The 1.25 Million-Vote Coalition for Smaller Lots: What the Geography Of The Question 7 Vote Reveals
Updated: 10 minutes ago
Across America, household sizes have shrunk while homes have grown larger and increasingly expensive. Massachusetts is no exception. The median price of a single-family home in the Commonwealth has more than doubled since 2014, surpassing $600,000. In Greater Boston, 2025 marked the first year the median single-family home price crossed $1 million. Comfortably affording a home at that price requires a household income of roughly $250,000, more than twice the region's median household income of $118,000.
Question 7, on Massachusetts' recent statewide ballot, sought to address one piece of this growing affordability crisis: the disappearance of the starter home. It proposed a relatively straightforward zoning reform to make smaller, more attainable single-family homes possible in communities across the Commonwealth.
Was it a silver bullet for our housing crisis? Of course not. There is no single solution to decades of underbuilding, restrictive zoning, discretionary permitting, and building codes that create uncertainty and limit the range of housing we can build at scale. But minimum lot-size requirements are a major driver of housing scarcity across Greater Boston. They inflate land costs, restrict where new homes can be built, and contribute to a growing suburban teardown crisis. Smaller, more attainable homes are increasingly demolished and replaced with much larger luxury houses because, under existing zoning, the most viable path to new construction is often to buy an existing home, tear it down, and build something substantially bigger in its place.
Massachusetts has some of the largest minimum lot-size requirements in the country. In half of Greater Boston communities, at least half of all land is subject to minimum lot requirements of an acre or more just to build a single-family home. These rules don't simply determine the size of the homes we build. They determine how much land is available for housing in the first place, who can afford to live in a community, and where the region's workforce can realistically find a home.
Consider what that means for a regional economy like Greater Boston. We are already geographically constrained by the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Yet we have also surrounded ourselves with an expanding ring of suburbs where zoning effectively locks up enormous amounts of land for large-lot, single-family housing. The result is a region that makes it increasingly difficult to accommodate its growing economy and workforce within reach of jobs, services, and regional transit. Question 7 sought to challenge one of the fundamental rules perpetuating that pattern. Its defeat doesn't make the underlying problem any less urgent.
1,255,595 Massachusetts Residents Voted for Change, Those Voices Can Not Be Ignored
On November 3rd, more than 1.25 million Massachusetts residents sent a message that the status quo is no longer good enough. Housing costs are out of control, and homeownership is becoming an increasingly distant dream for younger generations. They voted for statewide zoning reform as a meaningful first step toward addressing our housing crisis. And while Question 7 fell just 30,000 votes, or roughly 1%, short of passage, ignoring the voices of more than 1.25 million residents is no longer an option for state and local leaders. The Commonwealth's future is at stake, and we cannot afford to stand still OR continuing with a status quo effort for reform that only nibbles around the edges of a problem decades in the making.
How the Vote Broke Down
Seventy-five communities voted 'yes' on Question 7, and 60 of those 75 are majority-sewered communities. Of the 116 communities with no public sewer at all, only eight voted yes, and together they landed at 39%. Among the 27 towns that are fully sewered, 20 voted yes, and as a group they votes 'yes' at 62%. Put the 75 yes towns together and they cast nearly half of all the yes votes.
Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Malden, Medford, Salem and Everett all came in between 61% and 76% yes. Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, Brockton, Lynn and Quincy weren’t far behind at 58% to 62%. But this was not just an urban/suburban divide by any means. Many smaller, rural towns and small Western Massachusetts cities bucked the pattern too. Monterey, Leverett, Pelham and Shutesbury have no sewer and still voted yes, and Provincetown and North Adams are small but mostly sewered and said yes by wide margins. Still, those are exceptions. If you only count towns where most residents are on sewer, it passes by +8%. Statewide it fell short by -1%.
If you exclude votes from communities where septic systems predominate, Question 7 would have won statewide by an 8-point margin, or approximately 126,000 votes.
While the City of Boston was technically excluded from compliance with this zoning change due to the unique structure of their zoning enabling legislation, nearly 70% of Boston residents voted yes, with extremely high yes votes in neighborhoods of the City with some of the highest percentages of renters. Many of those voters represent Massachusetts economic future. The young professionals paying extremely high rents scraping to try and save to buy a home that seems further and further out of reach every year. This is the group faced with the choice of perpetually renting or leaving the region and taking their educations, their work experience, their ingenuity and their communities with them as part of the largest demographic leaving the Commonwealth.
The Geography of The Question 7 Vote
Metrowest A Split Vote
Newton Overwhelmingly Votes Yes
Newton is an especially interesting case. The city has been at the center of some of Massachusetts' most visible and contentious debates over zoning reform, multifamily housing, and new development in recent years. Yet despite that history, Question 7 carried the day in Newton by more than 10 percentage points, a margin of about 3,600 votes. That's a significant result in a community where housing and zoning have often been politically divisive.
