State opens grant program for towns that have enacted multifamily zoning

The Healey-Driscoll administration has opened a $15 million grant program for communities that are certified as compliant with the MBTA Communities Act, and Harvard is eligible. Communities can use the grants for projects supporting housing production, including infrastructure upgrades, planning, rehabilitation, and the purchase of property for housing.

Harvard passed the multifamily bylaw required by the act well ahead of its December 2025 deadline, at last spring’s Town Meeting. The bylaw created an 8-acre overlay district near the Route 2 interchange at 185, 187, and a part of 203 Ayer Road. Harvard’s obligation was to zone for 113 units; the bylaw allows for 120 units by right, with a density bonus—available through special permit—if affordable units are included in a development.

The town received its compliance letter just last week from the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, which regulates housing issues and administers the grant program.

To date, 75 of the 177 communities that are required to enact multifamily zoning have done so. Harvard is one of the 33 towns that have received the compliance notices needed to apply for grants. According to the program’s guidelines, awards will range between $250,000 and $1 million. Requests for funding should “support a complete project or complete phase and must provide clear justification for the requested amount,” the guidelines said.

Planning Board Chair John McCormack told other board members about the grant program at the board’s Oct. 7 meeting and suggested that the town consider a grant to bring municipal water to the multifamily zone. That infrastructure, he said, might eventually be expanded to the Ayer Road commercial district. Select Board member Rich Maiore, who attended part of the meeting, agreed that the idea was worth pursuing. Discussion was brief; no motion was made nor vote taken.

To date, only the town of Milton has defied the law by at first passing zoning for multifamily zones, but then repealing it by referendum. The state’s attorney general has taken Milton to the Supreme Judicial Court; arguments began last week. Holden has publicly stated its opposition to the law but has not yet declared whether it will comply with the law by its December 2025 deadline.