Time’s run out for nine of the 12 communities that haven’t signed on to the MBTA Communities Act.
Under that statute — a 2021 law requiring municipalities served by or adjacent to MBTA transit to create zoning for multifamily housing — the majority of the resisting communities were required to comply by July 2025.
The holdouts: Dracut, Tewksbury, Wilmington, East Bridgewater, Halifax, Holden, Marblehead, Middleton, and Winthrop. Carver and Rehoboth — which had until Dec. 31 to join the fold – and Freetown – with an upcoming zoning board meeting that might bring it into compliance – have so far been spared any legal consequences.
The other nine have been slapped with enforcement lawsuits by the state’s attorney general.
In July, AG Andrea Campbell warned that her office could pursue enforcement against noncompliant towns beginning in January 2026.
Campbell recently reiterated her previous enforcement warning. And now she’s made good on that promise.
We’ve already seen some samples of what form that action might take.
Tewksbury Public Schools found out in December that it won’t receive certain state funding in fiscal 2026 as a result of the town’s noncompliance.
In Middleton, the town lost a $2 million MassWorks grant that had already been awarded, along with funding for a Council on Aging passenger van.
Wilmington Town Manager Eric Slagle said the town had been communicating with Campbell’s office since the second half of 2025 after the zoning failed to pass at Town Meeting last year.
“They asked if we planned to put it on another Town Meeting agenda, but there was no appetite on the Select Board for that,” said Slagle.
For now, he said Wilmington is in a “wait-and-see mode” as the complaint filed by Campbell’s office did not specify how a judge would force compliance.
So, what’s the end game for these nine municipal outliers?
More than 90% of the affected communities, 165 out of 177, have created a multi-family zoning district per that MBTA law.
A few holdouts can’t change that fact, or the inevitability of this legislation. Rather than continuing to resist, those communities could adhere to the letter – if not the spirit — of the law.
While the MBTA Communities Act compels designated municipalities to create zoning districts that allow multifamily housing by right, it does not require them to actually build housing or guarantee affordable housing production.
A Boston Globe review in May of several preliminary and already-passed zoning strategies found that some towns have deliberately designed plans that cleverly circumvent the state mandate.
In some cases, towns have created zoning to allow apartment buildings in places where such structures already exist, making it economically impractical to create a new one of similar size.
Others have written zoning rules that cap building heights and densities in ways that effectively discourage new development.
These creative methods have apparently satisfied the law’s mandate.
It’s the blueprint those sued communities should take, instead of enduring the substantial legal and financial penalties further resistance will exact.
Sentinel and Enterprise
