A local politics forum turns housing into a question of power
A politics forum about housing can sound niche, even a bit wonky. Then someone puts hard numbers on the table and it suddenly feels very real. That is what happens at Newton for Everyone’s event, How Housing Scarcity is Costing Massachusetts Political Power, held on 24 September 2026 and covered by Fig City News. The headline promise is blunt: build too little housing for too long, and the consequences do not stop at rent prices. They reach all the way to representation and influence.
The forum brings together two voices who come at the problem from different angles. Professor Maxwell Palmer, an associate professor of political science at Boston University, argues that population is political power and that Massachusetts is bleeding both. Congressman Jake Auchincloss pushes back on the idea that fewer congressional seats will change housing politics, but he does not dispute the underlying crunch. He frames housing as a messy American contradiction: people want it to be an investment that rises in value and a widely available commodity that stays affordable. Both cannot be true at the same time, at least not without trade offs.
What makes this politics forum worth paying attention to is not just the policy detail, it is the way it exposes the machinery of local decision making. Zoning boards, town meetings, odd year elections, public hearings, and the people who reliably show up. It is the unglamorous stuff. And yet it is where the housing supply is either allowed to grow or quietly strangled.
Inside the Newton for Everyone politics forum on housing scarcity
The Newton for Everyone forum is structured around a central claim: Massachusetts is losing political clout because it is not growing, and it is not growing because housing is too expensive and too scarce. Palmer sets the tone with a historical marker that is hard to ignore. Massachusetts congressional representation drops from 12 to 9 since 1970, a shift that signals relative population decline compared with faster growing states. The forum does not present this as an abstract civics lesson. It is framed as a warning about what happens when a state becomes a place people love, but cannot afford to stay in.
Palmer also points to a slower growth trajectory in more recent decades. He says Massachusetts population growth has been half the national average since 1990. And the people leaving are not mostly retirees chasing sunshine, at least not according to the picture he draws. The majority of residents moving away are in their prime work years, ages 25 to 45, and the main reasons they give for leaving are housing expenses and the high cost of living. In other words, the state is not just losing headcount, it is losing workforce and family formation years. That is the kind of demographic shift that changes everything from school enrolment to tax receipts.
Auchincloss, for his part, does not accept that the number of Massachusetts congressional representatives is what sways opinion on housing policy. That is an important distinction. He is not saying representation does not matter, he is saying it may not be the lever that moves zoning votes or planning board decisions. Instead, he suggests looking at new approaches to increase housing, including hyper local zoning. The forum therefore becomes a debate about which level of government can realistically break the logjam, and which incentives actually change behaviour.
Professor Maxwell Palmer’s case: population is political power
Palmer’s argument is straightforward, and that is part of its force. In a representative democracy, population translates into seats, and seats translate into influence. Massachusetts has already felt that in the reduction of its congressional delegation from 12 to 9 since 1970. He ties that long term shift to a more immediate pattern: housing growth and population growth align. If housing production stalls, population growth stalls too. People do not disappear, they move to where they can find a home they can afford.
The forum offers a detailed look at where former Massachusetts residents go. Palmer lists Florida, New Hampshire, California, Connecticut, and Rhode Island as the top five destination states. There is a particularly telling detail here: 59 percent of former residents move to neighbouring states, and many commute back to Massachusetts for work. That is not a clean break. It is a sign of a regional housing market where jobs remain concentrated in Massachusetts, but homes become more attainable across the border. The most popular move, Palmer says, is from Middlesex County to Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, where rents are 28 percent lower and housing costs are 44 percent lower. Those are not marginal differences. They are life changing gaps.
Palmer also makes the political process itself part of the diagnosis. Massachusetts style local government, with odd year local elections, public hearings, town meetings, and referendums, empowers opponents of housing. He describes a participation imbalance that will be familiar to anyone who has watched a contentious planning meeting. Homeowning community stakeholders, who are older, whiter, and richer, are more likely to vote in local elections, run for local office, attend planning board meetings, and oppose housing development. In Palmer’s research on 97 Massachusetts cities and towns, homeowners comprise 45 percent of voters and 73 percent of public meeting attendees. The people who would benefit from more housing, including renters and future homeowners, are not in the room. And if they are not in the room, they are not shaping the outcome.
