Automatically Addressing a Housing Shortage

A model for writing an automatic response system into the law

If you’re a legislator who is serious about solving your city’s housing shortage, consider writing an automatic response system into your law.

Here’s how: pass an ordinance that defines when a shortage has become severe, unlocks temporary tools to accelerate housing construction, and automatically shuts those tools off once the shortage ends.

In other words: treat housing the way we treat other critical systems. If the power grid goes down, we don’t form a task force to study the pros and cons of repair, we aggressively work to restore it.

Here’s what your ordinance might look like:

1. Define the shortage

First, pick a metric. You need a clear signal that your city doesn’t have enough homes and that it’s time to act.

New York City uses a 5% vacancy rate as its benchmark: when vacancy falls below that, a housing emergency is declared. That’s not a bad starting point. Choose a number that makes sense for your city, and define who will measure it (perhaps a city department or a local university).

To avoid overreacting to blips, you might require two consecutive quarters of low vacancy before the ordinance kicks in.

2. Define your temporary tools

When a city falls into a housing shortage, it needs to move fast. Rules designed for stable times (lengthy planning processes, restrictive zoning, historical reviews) become untenable when there aren’t enough places to live.

Consider having your ordinance temporarily suspend or override those bottlenecks.

You might include:

• By-right approval for housing that meets basic criteria

• Expedited environmental and historical review

• Waivers or reductions of parking minimums, height limits, and other blockers

• Fast-tracked infrastructure upgrades for projects that add housing

• Lower permit and linkage fees to encourage development

• Shortened or removed public comment windows

• Automatic conversion approval for commercial to residential use

In short: take the shortage seriously and prioritize ending it above your normal concerns.

3. Define when the shortage ends

Once the vacancy rate returns to a healthy level — say, above 5% for two quarters — your emergency-style measures shut off automatically.

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Why this works

It’s clear

Everyone knows what counts as a housing shortage. No endless debate. Either the numbers say we’re short on housing, or they don’t.

It’s fast

Instead of waiting for someone to “do something,” the response is automatic. The second the shortage hits the trigger, the housing flywheel starts spinning.

It aligns incentives

If city agencies or local commissions know they’ll lose power during a shortage, they’ll have every reason to speed up approvals and fix problems before the trigger hits.

It ends itself

Once the shortage resolves, the rules return to normal. No need for political courage or legislative clean-up.

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In summary

If you want to solve a housing shortage, build a system that:

• Knows when it’s in one

• Equips itself to respond

• And knows when to stop

In a future post, I’ll share some specific policy tools Somerville could activate to pull itself out of our current housing shortage.