Milton argues that the guidelines of the MBTA Communities zoning law lay out zoning district rules in a way that the town claims are “arbitrary and capricious, unconstitutional, and otherwise unlawful.” The town also claims that the law does not give Campbell the authority to enforce it.
As far as Campbell’s office is concerned, the state is on steady ground legally. Beyond that, it serves as a moral corrective to discriminatory housing policy, she said.
“What I love about this law is not just that it's mandatory, and that the Legislature was crystal clear on that, and that we have to enforce it,” said Campbell, the first Black woman to hold the state AG post. “When you think about the history of housing laws in Massachusetts, in this country, they have been exclusionary, excluding certain people from living in a certain community, including myself and folks before me, cutting off their ability to not only choose where they would want to live, but also the ability to buy a home and build wealth for their families. This law allows us to focus on housing as a tool to close the racial wealth gap, to create more inclusive communities, and it is very inclusionary in its intent. That's a beautiful thing that I think sometimes
gets lost in the conversation.”
In challenging the lawsuit, and their “rapid transit” designation, Milton argues that the trolley system that extends through its neighborhoods from the Ashmont end of the Red Line in Dorchester is not comparable to the subway system. Milton officials have indicated they will probably challenge the town’s designation and move to develop a rezoning plan that could theoretically yield less than half of the units called for as a rapid transit community.
The attorney general, a 41-year-old Mattapan resident, was familiar with the infrastructure in question well before she took the state’s highest prosecutorial post. The state housing office, in Campbell’s view, clearly established the Mattapan Trolley Line as rapid transit with plenty of notice.
“Milton, of course, like every other rapid transit community, has been fully aware of what that is,” she said of the trolley line. “They receive funding from the state and from various sources to support that system. It's a public good that they have access to. I have access to it as well, living in Mattapan, and have taken the trolley and used the trolley to get to Ashmont, to go downtown. I think that question has been asked and answered. And I think people forget that they are going to get significant improvements to that line. And as they build more housing on the line, there's more development actively happening. It is readily available to folks to take and of course to be a transit-oriented community.”
Her sharp focus on housing is somewhat of a departure from her campaign promises, Campbell notes. She ran pledging to create a gun violence prevention unit, a reproductive justice unit, an elder justice unit, and a police accountability unit, all of which Campbell says are up and running.
A new housing unit, announced last year, is still getting off the ground. It is designed to work with municipal leaders, stakeholders, community-based organizations, developers, and others trying to bring about “more housing that is affordable and accessible to communities,” Campbell said.
Though she won’t get the springtime fast-track at the state’s highest court to decide the thorny issues of state and local zoning control that she asked for, the full Supreme Judicial Court will consider the suit later this year.
“We, of course, wanted a shorter time frame, just so that there's no confusion out there,” Campbell said. “And this can have the effect of creating or attempting to create confusion. The court put that off until October. That's fine. It's still enough time. And so we want to continue to make our arguments that we have the authority, one, to enforce this law. The second is that it’s mandatory. Third, Milton must come into compliance. And then we're gonna continue to work with them on doing just that, while not making this an adversarial process.”
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