Developers have used 40B to force through horrible projects. The root problem is that the townships have fought against affordable housing for so long that there is this Mack truck-sized hole through which developers can drive, so long as they set aside part of their development as low income housing.
The state's I.G. review of 40B projects showed a massive amount of waste and outright tax fraud; there are cases pending with the A.G. over some of them, and the state has promised to improve oversight.
The question is whether the 40B idea itself is workable or whether it's always going to be broken/subject to abuse.
Without 40B we have no way to promote affordable housing in communities that want to keep it out (most of them, sadly). With 40B we hand developers a big club with which they can bash the locality that may be defending a wetland or (in the case of my neighborhood) trying to prevent a development that would have completely overwhelmed the small roads serving the area. I don't like either solution.
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momijizukamori
This is indeed the other side of the problem
Date: 2010-11-02 16:54 (UTC)The state's I.G. review of 40B projects showed a massive amount of waste and outright tax fraud; there are cases pending with the A.G. over some of them, and the state has promised to improve oversight.
The question is whether the 40B idea itself is workable or whether it's always going to be broken/subject to abuse.
Without 40B we have no way to promote affordable housing in communities that want to keep it out (most of them, sadly). With 40B we hand developers a big club with which they can bash the locality that may be defending a wetland or (in the case of my neighborhood) trying to prevent a development that would have completely overwhelmed the small roads serving the area. I don't like either solution.