Malden City Council, Planning Board conclude successful municipal ‘sprint’ on new zoning regulations

City officials worked together on Malden-specific ordinance on new Accessory Dwelling Unit policy mandated by state

By Steve Freker

More often than not, when it comes to an important new municipal law or policy, it is customary to go by the “it is not a sprint, it is a marathon.” Not this time, however. With no time to spare, the Malden City Council, led by Council President Ryan O’Malley and the Malden Planning Board, steered by City Planner Michelle Romero and Chairperson Chuck Ioven, moved the proverbial mountains in the past 10-14 days to make sure that Malden had its own stamp of approval on a top-shelf municipal policy.

When the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities announced in late December its newest mandate to address the housing crisis in Massachusetts, it came with a sweeping mandate giving the go-ahead for Mass. residents to add Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) to their properties. Known as “granny flats,” and “in-law apartments” as well, it gave the so-called “green light” for virtually unlimited new additions to existing dwellings. The mandate also gave a February 2, 2025, deadline for individual cities and towns to formulate and register with the state their own desired adjustments and protocols for these ADU units, as long as they fit under the general state guidelines.

“If we did not come up our own zoning changes, we would have had to follow whatever the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dictated to us regarding ADUs,” Council President O’Malley, who represents Ward 4 in Malden, said early in the process.

Since then, the City Council and Planning Board literally made municipal history in sprinting to the finish of formulating – then enrolling and ordaining – changes to the municipal ordinance regarding ADUs.

The biggest history-maker was the fact that last week the City Council planned and held no less than three full City Council meetings in the same week on three consecutive evenings – Tuesday, January 28, Wednesday, January 29 and Thursday, January 30 – unprecedented in city history. All three of those meetings came after a nearly three hour Malden Planning Board meeting held on Monday, January 27, where members laboriously toiled with City Council members – most notably Ordinance Committee Chairperson Steve Winslow (Ward 6 Councillor) – to come up with recommendations for ordinance change amendments centered on ADUs.

On Aug. 6, 2024, Governor Healey signed the Affordable Homes Act into law (Chapter 150 of the Acts of 2024). Section 8 of the Affordable Homes Act amends the Zoning Act to allow ADUs up to 900 square feet to be built, by right, in single-family zoning districts.

In May of 2024, Ward 3 Councillor Amanda Linehan, who also works professionally with the Massachusetts Municipal Association, signalled to her colleagues this legislation was coming up quickly and that “we have to be ready for it in Malden.” Malden Councillors, led by Linehan, Winslow and Councillors-at-Large Craig Spadafora and Carey McDonald, began working on the issue at that time, and the work continued this Council session as well, with the Ordinance Committee meeting for hours-long sessions four times before last week’s meetings.

The newly revamped ADU ordinance, replete with just under a dozen approved Planning Board recommendations, was enrolled by a 10-1 vote of the City Council at the January 28 meeting, with Councillor-at-Large Spadafora opposed. At the January 29 meeting, the new ordinance was ordained by a unanimous vote in favor. On Thursday, January 30, a third Council meeting in three nights was held, just in case there was a reconsideration motion by one of the members, so the deadline of February 2 could be met. There was no reconsideration.

The two most pertinent points regarding ADUs that came out of the many meetings and many hours wrangling over the topic were, first, that the ADU applications would be reviewed by a Site Plan Design Committee with the “Building Commissioner as Zoning Enforcement Officer shall determine whether a unit is an Accessory Dwelling Unit. This determination may be appealed to the Board of Appeal as an administrative appeal under this ordinance.” Second, at any time, the Council could vote to revisit and revise the ADU ordinance as it saw fit. The urgency of the past two weeks was generated by the February 2 deadline imposed by the state.

Councillor Spadafora, at the January 28 meeting, warned against the ordinance as written, particularly the lack of dimensional controls and absence of parking space requirements. “If a Councillor tells me there aren’t too many cars [in Malden], they are lying. How can there be no parking requirement if they’re adding a unit?”

“There are also no dimensional controls and no affordable housing requirements. How does this address the housing crisis? We are the 4th densest developed city in the state as it is and we are opening this [ADU option] to every single dwelling in the city,” Spadafora added. “These aren’t scare tactics, it’s fat. We have lost control.”

“This is all about creating reasonable guidelines to increase housing in our city,” said Councillor McDonald. “This is good for Malden. I hear consistently that our residents do want to be able to add to their properties for lots of different reasons. They want relatives to live with them and some want to have more rental income.

“We have a housing shortage in this country and it is extremely acute here in the Boston area. It’s a huge problem in Malden,” McDonald added. “I wish we could target it on affordable housing but it is not allowed [under this law]. We are retaining our ability with community regulations to prevent against adding [ADUs] that are disruptive.”

“This is something positive for our city. We can build out our housing base and help every neighborhood in Malden,” Councillor McDonald said.

“We appreciate all the work our municipal staff and the Planning Board did in this work for our community,” Councillor Winslow said. “The state’s base position is, perhaps, creating some havoc in that dimensional controls are being applied in the most permissive way, but that will be addressed in the Site Plan Review phase.”

“Ultimately, this will be very beneficial to our residents,” Councillor Winslow said.