Issues 2025: Council candidates talk New Bedford’s housing crisis

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The candidates running for New Bedford City Council agree that housing costs are out of control. But few are pushing for groundbreaking new actions.

New Bedford faces one of the most significant housing crises in the state. A 2024 study found that Greater New Bedford needed to build 4,100 more homes to meet current demand. The shortage makes it easier for landlords to charge higher rents, and for homesellers to ask for higher prices. 

Of the 12 council candidates interviewed by The Light, most lacked comprehensive housing plans beyond the measures that Mayor Jon Mitchell’s administration has already taken. Asked what the city could do to increase its supply of housing, most incumbents and challengers brought up strategies introduced months or years ago.

Two progressive candidates, Councilor Shane Burgo and at-large candidate Jenny Arruda, said they support capping annual rent increases, despite hurdles that make it unlikely to ever become law in the city.

Most candidates said parking in residential neighborhoods is scarce already, and they saw new development as a potential threat to that. But the city’s initiatives to redevelop vacant properties had broad support among the candidates, and many were optimistic that turning these sites into new housing could help address the shortage without significant impacts on neighbors.

Some candidates have not participated in any of The Light’s election interviews. These include: the longest-serving councilor at-large, Brian Gomes; the unchallenged Ward 4 incumbent, Derek Baptiste; and the fisherman Ian Saunders, an at-large challenger.

The Light invited all City Council candidates to participate in an interview focused on the city’s housing crisis. Baptiste, Gomes, Shawn Oliver, Ryan Pereira, Shaun Mulvey, Saunders, and Scott Pemberton did not respond to this interview request, or declined the invitation. 

Most candidates support housing initiatives already in place

Incumbent councilors underlined their efforts to make housing easier to build by taking steps to sell vacant city-owned properties and update zoning. 

The incumbents noted that the city has put multiple empty fire stations and schools up for sale to housing developers. They also praised the work of Josh Amaral, the city’s housing director. Amaral’s office recently hired a full-time vacant property development manager whose sole job is to get empty problem properties back into use, and councilors said they wanted to see that work continue.

Councilor Naomi Carney wants to see more action on vacant nursing homes, while councilors Maria Giesta and Leo Choquette said the city should target vacant churches.

Over the last year, the City Council has passed a series of zoning ordinances to make building housing easier in the city. It continues to review other zoning ordinances the mayor has proposed. In particular, the councilors touted new “transit-oriented” development districts designed to stimulate dense, mixed-use development near the city’s new MBTA commuter rail stations.

Challengers frequently suggested making changes that the city has already made, including working with builders to revamp vacant properties and selling empty schools and fire stations.

At-large candidate Christopher Cotter was among them. Asked if he had ideas for actions the administration hasn’t already taken, he said much of the work on vacant properties was happening “behind closed doors or through subcommittee meetings where as an outsider, we really don’t have the the insight or the inside information on what in fact is being done with, or looking into getting these things done.”

City Council subcommittee meetings are public. The work of the vacant building development manager has been described in media reports by The Light and other outlets, as well as in subcommittee meetings. The sales of vacant city properties have been publicly discussed in multiple City Council meetings and are part of a public bid process.

Most candidates said it’s important for the city to work closely with developers, but few had specific visions for what that would look like.

Incumbent Councilor Ian Abreu said the city needs to “cut red tape” to “get rid of the stigma that New Bedford is not developer-friendly.” He said the city should keep supporting and potentially expand tax breaks for new housing developments.

Ward 1 candidate Matthew Marko said the city could do more to make sure developers can use low-income housing tax credits, which fund projects if developers agree to set aside units for households under certain income thresholds. The credits are distributed at the state level, but Marko said the city could “push it more.”

At-large candidate James Roy backed a measure that would have made duplexes legal to build in any of the city’s residential neighborhoods, effectively eliminating single-family zoning.

The Mitchell administration included this provision in a zoning ordinance late last year, and the council passed the ordinance hastily without realizing the change was in it. Councilors quickly reversed the change after discovering what they had done.

Progressive candidates call for rent control

Burgo lashed out at the mayor and said the administration was moving too slowly on housing. 

