While driving through just about any Boston suburb these days — or better yet, riding the MBTA bus, commuter rail or the T — you’ll likely notice construction sites where new housing developments are popping up.
Biogen Idec’s old global headquarters near Route 128 in Weston is slated to become a housing development with about 480 units. And down on the South Shore, the old Armstrong World Industries factory in Braintree near the town’s Red Line station is set to become a 752-unit housing complex.
Why? Because for the past five years, municipalities have been moving forward with plans to comply with the MBTA Communities Act, which requires the 177 transit-connected municipalities around Boston to create zoning that allows for more multifamily housing. The act was signed into law in 2021 by former Gov. Charlie Baker, and deadlines for the some towns to submit their plans were in 2023. Now, residents are moving into the first developments.
The goal of the act is to bring down housing costs and put roofs over locals’ heads. The new housing is supposed to be built along transit routes, which could limit the number of cars on the roads and lower carbon emissions.
The state surveyed each community and told town leaders how many acres of land must allow multifamily housing developments, then gave towns and cities varying amounts of time to draw up their own plans for where and how to rezone.
Most communities got to work on the messy process of rezoning, with all the NIMBY and YIMBY-ism it entails. (Not in my backyard; yes in my backyard).
But some resisted. Marblehead is a famous example. The town repeatedly refused to comply, arguing there isn’t enough space in town for more housing. In May 2026, facing legal action from the attorney general and after losing some state grants, the town finally passed a plan. But its plan is designed to ensure no housing is built — its rezoned acres span Tedesco Country Club, a private golf course that isn’t set to close.
Lexington
Lexington was the poster child for the MBTA Communities Act — until it wasn’t. The town was the first to create a compliance plan, and an ambitious one at that. Lexington vowed to rezone 227 acres to allow multifamily housing, though the state only required it to rezone 50.
But once developers’ proposals started to roll in, residents wanted to roll back. So Lexington’s Town Meeting passed a motion, born out of a citizen petition, asking the town to reduce its commitment to about 90 acres. After much back and forth, the town passed the motion, which removed Lexington’s historic center district out of concern that building new housing there would compromise its charm.
As of late October 2026, there are 17 MBTA Communities Act compliant housing projects (some approved by the Planning Board and some proposed) in Lexington. Altogether, those 16 projects imagine bringing around 1,600 new dwellings to the town, 236 of which would be considered affordable.
All of this new housing comes to Lexington at a unique time. The town is designing and preparing to build a new high school. Many residents are worried about how additional housing could affect school enrollment, and therefore, whether the new high school is currently being designed to be the correct size. The town’s School Building Committee has worked extensively with the district and the state to ensure the school can accommodate a range of students. One solution is to turn the planned central office space into about 11 classrooms if needed.
Credit: Maggie Scales
But in the present day, the opposite problem exists in Lexington — enrollment is declining. The district cut a handful of positions and laid off some teachers ahead of fiscal year 2027 to balance the budget and right-size staff. It has also stated it’s considering closing an elementary school to keep up with declining enrollment. — Maggie Scales
Cambridge
If Marblehead was the truculent truant when it came to the MBTA Communities Act, Cambridge was a star student. The city was basically already in compliance with the requirements when the guidelines were passed. A Boston Indicators report from January credits Cambridge with 29 projects that comply with the act, 25 of which have been started since the act was passed.
But the MBTA Communities Act itself had little to do with Cambridge’s new multifamily housing, multiple experts said. The act was probably “a bit of a spur,” said Jeff Levine, an MIT professor and head of the university’s Housing, Community & Economic Development program, “but wasn’t really a driving force the way it was maybe in Lexington, where the community leaders really saw it as an opportunity to address this issue.”
Levine said Cambridge was already doing most of what it needed to do to comply, and “There are a lot of people, perhaps a majority of people, that understood that Cambridge should have more housing.”
The city did need to take a few steps to align with the act’s requirements. It already had multiple districts with a gross density over 15 units per acre, but none were large enough to meet the “reasonable size” requirement of 50 acres for a district. To be deemed compliant by Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (HLC), the city needed to redraw and combine a few districts for size.
Cambridge was one of about a dozen rapid transit cities (Somerville was another) that were required to create 90% of new units within a half-mile radius of T stations, including Lechmere, Kendall/MIT, Central, Harvard, Porter and Alewife. The city completed the zoning compliance and was approved in 2023.
And Cambridge has gone on to exceed expectations. In February 2025, the city council passed the Multifamily Housing Ordinance, which created a multifamily zoning district in most areas of Cambridge. Developers can build up to four stories by right or up to six stories for buildings that include affordable homes. The ordinance aligns with the requirements and intent of the MBTA Communities Act, according to Levine and city officials, as Cambridge’s density remains above the minimum, and now the majority of the city allows by right development. And the Boston Indicators report called that ordinance one of a few “breakthrough successes outside of the MBTA Communities mandate.”
Cambridge City Councillors Patty Nolan and Burhan Azeem said their decision to support the Multifamily Housing Ordinance — a landmark zoning reform — was unrelated to the MBTA Communities act.
Nolan said she hopes the act will “indirectly impact — and benefit — Cambridge by having more surrounding communities zone for and hopefully build more housing. If that happens, it should help ease the price pressure a little bit in Cambridge.” — Chloe Taft
Arlington
As one of the most densely populated communities in Massachusetts, Arlington faced the questions of how and where to make the act work. Even along corridors with MBTA bus service, single-family and two-family homes had long been the norm.
