Lessons – and opportunities – from starter home ballot question loss
Sponsored by The Boston Foundation The Best of CommonWealth Beacon OPINION A "starter" home built in Wrentham under the state's 40B affordable housing law. (Photo by Michael Jonas) Lessons – and opportunities – from starter home ballot question loss November 8, 2026 By Greg Reibman and Max Woolf By a razor-thin margin, Massachusetts voters rejected Question 7 , the ballot measure that would have capped minimum lot size requirements for single-family homes at 5,000 square feet. This commonsense reform could have unlocked thousands of new homes. Estimates ranged from a conservative 750 a year to more than 5,000 a year. More importantly, it would have begun undoing decades of exclusionary zoning that encouraged McMansions and pushed starter homes toward extinction. Our chamber enthusiastically endorsed the measure, the first business association in Massachusetts to do so. We did so because we saw an opportunity to create homes for young professionals near their jobs o...