A new study by a team of researchers at Boston University uses data from public meeting minutes to explore whether or not those who participate in public comment periods reflect the larger community’s views when it comes to housing.
There’s a lot of data here so you may prefer to start by reading this article about the research. And here’s an excerpt:
Researchers at Boston University found that people who turn out to speak at planning and zoning board meetings tend to overwhelmingly oppose new housing development. Compared to other residents, these meeting goers are also more likely to be older, male, and homeowners.
“It’s problematic in part because planning and zoning board officials are listening to these unrepresentative voices and being influenced by them,” Katherine Levine Einstein, a Boston University professor and one of the paper’s authors, said by phone on Tuesday.
“People who are actually showing up,” she added, “are biased in a variety of troubling ways.”
The researchers say their study, which looked at part of Massachusetts, is the first to document inequalities in who shows up and makes comments at local public meetings about housing.
It found that opposition to new housing construction was strong among meeting participants even in places that showed support for affordable housing measures when voting in elections.
News alert: people are inherently selfish…
Most people do not vote against their interests, which i guess for recent or struggling homeowners means “keep prices up and property taxes down”
You don’t need a study to tell you that. It’s already known that people are more likely to comment when they have strong views, and the more effort involved, the stronger the bias (i.e., people who are mildly for or against something or neutral are less likely to go to a hearing after a long day at work or in the middle of a work day than those who strongly oppose something.
Sure this seems intuitive. But it’s always helpful to have data to support any hypothesis.
I’m not sure how known this is among many in the community. I came out of a rather contentious public meeting earlier this year and while on the steps of city hall I heard one woman tell another, referring to the rather loud opposition that showed up: “I sure hope the city council listens to the will of the people.”
My thought was: did they hear the will of the people? They certainly heard the will of the people who showed up.”
Then there are the people who don’t show up and then wonder why a project stalled or how it ended up being smaller than they had read about in the TAB or why it doesn’t have what they think the city really needs.
@Greg – I don’t have time to look it up, but there’s research on the topic going back decades.
Most people who attend these public hearings and who live close to the new construction do support both high end and affordable housing. What the chief objection is the inappropriate scale of the housing. Most residents support new housing which reflects the size of existing buildings and the historical nature of very old Newton villages. The north side villages contain homes built before the revolution and civil war. New housing must respect the traditions of these historic villages.
The Newtonville Area Council engaged thousands of village residents in a charrette and a survey. The response indicated a high value for retaining the village character through scaled down housing development.
It’s great to have a study with data to back up what was already suspected. And not just about housing.
First of all, everyone who shows up to a city council meeting is going to be biased, whether we are talking about housing, marijuana use, or leaf blowers. If a group of young women showed up demanding more affordable child care, I don’t think anyone would assume that they represent the voices of the entire town. But it also doesn’t mean that their opinions should be dismissed, or not taken into consideration.
Just because some people are opposed to a particular development doesn’t mean that they aren’t aligned with good public policy. In the study, researchers used voting results of a 2010 Massachusetts Ballot Referendum to repeal Chapter 40B (a pro-affordable housing law) to determine how people felt about development. But voting for Chapter 40B is not the same thing as accepting every housing development that comes up in your community, period. As Colleen mentioned, most objections are not with the idea of development/affordable housing, but rather with the scale of said housing. Traffic, parking, neighbored character, etc. are legitimate concerns, and shouldn’t be dismissed in the rush to create new housing.
In the cases mentioned where board officials listened to the objections of residents, I see compromise – not the shutting down of projects. Compromise is an important part of any democracy, and if people have objections to something and are taking the time to show up to board meetings, then I think their voices deserve to be listened to, not shut down.