Why zoning becomes the villain in this politics forum
Housing debates often get stuck on slogans, build more, protect neighbourhood character, stop luxury flats, save the trees. This politics forum gets more specific. Palmer argues that Massachusetts can fix the problem by reforming zoning, because zoning decisions are uniquely local in the state. Each city and town has its own zoning authorities and ordinances, and that fragmentation creates friction and cost. He illustrates the point with a comparison that is designed to sting a little. Texas, a state of roughly 32 million, has 433 zoning authorities. Massachusetts, a state of roughly 7 million, has 351. The implication is not that Texas is perfect, it is that Massachusetts has built an unusually dense thicket of local gatekeepers for a much smaller population.
And then there is the detail that developers and housing advocates complain about constantly, but which rarely makes it into mainstream political conversation: the sheer variety of rules. Palmer notes that differences in zoning codes, from setback sizes to tree protection ordinances to energy requirements, complicate development and increase building costs. Those costs do not vanish. They are passed on to homebuyers and renters. In a tight market, every additional constraint can translate into fewer units built, longer timelines, and higher prices. It is not exactly groundbreaking to say regulation affects supply, but the forum’s value is in connecting that to political power and demographic churn.
Palmer also points to behaviour that suggests some communities are not merely cautious about development, they are actively blocking it. Since 2010, he says, 12 Massachusetts communities have spent $55 million of public money to buy land to prevent housing development. Half of those communities use Community Preservation Funds towards those purchases. That is a striking use of public resources, not to build, but to stop building. It also hints at why statewide reform is so contentious. Local voters may see these purchases as preservation. Statewide housing advocates see them as exclusion, dressed up in nicer language.
Congressman Jake Auchincloss: housing as asset, housing as commodity
Auchincloss brings a different kind of realism to the forum. He frames housing as a cultural and economic contradiction: Americans expect it to be both an asset for building wealth, with growing value, and also a widely available, affordable commodity with stable pricing. That tension sits underneath almost every housing argument, even when people do not say it out loud. If homeowners rely on rising values to feel financially secure, they will often resist changes that might soften prices. But if prices keep rising faster than wages, the next generation cannot buy in. Something has to give.
He puts a political label on the consequence: Massachusetts is pricing out the middle class and creating a generational divide among Democrats. That is not a small claim. It suggests housing is not just a policy headache, it is a coalition problem. When younger voters and renters feel locked out, and older homeowners feel threatened by change, the party that dominates many Massachusetts communities ends up fighting itself. And those fights tend to play out at the most local level, where turnout is lower and the most motivated voices carry disproportionate weight.
Auchincloss also highlights how the timeline of homeownership has shifted. The average first time homebuyer is now 42, up from 29 in 1981 and 33 in 2021. The forum does not provide the underlying dataset, but the point is clear enough: the ladder is being pulled up. If people cannot buy until their forties, it changes family planning, savings, mobility, and the sense of whether the system is fair. Auchincloss suggests people could focus on investments beyond housing to build wealth, a nod to the uncomfortable truth that treating housing as the primary wealth vehicle creates political pressure to keep it scarce.
Local democracy, unequal participation, and the quiet power of “no”
One of the most revealing threads running through this politics forum is not about ideology, it is about participation. Palmer’s description of Massachusetts local governance, odd year elections, public hearings, town meetings, referendums, sounds like civic virtue on paper. In practice, it can become a system where the same small slice of the community shows up again and again. Those people are not villains. They are engaged. But engagement is not evenly distributed, and that matters when the engaged group is disproportionately homeowning, older, wealthier, and more likely to oppose new housing.
The numbers Palmer cites from his research on 97 Massachusetts cities and towns are the kind that stick. Homeowners make up 45 percent of voters and 73 percent of public meeting attendees. That gap is the story. It means the forum is not just arguing about zoning codes, it is arguing about who effectively gets a vote in the decisions that shape the housing market. Renters and would be residents, the people who might move into new homes if they were built, are structurally absent. They cannot vote in a town they do not live in yet. They are busy working. They move more often. They are less likely to attend a three hour meeting on a Tuesday night. Fair enough. But the outcome is predictable.
