"Despite recent statewide reform efforts, residential permitting in Massachusetts remains slow and unpredictable. As housing costs push families and employers toward lower-cost states like New Hampshire and Rhode Island, cities and towns don’t have to wait for Beacon Hill to act.
Much of the delay and added cost happens out of public view, in the back-office interactions between applicants, staff, and volunteer board members that occur long before any public hearing.
Drawing on 17 interviews with developers, consultants, government staff, local officials, and land use attorneys from across Massachusetts, Pioneer’s Chief Housing Economist Andrew Mikula identifies ten best practices that municipalities can adopt on their own to make the approval process faster, fairer, and more predictable.
The recommendations span three categories:
Easier to navigate process
- Make online permitting information clear, easily accessible, and consistent with zoning. At a minimum, towns should offer online checklists, a single page describing each stage of the process, and up-to-date fee schedules and timelines.
- Use a standardized online portal for permit application submittals. Moving submittals online reduces incomplete applications and gives both staff and applicants real-time visibility into where a project stands.
- Offer developers a pre-application meeting with municipal department heads and local board members. Meeting with officials before a formal application is filed lets both sides flag design, technical, or political issues while a project can still be adjusted cheaply.
- Have a single point of contact with the applicant throughout the process. A “permit coordinator” would save time by sequencing reviews correctly and giving applicants one person to call.
Faster, coordinated reviews
- Coordinate peer reviews early in the process. Municipal officials should anticipate which external reviews will be needed before a public hearing and sequence them to avoid redundancy, saving time and money for applicants and staff alike.
- Standardize and synchronize internal technical reviews. Codifying clear technical criteria in advance and requiring departments to comment in parallel, rather than in sequence, lets municipalities move faster without cutting corners on safety or code compliance.
Predictable decisions
- Codify objective review criteria and efficiencies in local ordinances and bylaws. Writing clear, objective thresholds—such as when a traffic study is actually required—into local bylaws locks in predictability for every future applicant, not just the well-connected ones.
- Require training for local board members. A required orientation on land use law and review procedure—already contemplated in pending state legislation—would help board members avoid costly, legally vulnerable overreach.
- Minimize the number of local officials who hold sway over subjective criteria. Consolidating project approval authority in a single body, as some communities have done for design review, gives applicants one clear source of guidance instead of conflicting direction.
- Fully implement permitting reforms from comprehensive plans. Communities that appoint a dedicated implementation body are far more likely to actually follow through on a comprehensive plan’s reforms rather than let them sit on a shelf.
Most of these recommendations rely on process changes at the ground level: providing clear, timely information to applicants and proactively managing internal reviews. Together, they offer municipalities a framework for evaluating projects both rigorously and expeditiously, respecting each site’s context while giving applicants the predictability they need.
Streamlined permitting won’t lower housing costs overnight, but it is a major pillar of a broader solution to the state’s housing shortage. "
Read the full report - https://pioneerinstitute.org/solving-the-permit-puzzle/
