To the Editor:
Question 7 on the November ballot would require every Massachusetts town to allow a single-family home on any lot of 5,000 square feet with 50 feet of frontage, as long as the lot has access to public sewer and water. Whatever you think of its goals, understand what a yes vote does: It takes one of the most basic planning decisions away from our towns and hands it to a statewide formula.
Towns can already do this. Any town meeting can reduce its minimum lot size tomorrow, and the state even pays towns that adopt starter-home districts. Island towns have looked at that choice and declined so far, because unrestricted small lots do not produce year-round housing here. Question 7 doesn’t give towns a new tool; it takes away the right to decide, and an edict from Boston is the wrong way to settle a question that turns entirely on local conditions.
Here those conditions are plain. The measure assumes a lot with access to sewer can take on more homes. Oak Bluffs expects only about 150,000 gallons of added treatment capacity by 2028, and nearly all of it is already committed, mostly to nitrogen cleanup our ponds depend on, the rest to housing projects already in the pipeline. Edgartown faces similar limits. Tisbury’s plant can treat 139,000 gallons a day, and the town’s wastewater plan already commits all of it: The downtown is capped, the new State Road district takes the rest, and the next expansion costs $10 million or more. Question 7 would allow a home on every 5,000-square-foot sewered lot, inviting lots to be divided to that size, and each new hookup would compete for capacity already promised to affordable housing and water quality.
Nor is there any guarantee these homes would house year-round residents. The Island’s problem is not a shortage of houses; it is that too few of the ones we have are lived in year-round. On an Island where a small lot near town is prime second-home property, smaller lots without restrictions will add to the seasonal stock, not fix the imbalance.
A no vote from the Island sends Beacon Hill a clear message: Seasonal communities need the authority to tie small-lot housing to year-round or affordable use, and to tie sewer “access” to real capacity. If Question 7 passes anyway, those protections will have to come from the legislature, and our towns will need the same voters behind them. Either way, vote no on Question 7, and then stay engaged.
Ben Robinson
Tisbury
Ben Robinson is a chair of the Tisbury planning board. He is writing as a resident.
