Building on the city’s initiatives to address Boston’s housing affordability, Mayor Michelle Wu plans to sign an executive order making it faster and easier to boost affordable housing production. 

The announcement was made at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s annual Government Affairs Forum.

It can currently take up to 337 days to approve affordable housing; Wu hopes to reduce that time by half. 

“Building a Boston for everyone means ensuring that all of our residents and families have access to safe, affordable housing across our communities,” said Wu in a press release. “By streamlining the timeline on affordable housing projects, we’ll identify ways to make our processes more predictable for all projects to keep our city green and growing. I’m grateful to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and the BPDA for their leadership and look forward to accelerating our efforts for affordability across our neighborhoods.”

Five components make up the executive order, which Wu says is designed to increase the speed of approving affordable housing projects for development. They include: 

• Creating a more efficient path for Article 80 development review and approval.
• Studying and addressing zoning challenges to affordable housing development.
• Prioritizing affordable housing in the development review process.
• Creating a system to track affordable housing reviews and approvals.
• Establishing a governance structure to ensure effective implementation.

The order would direct the Boston Planning & Development Agency to recommend changes to parts of the city’s Zoning Code, establish an alternative to the current path for reviewing affordable housing developments and include community engagement, as well as clearer, faster timelines. 

“The BPDA is looking forward to creating a process that streamlines review and approval of affordable housing developments,” said chief of planning Arthur Jemison. “These projects are critical to boosting our city’s housing supply and making Boston more affordable – one of the BPDA’s top three priorities, along with resilience and equity.”

It would also require the establishment of an Affordable Housing Development Review Advisory Committee with members of several city agencies for evaluating actions taken to “prioritize and lessen the time associated with the development review and permitting of affordable housing developments.”