Two Council Ordinances Would Make Developers Face Displacement Reviews and Price Affordable Units by Neighborhood Income

Two Boston city councilors have filed a pair of ordinances that would require the city to assess whether every proposed development risks pushing out existing residents and businesses, and would tie the price of city-backed affordable housing to the incomes of the neighborhood where it is built rather than to a regional benchmark.

Councilors Julia Mejia and Brian Worrell offered both measures, which were filed on Oct. 21, 2026, and placed on the agenda for the City Council's meeting that day, according to the council's Legistar records. One, Docket 2026-1959, would establish a Displacement Impact Mitigation Initiative and Trust Fund. The other, Docket 2026-1960, would establish Neighborhood-Based Affordability Standards. As of Thursday morning, the council's online records listed both as agenda items and did not yet show what action, such as referral to committee, was taken.

The displacement ordinance would add a new Section 8-14.10 to Chapter VIII of the City Code. Its stated purpose is to "identify development-related displacement risks early, develop project-specific mitigation plans, and coordinate investments to help Boston residents and neighborhood businesses and organizations remain and thrive." The program would be run by the city's Development Review Division.

Under the text, the division would assess the potential displacement risks of "all proposed development projects," in coordination with other city departments, boards and agencies. The assessment would be based on a community process in which the division must "seek and accept comments and input from affected residents, businesses, and organizations, including local advisory groups."

For any project with a publicly noticed meeting, the division would have to publish whether a displacement assessment has been completed and, if so, a Displacement Assessment Completion Form, kept on a publicly accessible platform. The ordinance also directs the division to create a process through which community members could appeal its initial assessment before a project receives final approval.

Projects that the division deems to present risks of displacement would become "Covered Projects." For those, the division would be required to produce and publish Displacement Assessment Reports before final approval, documenting its initial findings, plans of action, mitigation efforts and final resolutions. The reports would also have to list the agencies involved, describe community outreach and feedback, include written responses to material comments and advisory group recommendations, and disclose "the methods, data, and tools used" in the assessments.

The division would then be responsible for identifying feasible mitigation efforts, creating implementation plans and overseeing them. The ordinance does not specify what those mitigation measures must be or set a fee or payment schedule for developers.

Money for mitigation would flow through a new Displacement Impact Mitigation Trust Fund. The ordinance directs the city's Collector-Treasurer to establish the trust "in the form and manner of a future Declaration of Trust," and, subject to approval by the City Council and the mayor, authorizes the trust to accept and spend contributions consistent with its purposes. Subject to appropriation, the division would use the fund to support mitigation and "assist impacted residents, businesses, and organizations."

Every Displacement Assessment Report would be sent to the City Clerk, who would forward it to the mayor and docket it at the council's next meeting. The division would also file an annual report on the initiative and the fund, to be reviewed at an annual council hearing. The ordinance would take effect immediately upon passage.

The second ordinance addresses how Boston defines affordability. Most income-restricted housing is priced using Area Median Income set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for a region much larger than the city. The ordinance's preamble says housing priced to a regional benchmark "may remain beyond the means of households living in Boston neighborhoods and therefore not be truly affordable," and cites the difference between Mattapan and the Seaport as an example.

The measure would create a new Section 10-13 of the City Code establishing a "Neighborhood Area Median Income," an annual estimate of median household income for defined Boston neighborhoods. The text states that the figure is a local measure and "shall not be represented as a HUD-approved income limit."

The Mayor's Office of Housing would convene a working group, including the Planning Department, the Office of Housing Stability, the Zoning Board, the Boston Housing Authority, advocates, experts, historians of Boston neighborhoods, homeowners, renters, developers and landlords, to draft neighborhood boundaries, calculation methods and income schedules within 180 days of enactment. A 90-day public comment period would follow, with at least one in-person meeting in each council district and at least three virtual meetings. The office would then have 90 more days to finalize the initial rules, putting the full process at roughly a year.

Several provisions are aimed at preventing manipulation. "A developer may not select or alter a boundary," the text says, and projects that cross neighborhood lines would use the lower benchmark. For each city-backed commitment, the pricing benchmark would be "the lower of Neighborhood AMI and Regional AMI" at the same household size and tier. The ordinance also bars calculating neighborhood income by simply averaging census tract medians and requires the city to publish its data, margins of error and adjustments.

The standard would apply to "covered commitments": discretionary city housing grants, loans, and dispositions or ground leases of city-owned land executed after the rules take effect. Federal and state eligibility, tax-credit, voucher and funding rules would remain controlling, and the ordinance states that it does not replace HUD income limits.

The text also sets limits on its own reach. It creates no neighborhood residency preference and does not exclude applicants from other neighborhoods or restrict voucher holders. It does not impose rent regulation on unrestricted private housing or alter existing approvals and tenancies. It "does not itself amend the Boston Zoning Code"; instead, the housing office and the Planning Department would send the council and the Boston Zoning Commission any amendments needed to apply neighborhood pricing to inclusionary units.

City-controlled listings would have to disclose both the neighborhood and regional income figures, and the housing office would publish an annual dashboard comparing the two benchmarks with unit prices and the share of neighborhood households able to afford each tier.

Both ordinances describe themselves as complements to other pending proposals, including a Neighborhood Impact Commission and Special Protection Zones. A search of Boston news outlets on Thursday found no coverage of the filings beyond a brief agenda summary on the council-tracking site Council TL;DR.