Walk through almost any older neighborhood in Northampton and you will notice something that feels increasingly rare across Massachusetts: modest, charming homes sitting comfortably on compact lots, close to neighbors, sidewalks, and local businesses. For generations, these were the homes where young families got their start, where school teachers and service workers put down roots, and where people built the foundation of their lives.
Today, across much of the commonwealth, building that kind of home is effectively illegal.
Decades of exclusionary zoning have steadily pushed minimum lot sizes upward. Even in neighborhoods equipped with municipal water and sewer, many Massachusetts towns mandate a half-acre, a full acre, or even two acres just to build a single house. By requiring larger, more expensive building lots, this arbitrary zoning raises house construction costs and wastes precious land resources. In doing so, we have priced out the traditional starter home, and with it, dampened the aspirations of an entire generation.
This November, Massachusetts voters can change that trajectory through Ballot Question 7, the initiative to legalize single-family homes on small lots in infrastructure-served areas.
If passed, Question 7 would set a sensible statewide baseline: municipalities could no longer require more than 5,000 square feet of lot area (about an eighth of an acre), or 50 feet of frontage, for single-family homes in residential neighborhoods that already have municipal water and sewer. Crucially, the measure preserves local authority over building heights, setbacks, environmental protections, open space standards, parking regulations, and short-term rental rules.
To be clear, Question 7 is not a magic wand. Proponents estimate it could unlock up to 200,000 homes over time. Whether the state reaches that high-water mark depends on mortgage interest rates, construction labor, and local infrastructure capacity. It will not solve the housing crisis overnight, nor does it replace the urgent need for deeply subsidized affordable housing, tenant protections, or supportive housing developments like the one underway at 27 Crafts Ave.
Rather, Question 7 provides a vital, missing piece of a much larger puzzle.
Housing is the bedrock of community life. When homeownership slips out of reach, young people who grew up in the Valley cannot afford to live in their home community. Couples delay starting families. Older neighbors who want to downsize find nowhere to go, keeping larger family houses locked up.
Furthermore, homeownership remains the primary vehicle for working-class families to build generational security. When home prices surge, the rental market bears the strain. Renters face steep annual hikes and low vacancy rates, while starter home buyers compete for the same limited rental stock. Creating attainable starter homes eases that pressure, helping to cool rents across the board.
It is easy to assume this is solely a problem for other communities. Northampton has taken commendable steps to modernize downtown zoning, but our city is far from exempt. Large residential districts across Northampton still mandate lot sizes well above 5,000 square feet, even when connected to municipal water and sewer.
In our Urban Residential A (URA) downtown neighborhoods, new single-family lots require 8,000 square feet. In Suburban Residential (SR) areas, the minimum jumps to 15,000 square feet. In Rural Residential (RR) zones covering much of Leeds, building on city water and sewer still mandates 30,000 square feet, six times larger than a standard starter lot!
Where public water and sewer already exist, Question 7 would directly expand opportunities within Northampton, allowing infill lots and modest starter homes without costly infrastructure expansion.
Moreover, housing markets do not stop at city borders. Northampton cannot build its way out of a regional shortage alone. When neighboring communities maintain exclusionary mandates, workers face long, carbon-heavy commutes, and regional demand spills into our downtown neighborhoods, inflating housing costs for everyone.
Zoning was originally conceived to keep dirty industrial factories away from where children sleep. Somewhere along the way, it morphed into a tool that keeps neighbors away from neighbors and locks out working families.
Question 7 brings us back to basics. If a neighborhood already has public infrastructure to support housing, a family shouldn’t be forced to buy an unnecessarily expensive house and lot just to own a roof over their heads.
As members of the Northampton Housing Partnership, we believe in a vibrant, multigenerational community where everyone has a place to thrive. We urge our neighbors across Northampton and the Pioneer Valley to vote “yes” on Question 7. It is a sensible, hopeful, and necessary step toward building a commonwealth everyone can afford to call home.
Yakov Kronrod is chair of the Northampton Housing Partnership and drafted this column on behalf of fellow members Hannah Shaffer, Richard Abuza, Christine Bryson, Gordon Shaw, Ben Wood, and Gwen Nabad.