Across the United States, affordable housing has become a defining crisis of our time. Rising costs, limited supply, and growing economic segregation are reshaping where people can live, work, and raise families. The consequences are no longer abstract: they show up in workforce shortages, longer commutes, declining school enrollments, and, increasingly, outmigration from high-cost states like Massachusetts.
Newton is not immune to these forces. Despite its prosperity and strong civic institutions, Newton is experiencing the same pressures felt across the region. When a place becomes too expensive for teachers, nurses, municipal workers, young families, and even mid-career professionals, people do not “adjust” — they leave. Over time, that hollowing out quietly undermines the very social fabric that makes a community successful.
One major reason affordability is so constrained in Newton is zoning. For decades, zoning rules have sharply limited what can be built in a city that is already largely built out. When demand continues to rise but supply is artificially restricted, prices escalate. That dynamic now defines Newton’s housing market.
Zoning is understandably a fraught issue. It touches neighborhood identity, property values, equity, and deeply held concerns about change. But it is also fundamentally a governance problem, not just a technical one. If Newton wants thoughtful, legitimate reform, we should convene a Citizens’ Assembly to develop a proposal for city-wide rezoning. Citizens’ Assemblies are used to develop and propose solutions that respond to specific challenges. An Assembly begins with recruitment of a demographically representative group of residents who agree to commit to investing their time to participate. The group is provided with balanced expert information in the form of presentations and documentation. After studying materials, members participate in facilitated conversations and are given time to deliberate and craft their proposals. This approach has been used successfully around the world to resolve complex, polarized public issues. It offers a way to move beyond adversarial hearings toward collective problem-solving.
Yet even if zoning is reformed, another barrier remains: market dynamics. Left to itself, the housing market reliably produces what is most profitable — typically large, expensive units — resulting in an oversupply of luxury housing. This is in contrast to what communities actually need to be communities: a distribution of price points to meet the needs of individuals, groups, and families with varying abilities to pay; physical configurations that integrate rather than segregate residents by income; and streetscapes that promote walkability, public transportation, and pedestrian traffic for small and local businesses .
What Newton needs is not just “more housing,” but the right kinds of housing: homes that allow seniors to downsize without leaving their neighborhoods, that enable young families to stay near schools and work, and that make it possible for teachers, service workers, and municipal staff to live in the communities they serve. These outcomes will not emerge organically from the market. They require intentional public investment.
Of course, public investment requires public funding, and one practical tool for raising funds in this case is a Pigouvian-style transfer tax on real estate transactions. Pigouvian taxes are designed to address situations where private transactions impose broader social costs. In Newton, high-value real estate transactions contribute to displacement pressures, rising rents, and declining economic diversity. A modest, graduated transfer tax would require those benefiting most from current market conditions to help fund solutions to the problems those conditions create. Properly designed, it could exempt lower-value transactions while generating a stable, locally controlled revenue stream dedicated to affordable and mixed-income development.
Ultimately, Newton faces a choice. It can remain locked in a slow-growth, exclusionary real estate market that gradually narrows who can afford to live here. Or it can renew the sense of shared responsibility that has made the city what it is — by reforming zoning, investing collectively, and designing housing policy around collective and mutually beneficial social goals rather than market defaults.
The real risk is not change. The real risk is a quiet future in which Newton becomes economically brittle, culturally homogeneous, and increasingly disconnected from the region we depend upon. Preserving Newton’s vitality will require coordinated action, shared responsibility, and effective public investment to create a future that works for more than just those who have already made it in. Citizens’ assemblies and a Pigouvian-style transfer tax are tools for reaching that goal.