Palmer also makes a pointed observation about political identity. Extremely liberal communities, like Newton, tend to support housing at the national level but not at the local level. This is not a new accusation, but it lands differently when paired with the forum’s broader argument about power. If communities vote for pro housing rhetoric nationally while blocking housing locally, the state ends up with the worst of both worlds: moral satisfaction and practical scarcity. The forum suggests that this is not hypocrisy so much as a product of incentives. Local politics rewards the people who show up, and the people who show up often have the most to lose, or at least the most to fear, from change.
MBTA Communities Law, paper compliance, and the limits of incrementalism
The forum also touches on the MBTA Communities Law, a major policy lever intended to push municipalities towards more housing, particularly near transit. Palmer’s critique is sharp: most communities subject to the law do the minimum, meeting paper compliance. That phrase, paper compliance, is doing a lot of work. It implies that the law can be satisfied through technical alignment without producing meaningful new homes. Zoning can be changed on a map while nothing changes on the ground, especially if other rules, processes, and political pressures still make building difficult.
This is where the forum’s emphasis on zoning fragmentation becomes more than an academic complaint. If each town has its own layers of requirements, then even a statewide mandate can be absorbed and neutralised. A district can be zoned for multifamily housing, but setbacks, parking requirements, design review, and permitting delays can still make projects financially unviable. The source material does not provide a full inventory of these constraints, but it does make the central point: complexity raises costs, and costs reduce supply.
Palmer also points to a concrete example used in a 2024 housing report he worked on, which cites Newton’s Walker Center. The Walker Center is purchased with $2.45 million of American Rescue Plan Act funds and is described as a seemingly viable housing project proposed on suitable public land that may never be completed. The forum uses this as a symbol of how even when land is available and public money is involved, local politics can still stall or stop housing. It is a reminder that the bottleneck is not always land. Sometimes it is permission.
What this politics forum reveals about the next phase of housing politics
The most interesting thing about this forum is the way it reframes the stakes. Housing is usually discussed as a cost of living issue, a fairness issue, or a planning issue. Here it is also a power issue. Palmer’s line, population is political power, is not just a slogan. It is a description of how federal representation works and how states compete for influence. If Massachusetts continues to grow slowly relative to the rest of the country, it risks further erosion of its voice in national politics. The forum does not claim an imminent seat loss, and it does not need to. It is arguing about trajectory, and trajectories are shaped by housing supply.
At the same time, Auchincloss’s scepticism about whether congressional representation drives housing policy is a useful check. It suggests that even if the state’s influence declines, local incentives may remain stubborn. People do not oppose a development because they have done the maths on apportionment. They oppose it because they worry about traffic, schools, parking, noise, change, property values, or simply because they like things as they are. The forum’s implicit challenge is that advocates need to win on those local terms, or change the system so local veto points are weaker.
There is also a deeper political tension bubbling under the surface. If housing is treated as the primary wealth building tool, then scarcity is rewarded and reform becomes politically painful. Auchincloss gestures at an alternative, encouraging wealth building beyond housing. That is not a housing policy tweak, it is a cultural shift. And cultural shifts take time. In the meantime, the forum suggests Massachusetts faces a choice: accept a future where younger workers and families live elsewhere and commute back, or make it easier to build homes where the jobs are.
Closing thoughts: from a single forum to a statewide argument
Newton for Everyone’s politics forum is local in setting but statewide in implication. It brings together a political scientist focused on systems and incentives, and a congressman focused on the lived contradiction at the heart of American housing. The details matter: Massachusetts representation falling from 12 to 9 since 1970, population growth running at half the national average since 1990, movers concentrated in ages 25 to 45, and the cross border pull of New Hampshire where rents are 28 percent lower and housing costs are 44 percent lower in Hillsborough County compared with Middlesex County. Those are not talking points. They are pressures shaping where people live and how the state evolves.
The forum also makes an uncomfortable point about democracy itself. Local control sounds empowering, and often it is. But when participation is skewed, local control can become a mechanism for exclusion, even without anyone saying that is the goal. Palmer’s finding that homeowners comprise 73 percent of public meeting attendees is a clue to why housing politics feels stuck. The people most harmed by scarcity are the least present in the process that produces it.
And so the argument rolls on. Statewide zoning reform versus hyper local experimentation. Paper compliance versus real world building. Housing as an asset versus housing as a commodity. The forum does not resolve these tensions, but it does something arguably more useful. It names them clearly, in public, with numbers attached. In 2026, that kind of clarity is not nothing. It is the start of a fight that Massachusetts cannot keep postponing.