Brookline Sees a 32% Margin of Victory
In a community where 30% of the town requires more than an acre of land to build a home, a 32-point margin sent Question 7 sailing through. This victory is, in part, thanks to the education around our housing systems done by local organizations like Brookline For Everyone who have told the story of our housing crisis and the need for regulatory reform to ensure Brookline remains a strong community into the future.
Milton, The Original MBTA Communities Opponent, Goes Yes on 7
Milton made national headlines in 2024 when it became the first Massachusetts community to vote against its MBTA Communities rezoning plan, with 54% of voters supporting the repeal of a Town Meeting supported 3A plan.
Two years later, Milton delivered a different message on housing. Question 7 won the city with 51% of the vote, signaling support for reforming restrictive minimum lot-size requirements and making smaller, more attainable starter homes possible.
Cape and Islands Produces Split Vote
Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard's Surprisingly Close Votes
The Cape and Islands have consistently seen a worsening housing crisis, and some of the most contentious housing battles, over the past few years. On Nantucket, one of the most expensive zip codes in America with some of the most expensive individual home sales in Massachusetts history, just 97 votes separated support and opposition townwide, even though Question 7 would have applied only to the roughly 60% of the island with public sewer access. The town has consistently grappled with battles over new development while facing a crushing housing crisis that pushes year round residents and the Islands' work force to the brink.
On the Vineyard, Question 7 won by substantial 10-20 point margins in Tisbury, Oak Bluffs and Aquinnah with No carrying slight margins on the rest of the Island.
Wellfleet, With Future Sewer Plans, Votes Yes, Alongside Much of Outer Cape
Wellfleet, on the Outer Cape, joined Truro and Provincetown in supporting Question 7.
It's also worth noting that Wellfleet is advancing plans for a phased municipal sewer system, beginning with a downtown sewer district. The broader strategy aims to reduce nitrogen pollution entering Wellfleet Harbor, protect the town's shellfish industry, and address wastewater constraints that have long complicated housing development.
Western Massachusetts Support
While places like Pittsfield and Northampton were not surprising 'yes' votes, places like Amherst, Shutesbury, Montague, Greenfield, Shelburne, North Adams, and the small town of Monroe offered significant 'yes' margins.
Bulk of Opposition, And Widest 'No' Margins, Was on South Coast
Towns like Seekonk, Rehoboth, Plympton, Dartmouth, Kingston and Middleborough, along with many more South Coast and South Shore communities, voted no by the widest margins in the state. Those six alone netted about 15,000 votes against, roughly half the statewide gap of 30,000. Many of these towns are on septic and would have been excluded from Question 7.
Marblehead, And Many Suburbs, Vote No Despite Extremely High Levels of Existing Nonconformity
The North Shore community that famously, and very publicly, shirked their responsibilities under MBTA Communities by choosing the local 120+ year old privately owned Country Club for their MBTA Communities, also has voted no to reducing lot size requirements to 5,000sf. Marblehead joins a short list of towns with near total public sewer coverage in voting no to the change.
Like many communities across Eastern Massachusetts, much of present day Marblehead could not be built under heavily restrictive local zoning laws. A quick glimpse at existing lot sizes finds that 65% of existing parcels do not meet current minimum lot size requirements for the zoning district. Additionally, of the 1,045 existing single family lots 5,000sf or less, 99% are existing nonconforming with the underlying zoning. This reform would have zoned for a community that looks more like what actually exists today, not what current zoning requirements state.
The Path Forward
One of the biggest arguments against Question 7, as well as MBTA Communities before it, has been the idea of “local control.” It's worth examining what that actually means in this context and recognizing that decades of restrictive local zoning decisions are a major reason Massachusetts finds itself in today's housing crisis.
Both Question 7 and MBTA Communities sought to address this concern while preserving substantial local authority. Question 7 would have established a statewide floor: communities could not require minimum lot sizes greater than 5,000sf for single-family homes on lots with public water and sewer and at least 50 feet of frontage on a public way. Beyond that baseline, municipalities would retain broad authority over height, setbacks, floor area ratio (FAR), open space, parking, design, permitting processes, and other local requirements.
Massachusetts' housing crisis is more acute in some communities than others, but addressing it requires regional solutions. MBTA Communities illustrated why. The law sought to open parts of the Commonwealth to housing growth after decades of restrictive zoning. In a region with such a tight housing market, however, opening the door in just one or two communities would inevitably concentrate development pressure there rather than distribute it across the region.