Burgo, the current council president, repeated his recent call for Mitchell to be voted out of office. He has reportedly expressed interest in running for mayor in 2027, New Bedford Light opinion columnist Jack Spillane previously wrote.

The mayor promised a slate of zoning reforms in the March 2023 Building New Bedford housing plan. They included new “transit-oriented” districts to promote development around the city’s MBTA stations, streamlining of the review process for new developments, and reductions in the amount of parking required for new housing.

Almost all of the promised reforms have been sent to the City Council for review. Some, like the transit districts and streamlined review process, have already become law. But the rollout has taken months longer than originally projected. The administration planned to bring the parking ordinance to the council in late 2024, but that didn’t happen until this month.

“We know that things in government technically tend to move slow —  for good reason, because you don’t want to rush things and it gets sloppy,” Burgo said. “But this has been moving extremely slow.”

Burgo also said he was frustrated that the administration had commissioned reports on housing and homelessness “that tell us all the things that we already know, and not actually getting any of the work done.”

He claimed credit for the Building New Bedford Plan because the administration introduced it after Burgo joined the council in 2021 and became its most outspoken housing advocate.

Burgo said he supports more development to close the city’s housing gap, but in the interim he believes the city should limit how much landlords can increase rent each year. He proposed a “rent stabilization” ballot question in 2023, but the mayor vetoed it and the council didn’t have the votes to override the veto.

Such a measure would require approval from the state Legislature through a home rule petition that must be approved by the mayor, Burgo said. Boston submitted a home rule petition for rent stabilization in 2023, but the Legislature hasn’t acted on it.

The housing coalition Homes for All Massachusetts is collecting signatures to put a question on the 2026 ballot that would cap annual rent increases statewide. The deadline to collect the required 74,574 signatures is Dec. 3.

Burgo said he recognizes that there’s not enough support at the local or state level to introduce rent stabilization in New Bedford, but reiterated that he still supports it.

The only other person in the race who supports rent stabilization as strongly as Burgo does is Arruda, the at-large candidate. Despite the long odds of such a measure ever becoming law, Arruda said the city needs to consider it because housing costs have outpaced incomes.

“It is still a conversation worth having because it’s a tool in the toolbox that we need to right our ship,” she said.

Asked about measures to increase the city’s housing supply, Arruda said she didn’t support building more housing downtown because of limited parking. She pivoted to boosting homeownership through first-time homebuyer programs and turning multifamily housing into condos.

Arruda echoed Burgo’s calls to remove Mitchell from office.

“[Mitchell] seems to really want to gentrify us to the point where all the middle class will become the poor and the poor will be below the poverty line,” she said.

Marko, the Ward 1 candidate challenging incumbent Choquette, said rent control might be worth considering if the city can’t build enough housing to reduce prices over the next decade.

“I wouldn’t jump to it on day one, but I wouldn’t rule it out either,” he said.

Choquette strongly rejected rent control with one exception — he said he would support measures to mitigate rising housing costs for elderly residents on fixed incomes.

Ward 5 candidates bring unique ideas

The candidates for Ward 5 both had ideas for approaches that the city hasn’t already used.

Councilor Joe Lopes suggested expanding the city’s building department to speed up routine construction permits for renovations and new developments. He said this would lower the financial burden on developers as they wait for permits.

“And once they have a good relationship with the city, it’s easier to get that next job done or in the pipeline,” Lopes said.

Renee Fernandes, the city’s former treasurer-collector, who’s running for Lopes’ seat, said the council should give more resources to the New Bedford Housing Authority to develop more housing. To secure that funding, she said, the council needs to work more closely with its state representatives and congressional delegation.

She was the only candidate to say that the city should work to improve wages so that residents can better afford high housing costs.

Fernandes disagreed with the way the City Council has handled city-owned vacant properties, including empty schools and fire stations. Many of the candidates said it was good that the city has sent out requests for proposals, or RFPs, inviting developers to submit plans to turn them into housing. But Fernandes said the city could revamp those properties faster and easier by simply auctioning them off.

The RFP process gives the city more control over how the properties are developed, allowing the council to choose from a set of proposals and make an agreement with a developer that includes backup plans in case the project falls through. But the bid process takes months, and recent RFPs to redevelop vacant fire stations were delayed because of legal technicalities.

