent. Marblehead has seen little in the way of new housing produced since 2010, just a 1.5 percent increase, but has witnessed a 17 percent drop in its student population.
Prop. 2½ Overrides Failing
Marblehead’s 2020 Housing Production Plan warned: “These trends are expected to continue, and the Town will need to meet the needs of aging households and prepare for the implications of demographic shifts in the population.”
Without new residential and commercial development to increase the town tax br, and an aging population less inclined to want to pay more to support the school system, a 2023 Proposition 2½ override to increase funding to the schools failed, leading to a spate of layoffs and contentious teacher contract negotiations.
We’re seeing similar scenarios play out currently in places like Newton and Melrose as tight municipal budgets lead to tense negotiations with teachers unions. Populations in both communities have fallen from their peaks in the 1970s and ’80s and net new housing production has waned.
Incremental changes in the types of housing we allow, like those prescribed by MBTA Communities, will build stronger, more resilient communities capable of meeting the housing needs of residents at different points in their lives, and they will support our regional economy while strengthening public education.
New housing, of a variety of types and price points, will offer our teachers a better opportunity to live in the communities where they teach and provide our region with better housing options to meet changing population needs at different phases of life. The bottom line: We can no longer afford to allow misinformation and fearmongering to prevent us from solving the truly existential housing shortage we face today.
Jonathan Berk is an urbanist and advocate who’s focused his career on building and advocating for walkable communities with vibrant public spaces, abundant housing choices and robust local small business communities. As the Founder of Re:Main, he's working to accelerate the growth and expansion of walkable neighborhoods, with abundant housing options, through innovative, action-oriented programs.
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