In a town of more than 46,500 residents living in about 20,000 housing units, the act prompted public pushback, including a hearing in September 2023 that was stopped briefly for Arlington police to restore order.
Arlington approved a plan for MBTA Communities zoning after several nights of debate in October 2023. An Oct. 15, 2023 report to Arlington’s Town Meeting prepared by Stephen Revilak, a Precinct 1 Town Meeting member and member of the Arlington Redevelopment Board, used town records to project that “15-45 parcels could be redeveloped over the next ten years, for a net increase of 50-200 new units.”
In reality, the numbers have played out more slowly. As of January 2026, Arlington had 57 units in its MBTA Communities pipeline, according to Boston Indicators. The first project under the new rules, on Belknap Street, turned a traditional two-family home into a modern four-family building.
Reached in October 2026, Revilak said that a number of forces have come into play — most notably, building costs have soared. “There’s also some nuance. A project that’s permitted might not get built, or it might get scaled back,” Revilak said in an email. “That recently happened at 259 Broadway. They were permitted for a mixed-use building with 14 apartments; the construction bids came in higher than the applicants anticipated so they re-applied for a scaled-down version with five apartments. That property currently has four apartments so the net change is now plus one.”
Town officials in Arlington are currently holding a series of hearings (the final is scheduled for Nov. 5) on zoning changes along Massachusetts Avenue near Park Avenue. that look at whether new development could be allowed up to five stories. — Carol Beggy
Waltham
Not every community has seen a burst of new development. A January report from Boston Indicators shows that Waltham has exactly zero units of new housing in the pipeline through its MBTA Communities Act zoning reforms.
Building Inspector Brian Bower said his department has received interest in one potential housing project in one of the two overlay districts created by Waltham’s MBTA zoning reforms — a project the applicant has since withdrawn. Bower said he was disappointed and expected to see more applications since the citywide attention to the zoning changes.
But there are many factors explaining why the city hasn’t seen new housing from the act.
For one thing, both overlay districts are already fairly built up. The district near the Brandeis campus contains university buildings and apartment complexes, and the district along Waverley Oaks Road includes currently operating businesses and a significant amount of Beaver Brook swampland.
Housing advocate Tom Benavides of local nonprofit Waltham Inclusive Neighborhoods also pointed out both districts only allow for four-family housing, which he said wasn’t economically viable or in keeping with either existing neighborhood. He added that housing reform initiatives like accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, may have found more relative success in Waltham — the city has approved 16 since Massachusetts allowed them by right — because the state provided a clearer mandate.
Ward 7 Councilor Paul Katz, who represents one of the districts, said the MBTA Communities Act was too much of a one-size-fits-all approach for Waltham. He added that although Waltham’s zoning changes created “capacity and opportunity” for new housing, that’s not the same as creating actual units. Katz said the jury’s still out on whether the act will succeed in creating housing that fits the city’s needs.
From Benavides’ perspective, though, the act has still had a positive effect on Waltham by bringing discussions of community housing needs to the forefront of the city council agenda. He said he’d like to see that momentum extend to Waltham’s ongoing zoning reform, which he hopes will return to council this fall, along with discussions about large potential housing projects in western Waltham.
Belmont
Meanwhile, in Belmont, Town Meeting considered two maps in November 2024 — the result of a long, drawn-out process that included consultants, hours of workshops, forums, public hearings, and an inability to come to a consensus on one map to present to Town Meeting.
The first set of maps shared with the community were designed by the town’s consultants on the project, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. Then-Select Board member Roy Epstein said those maps had significantly higher unit counts than the law required, which, for Belmont, was 1,632. Eventually, the counts were brought down, and they were presented to the community in early 2024.
At that stage, Epstein introduced his own map.
Eventually, the advisory committee that had been formed at the start of the process passed along its recommendation — essentially the map created by Epstein — to the Planning Board, at which point months of meetings and public hearings commenced.
The result of the process was two almost identical maps, both sent to the state for compliance review. One included the Purecoat North site in place of a portion of lower Belmont (along the Watertown line), while the other included lower Belmont but not Purecoat North. The crux of the debate rested on the elimination of a commercial district (at a time when Belmont is struggling with its commercial tax base) in favor of hypothetical mixed-use development.
When it came time for Town Meeting, a Planning Board-approved map was included on the warrant for consideration, with the second map (created by Epstein) offered as an amendment. After much deliberation, the amendment was voted down while the Planning Board map, which excluded the Purecoat North site, was supported 213-8, with seven abstentions.
As of mid-August, just one project has received approval under the new zoning, according to Planning and Building Director Chris Ryan. Beyond that, “there has been a lot of communication with different parties” with respect to the Moraine Street and Church Street parcels.
Five years in, the new regulations on multifamily housing have meant very different things in five nearby communities: Cambridge now allows multifamily housing throughout most of the city. Lexington has seen a flood of new developments and proposals, Arlington a trickle. Belmont has a single approved project and Waltham an empty pipeline. Whether any of it makes the region more affordable is a question the first new residents are only beginning to answer. — Mary Byrne
This story is a collaboration between LexObserver, Cambridge Day, the Belmont Voice, the Waltham Times and Your Arlington.
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