Fernandes said the selective process can come with high standards that disincentivize developers.

“We want the crème de la crème, but we have to recognize that the cost of the crème de la crème just sometimes doesn’t equal what an investor is willing to pay,” she said.

Lopes backed the city’s use of RFPs, but said the city could structure them better — for example, he thought the RFP for the vacant Taylor School might have worked better if it was divided into three parcels.

At-large incumbent Burgo also mentioned the need to reevaluate the RFP process but didn’t go into detail.

A brewing battle over parking

Every candidate interviewed by The Light said the need for new housing has to be balanced with the need for parking. This is likely to become a major debate between the council and administration in the next few months.

City zoning currently requires developers to set aside two off-street parking spaces for every new apartment they build in most areas of the city. Developers and housing advocates argue that this requirement is unnecessary and impractical, raising the cost of building beyond realistic levels. Many developers get permission from the city’s zoning board to set aside fewer off-street parking spaces.

Recognizing the obstacle, the administration reduced the minimum to one space per unit in the new transit-oriented MBTA zoning districts. And this month, the mayor introduced a long-awaited ordinance to lower parking minimums citywide.

Under the proposed ordinance, single-family homes and duplexes would still be held to the two-spaces-per-unit standard. But larger multifamily buildings would only need one space for each unit and two spaces for each unit with three or more bedrooms. The proposal would also establish criteria for when to grant developers exceptions to the parking rules. Not all candidates had reviewed the ordinance when interviewed by The Light.

Most of the candidates were open to revisiting the two-space minimum, with reservations.

Burgo said one space per unit makes sense.

“We should be concerned about getting people housed, as opposed to getting people a parking space,” he said.

Carney and Lopes said they would support requiring 1.5 spaces per unit, a standard that would require three spaces for every two apartments. Carney suggested building more parking underground, while Lopes said the city could promote other modes of transportation such as buses, bikes, Zipcars and app-based electric scooters.

Abreu, Choquette, and Marko said they would support reduced minimums in some areas, but not citywide.

Fernandes and Giesta said it was important to protect parking because New Bedford is a car-centric city. Giesta said she didn’t want parking to stand in the way of development, but she had a “hard time” accepting a one-space-per-unit minimum. Her constituents have opposed housing developments in the past because parking was such a big concern for them, she said.

Arruda had deep concerns about parking, particularly downtown, but she said the city needed to “open up” its parking requirements because she believed the zoning board could favor some projects over others in decisions on exceptions.

The only candidate who opposed reducing parking minimums was Cotter, who said the city should keep the two-space standard and review exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

Balancing housing and character

Candidates generally agreed that the city could build more housing without sacrificing the “character” of existing neighborhoods.

They believed the city could find the space for more housing — and parking — by redeveloping vacant buildings and “underutilized” areas, like the Kings Highway plazas.

Even Burgo, one of the more progressive voices on housing, said that simply increasing the city’s housing supply without regard for surrounding neighborhoods could be “disastrous.” At the same time, he said opposition to new housing can sometimes rise to unrealistic levels.

Neighborhood character was important to Choquette. He said he supported building more multifamily housing, but not in the suburban Ward 1.

“If we just start building on every buildable lot, multi-family units, we’re going to ruin what Ward 1 is,” he said.

His opponent, Marko, said people should be open to building new housing in more areas. Neighbors should be willing to “meet in the middle” because the housing crisis has become so severe.

Abreu said the public hearing process is a good place to work out resident concerns about potential projects. He also said the council should do more to educate residents about the need for new development.

“We can’t complain about the revenue from our commercial tax base — or lack thereof — and complain about a serious housing affordability issue,” he said, “but yet in the same breath, say ‘not in my backyard.’”

How to vote on Nov. 4

All these candidates are vying for your vote. 

The general election for City Council, School Committee, and assessor is on Tuesday, Nov. 4. The polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. You can find your polling location online or by visiting the Election Commission office in City Hall.

An application for an in-person absentee ballot can be completed in the Election Commission office until Nov. 3 at noon. (The deadline for mail-in ballot applications was Oct. 28.)

All mail-in ballots must be received before polls close, at 8 p.m. on Election Day.  

Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org.

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