Critics rap housing panel's makeup

Critics of Chapter 40B, the state's affordable-housing law, say Governor-elect Deval Patrick has let them down by not including any advocates for municipalities on his transition team looking into housing issues.

Patrick's 12-member panel -- which is gathering ideas for a new housing policy for Massachusetts -- includes a real estate developer and three lawyers who represent developers, but no town planner, municipal official, or local housing authority representative. The other members represent an affordable housing advocacy group, a carpenters union, an entity that finances housing development, three community development groups, a university and a college.

"Where's the local input?" asked John Belskis, founder of the statewide Coalition for the Reform of 40B. His group, which wants to give communities more voice in the development of below-market housing projects, has members in 128 Massachusetts cities and town, Belskis said.

Cochairman David Abromowitz, a partner in the law firm Goulston and Storrs, which represents some of the state's largest developers, said the committee is listening to people with a variety of views on the state's housing policies, and local voices have been part of that group.

"We have had a very open process," Abromowitz said.

He said that the transition team has received hundreds of e-mails and written submissions from people about the state's housing policies, and has heard from dozens of people at three public meetings.

He also said housing panel members were selected because they have experience in housing issues and are good listeners.

Cyndi Roy, a Patrick spokeswoman, said he plans to carefully assess the community feedback gathered by the group. The panel was slated to deliver its findings to Patrick's staff on Friday. "Activists on all sides should be careful not to judge the outcome before it comes," she wrote in an e-mail.

Still, Belskis said he is not convinced that his group will get a fair shake from what he has called a developer-dominated panel. "We are very concerned," he said.

In recent years, developers have used Chapter 40B's regulations to gain approval for housing complexes to be built along highways, near floodplains, and in industrial parts of towns.

The law allows developers to bypass zoning restrictions in communities without sufficient affordable housing, as long as they set aside about 25 percent of a project's units for low- or moderate-income residents. For a community to be exempt from 40B, at least 10 percent of its housing stock must qualify as affordable, based on area income figures.

Supporters say the law, passed in 1969, is a necessary tool for creating lower-cost housing in an expensive state; critics say it allows developers to build housing with virtually no restrictions and overwhelm communities with rapid residential growth.

Developer Patrick Lee, a principal with Trinity Financial Inc., shares the chairman's role with Abromowitz. The other members of the panel are Aaron Gornstein, with Citizens Housing and Planning Association, a 40B advocacy group; Joseph Feaster, a lawyer and former chairman of Boston's Zoning Board of Appeals; Dennis R. Kanin, a lawyer at Foley Hoag and former manager with the New Boston development firm; Mark Erlich, with the 26,000-member New England Regional Council of Carpenters; Jenny Netzer, with MMA Financial, a major real estate investment house; John Barros, executive director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, a community advocacy group in Roxbury; Barry Bluestone, a Northeastern University dean; Stonehill College's president, the Rev. Mark T. Cregan; J. Stephen Teasdale, with the Main South Community Development Corporation in Worcester; and Ana Luna, of the Arlington Community Trabajando in Lawrence.

Christine McConville's e-mail is cmcconville@globe.com.