When the Large House Review Committee (LHRC) holds its first public listening session on June 9 at Powers Hall, it will be asking some truly Large questions. Over the course of a handful of listening sessions the committee needs to determine to what extent concerns expressed by many residents over the large, multi-million dollar houses that have been built on Needham’s smaller residential lots represent a genuine appetite for restriction. In short, is all the chatter about large houses simply a reaction to change? Or is it a sign there’s political will to further limit house sizes even if it has an economic impact on property values and the town’s tax base?
The last time house size regulations were passed, in 2017, the restrictions recommended by a similar committee were expected to strike a balance between size, demand, and price. However, developers and buyers found that, without exceeding the limits, they could build what some residents have said are homes that are too large for their sites and too expensive for young families that have comprised Needham’s housing market for the past 75 years.
LHRC committee member Oscar Mertz said that so far, the committee has been doing its homework. “We did background on the current bylaw and then did a history of a lot of the houses,” he said. “So we’re familiar with what’s happened since 2017.”
“Now we’ve got to hear from everybody and get the town’s input. What are the things that they’d like to address? That may mean no changes or it may mean let’s do some changes. We really don’t know yet where the town’s going to fall or what the community’s going to say.”
Mertz said the next steps in the committee’s research is to understand the building codes of similar towns and their economic impact. “What does it look like in Needham versus in Newton or Wellesley or Weston or other towns that are sort of comparable? By sort of setting the table for where we are and what other towns are doing, we want to try and get a reality check on what’s an appropriate sized house for a particular lot.”
The format of the listening session is still being discussed, but Mertz says the goal is to hear as many voices as possible, not just people brave enough to step up to a microphone. The plan is to have small group discussions that then get reported out to all attendees and to survey the attendees and the town at large.
The committee has stressed that it wants to hear from the community, whether by email, survey, or attending a listening session (there will be two more in the fall). “We’re doing as much outreach as we can,” said Mertz. “It’s important. Yet, we always manage to get to that point where somebody’s going to say, ‘Well, I never heard about this.’”
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