Lexington offers an instructive example. The town embraced both the letter and spirit of MBTA Communities, adopting a meaningful rezoning framework designed to unlock opportunities for multifamily housing. Many surrounding communities took a different approach, opting for districts that were unlikely to produce housing or would take years to generate meaningful construction, a practice often described as “paper compliance.” As a result, Lexington experienced significant early development interest, with proposals for more than 1,000 units emerging in the first few months after the rezoning. That sudden concentration of development activity created uncertainty and a resident backlash over how the new housing would affect the community. The following year, Town Meeting voted to scale back Lexington's MBTA Communities zoning to the bare minimum.
We're seeing this dynamic play out across Eastern Massachusetts. Communities like Lexington, Reading, Beverly, Lynn, and Salem increasingly feel they are carrying a disproportionate share of the region's housing growth while others continue to resist meaningful zoning reform despite consistent outcry for 'local control.' The result is an uneven distribution of development pressure, making it harder for even those communities willing to build to meaningfully ease a regional housing market still constrained by restrictive zoning across the bulk of the Commonwealth.
Question 7 was a relatively modest zoning reform. It would likely have enabled only a few hundred additional single-family homes annually statewide. But it also would have represented the most far-reaching statewide zoning reform since the sweeping downzonings of the 1960s and 1970s. Nearly 1.3 million Massachusetts residents sent a clear message: meaningful housing reform is necessary if we are going to restore pathways to homeownership for a generation who increasingly see owning a home here as little more than a distant dream. They are the future of our regional economy, and the choices we make about housing today will help determine whether they, and generations to come, can build their futures here as generations before have had the opportunity to do.
Infrastructure Challenges
Eastern Massachusetts has some of the oldest housing stock in the country, and much of its infrastructure is just as old. There are legitimate infrastructure constraints that must be addressed, and doing so will require greater state and federal investment. But we also need a much clearer, data-driven understanding of where capacity actually exists, where it is constrained, and where investments are needed. That means looking at water, sewer, transit, and electrical infrastructure individually rather than treating 'infrastructure capacity' as a blanket argument against any new housing as we see in some communities.
The reality is that aging infrastructure is becoming an increasingly significant financial liability for many communities, regardless of whether they accommodate additional growth. In many cases, new housing can help address that challenge by expanding the local tax base and generating the revenue needed to maintain, modernize, and expand infrastructure. Growth isn't always another demand on infrastructure. It can also be part of how we pay for the infrastructure we already need.
A Mandate to 75 Cities and Towns
While public opinion polling on issues facing the Commonwealth is conducted on a fairly regular basis, Question 7 was arguably the broadest and most consequential referendum on zoning reform the Commonwealth has ever seen. Nearly 1.25 million residents, across communities large and small, urban and rural, sent a clear message about the need to rethink our approach to housing.
In addition to the message sent to state officials, the results also offer a mandate for local action. In the 75 communities where Question 7 received majority support, including 52 where it passed by an average of 25 percentage points, voters have demonstrated support for meaningful zoning reform. Local leaders should take that signal seriously and, at a minimum pursue things like minimum lot size reform or allowing duplexes and townhomes across a wider area, and begin reintroducing the starter home back to a market desperately in need of it.
Massachusetts' housing systems are broken. Many of the policies that got us here were established decades ago, often in reaction to perceived threats to local communities that, in hindsight, proved misguided. Yet much of the zoning and regulatory framework created during those eras remains in place today. We are living with the consequences: constrained housing supply, escalating costs, shrinking opportunities for homeownership, and a growing disconnect between where people work and where they can afford to live (for a deeper look at how we got here, I recommend Amy Dain's Exclusionary By Design).
On November 3rd, nearly 1.25 million Massachusetts residents made their voices heard. Question 7 fell just one percentage point short of passage, but the underlying message should not be lost in that outcome. These voices cannot, and should not, be ignored. State and local leaders have an opportunity, and indeed an obligation, to respond with meaningful action, even without a statewide mandate. The Commonwealth's future depends on whether or not we have the courage to surface and confront the broken policies that got us here, have the difficult conversations in all of our communities, and build a housing system capable of meeting the needs of the Commonwealth we all love for this and future generations.
Onward together for a stronger Commonwealth!
Jonathan Berk, the founder of re:MAIN is an urban planning and housing policy professional, attorney, and nonprofit leader with more than a decade of experience advancing housing, land use, and economic development initiatives through partnerships between the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. His work focuses on addressing barriers to housing production and community investment, including zoning, permitting, and financing challenges. He has worked with local governments, developers, nonprofits, and advocates to advance practical policy reforms and implementation strategies. Jonathan is also a frequent writer and speaker on housing and land use policy.
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