At meetings last week, city planners and Dorchester residents took their first steps toward a new zoning map for the Fields Corner area, weighing a potential gain in Boston’s housing supply against further risks to the neighborhood’s affordability.

A virtual session May 14 and an in-person meeting May 18 were the area’s launch points for Mayor Wu’s Squares + Streets initiative. A launch for Codman Square, scheduled for earlier in May, was put on hold, due to the city’s plan for a possible expansion to include the Four Corners area. An amendment to the city’s zoning code for the initiative was approved in March by the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA).

The first areas where the BPDA introduced Squares + Streets were Hyde Park and Roslindale. “Fields Corner specifically was selected because it was really close to the Red Line T stop,” Ben Zunkeler, a senior planner with the BPDA, explained at the virtual meeting. “There’s seven bus routes, including one high-frequency route, two schools, one community center, the library, and there’s also an existing Main Street district.” He said the “small area plan” would focus on “main streets that are really strong and vibrant,” with commercial amenities for nearby residents and “good transit” that could support additional housing and businesses. The initiative would change zoning to allow for housing or mixed-use development with more density along parts of commercial corridors near public transportation.

The projects would be subject to the set-aside for affordable units under the city’s Inclusionary Development Policy (IDP). According to city planners, the zoning incentives – including fewer hurdles for accessory dwelling units – could be combined with capital improvements, affordable housing supports, development opportunities on city-owned land, and mitigation for climate change, such as treecover.

The Boston initiative follows a similar program, Transit Oriented Communities (TOC), adopted in Los Angeles in 2017. According to the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, the TOC program “likely increased Los Angeles’s supply of below-market homes and reduced housing scarcity overall.” Though they credited the program with increasing affordability and choice in the wider market, researchers concluded that public subsidies would be more effective for producing below-market-rate units and helping low- er-income households. In Minneapolis, there was another move to encourage development with more density, with fewer requirements for parking. According to a January 2024 post by Pew Charitable Trusts, the resulting surge in buildings with at least 20 housing units on commercial corridors was the main factor increasing the city’s housing supply and putting the brakes on rent increases.

The 2017 Housing Report Card report from The Boston Foundation credited the surge in housing production under former mayor Marty Walsh for a marginal decrease in rents in the region’s inner core. But, with most of the new units at luxury levels, the report found little relief at the lower end of the market. “The price of these units might have declined enough to bring the overall average rent down without much affecting the median rent or rents in the lower end of the price spectrum,” the report observed. “Hence, even as the average rent fell, the proportion of renters who are housing cost-burdened continued to rise in 2017.”

In Dorchester, new developments near transit stations have increased housing supply, with some gains in affordable units, but also with more anxieties over parking and upward pressure on the surrounding area’s housing market. Until sixteen years ago, Dorchester Avenue was dominated by commercial buildings with one to three stories, alternating with houses, mostly three-deckers. That changed with the development of “The Carruth,” a six-story brick building with 116 mixed-income units near Ashmont Station. This was followed by other higher-density projects along the avenue near Ashmont, Fields Corner and JFK/UMass stations, as well as Dot Block, with 488 units in four buildings near Glover’s Corner and Savin Hill Station.

Despite a number of affordable units and community benefits, the higher-density projects have also changed the landscape in pricing. On Apartments.com, monthly rents for Dot Block range from $2,540 to $4,265 for anything from a studio to a unit with three bedrooms. The development surge under Walsh in a transit corridor near the Orange Line in Jamaica Plain and Roxbury also led to more high-density buildings. Though the “Plan JP/Rox” included affordable and mixed-income developments, the BPDA faced protests over displacement caused by rent increases around Egleston Square. According to rental web- sites, most apartments near Egleston Square are currently on the market for $2,499 a month for a studio to as much as $5,899 for three bedrooms. Current listings for the area also include private bedrooms, with monthly rents at more than $1,000.

At the virtual launch for Squares + Streets, an organizer with Dorchester Not for Sale, Lori Hurle- baus, expressed concern that more displacement could be triggered by the transit-oriented zoning around Fields Corner. “We need to build more. I’m not opposed to that,” she said. “But, when we do that, that increases the value of the land. As I said earlier, it incentivizes evictions, it incentivizes longtime owners to sell to corporate entities. There is an impact of that.”

Markeisha Moore, the resident leadership coordinator for the Boston Neighborhood Community Land Trust, not- ed that Boston has to be “intentional” about complying with the “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) rule, reinstated and updated last year by the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Under the mandate, HUD program participants would have to take steps to over- come patterns of housing segregation and foster inclusion.

“I’m tired of seeing people leave,” said Moore, “and I’m tired of being stressed about how much longer that I can live here with my children, where they can have access to maybe get some different opportunities and have some different outcomes.”

Ellen Mason, the executive director of the Fields Corner Community Development Corporation (CDC) called for a plan that could include housing for the city workers unable to afford the cost of living in Boston—and not just with studio apartments. “As we think about this plan,” she said, “what I would like to see, along with up zoning and maybe more expensive, fancy housing, if you will, I want to make sure that we incorporate not just hanging onto the affordable housing we’ve got, but finding ways to have projects where we’re bringing in more affordable housing.” Targeting an area along Dorchester Avenue from Parkman Street to Freeport Street, from Clam Point to Ronan Park, the Fields Corner plan would also overlap with the Boston Little Saigon commercial and cultural district, which serves local residents, as well as relatives and customers who visit Dorchester from the suburbs.

Hiep Chu, a developer planning 14 studio apartments with zero parking right next to Fields
Corner Station, said he wanted a plan that would “continue the vibrance” of small businesses. “I really hope that we continue to maintain the type of the neighborhood,” he said, “the walkable, the foot traffic, the local restaurants.”

Early in the virtual meeting, Zunkeler tried to allay concerns. “We want to make sure that we’re preserving afford- able housing and cultural spaces,” he said. “We’re going to coordinate transportation improvements to make sure that that serves the area even better into the future.”

The Squares + Streets zoning would consist of six different tiers, known as districts, allowing different uses and levels of density. According to Caitlin Coppinger, the BPDA’s deputy director of comprehensive planning, five of the districts would require developments to undergo Article 80 review, even if they would be allowed without a zoning variance, and large projects would also have to undergo an AFFH process.

“We want to be able to keep the people that are there, so that’s why the city is also looking at what can we do to help put in anti-displacement measures,” she said. “That’s bigger than Squares + Streets, because we know that this is a problem not just in our local districts, but it’s a problem across the city.” After developing ideas through visioning and information sessions over the next two months, Zunkeler said, more ideas will be added and reviewed, with an eye toward completing a draft plan in November and a final report in January. After this, the changes would have to be approved by the Boston Zoning Commission.

Early in the meeting, one participant noted that neighborhood groups were less active during July and August, and that residents were more likely to be unavailable.

“Most of the folks faces I see on this meeting are white,” Mason told Zunkeler. “My residents are not, and my staff are not. And they need to engage.”

Hurlebaus said getting diverse, deep participation in a “really wonky” process, with the city’s “very quick timeline,” would be difficult. “It’s not a matter of being flexible,” she said. “It’s a matter of if we really want to deeply engage then those of us that are deeply embedded in the community, with folks who can’t always make these meetings, with folks who still don’t even know about it – that we need time to do that outreach.”