Milton becomes ‘interim compliant’ with MBTA Communities Act

Local News

Milton voters are scheduled to consider two rezoning proposals at a Special Town Meeting on June 16.

By Annie Jonas

June 6, 2025 | 2:35 PM

2 minutes to read

After nearly two years of resistance and legal wrangling, the town of Milton has taken a significant step toward complying with the MBTA Communities Act, a 2021 state housing law requiring communities near public transit to zone for multifamily housing.

On the heels of a bitter and prolonged debate, town officials recently submitted an action plan to the state, bringing Milton into interim compliance – at least for now.

The next few weeks promise to be crucial. Milton voters are scheduled to consider two 3A zoning proposals on June 16 at a Special Town Meeting, and the outcome could determine whether Milton stays on a cooperative path – or heads back to the drawing board.

Milton, an affluent suburb just south of Boston, has been the most high-profile battleground in the state’s push for multifamily zoning. The MBTA Communities law requires 177 municipalities with access to the MBTA to create zoning districts for multifamily housing. Most have complied or are on the way to doing so, but Milton has long-sustained defiance.

Although the town’s Planning Board and Town Meeting initially approved a rezoning plan in 2023, voters overturned it in a special referendum in February 2024, with 54% voting against the measure. In response, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell sued Milton to enforce compliance with the law. That lawsuit was bolstered by a January ruling from the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, affirming that the MBTA Communities law is both constitutional and mandatory.

Following the court’s decision, Milton officials began working again on a revised zoning proposal that aimed to strike a balance between meeting state requirements while softening density in some of the previously targeted areas.

But the path forward remained rocky. According to the Commonwealth Beacon, on May 8, the Planning Board voted to submit two rezoning proposals for consideration at a Special Town Meeting: one treating Milton as an “adjacent community” with lower density requirements (a capacity of about 1,000 housing units, 10% of the town’s total), and another as a “rapid transit community” (a zoning capacity of 2,461 units, or 25% of the town’s total), which is how the state officially classifies the town due to the presence of the Mattapan Trolley.

But just five days later, on May 13, the board reversed course and removed the higher-density 25% plan from the Town Meeting warrant.

In response, residents who support more aggressive zoning launched a successful citizen’s petition campaign to reintroduce the higher-density proposal. The Select Board then authorized Town Administrator Nicholas Milano to submit an official action plan to the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, per a Commonwealth Beacon report.

The state accepted the plan, according to a compliance status sheet dated June 3, 2025, granting Milton interim compliance status.

Annie Jonas is a Community writer at Boston.com. She was previously a local editor at Patch and a freelancer at the Financial Times.