The Bottom-Up Revolution
Andrew Mikula is leading a grassroots campaign to put affordable housing on the Massachusetts ballot in 2026. The initiative would legalize single-family homes on smaller lots. Today, he shares how he's building a broad coalition — from bankers to housing advocates — to make incremental, family-oriented housing reform possible.
Transcript (Lightly edited for readability)
Hello and welcome to this Bottom-Up Short. I'm Norm of Strong Towns, and I'm excited to be able to share with you this interview today with Andrew Mikula of Legalize Starter Homes, an initiative in Massachusetts that is working to legalize starter homes, in part to create the conditions in which we can see a greater spread of that necessary housing that is so needed within our communities.
Andrew has been a Strong Towns member since 2023, and he is driving this forward in his work as a policy advocate and analyst, but also in his own capacity as an individual and citizen within his community, working to make this possible. Andrew, welcome to this Bottom-Up Short.
Thanks so much for having me, Norm.
Can you tell me about Legalized Starter Homes and the project that you've been taking on in the Massachusetts region, but also, more broadly, the goal that you have for broader reform in this area?
Absolutely. In August, I filed an initiative petition with the state attorney general in Massachusetts for a ballot measure that we're hoping to get officially on the ballot for November 2026 that would make it legal to build new single family homes on lots as small as 5,000 square feet, about the size of an NBA basketball court, wherever there's public sewer and water service.
Because land is so expensive in much of Massachusetts and around the country, allowing homes on smaller lots will reduce the cost of homes for buyers and make it so that developers don't have to build giant McMansions just to justify the cost of assembling so much land. I do work as a housing policy researcher in my day job. My employer is not involved at all as an organization. I'm doing this in my personal capacity, but I really relied on a lot of connections I've made to other policy people, attorneys, advocates, who believe, like Strong Towns does, that the minimum lot size question is a big part of what is going to make it viable to build smaller, more affordable homes.
So what is your quick response when people say, "Why do we have minimum lot sizes, and who does it serve?"
I mean, I think a lot of it goes back to an era where land was a lot cheaper and maybe there weren't the kind of utilities infrastructure and services that we have now in some of those places. But right now, especially in Greater Boston, there are a lot of communities that have half-acre minimum lot size requirements, but fully urban style utilities, access to regional wastewater and water services that gets piped right to Deer Island off the coast. It just seems like a big discrepancy to me between what's underground versus what you're allowed to build above ground.
How do you get a ballot initiative on the agenda? I noticed you have your website, legalizedstarterhomes.com. Definitely encourage folks to go and check that out. But what is the process and what's been your impression of it so far?
The response has been great. I mean, we've gotten the statewide pro-housing advocacy group, Abundant Housing Massachusetts, to help us with organizing and endorsements. Like I mentioned, we have some other policy people who are part of the first 10 petitioners that you need to get an audience with the Attorney General's office to consider moving it forward.
A lot of folks have come to me with anecdotes and just want to be involved because they see the issue affecting their communities on the ground, whether it's because they have trouble affording a home when they're first trying to buy one in Massachusetts, or maybe they're a senior who can't find somewhere to downsize within their communities but wants to stay there. It's just been overwhelming, the response that's so positive.
I think that even some of the corners where we expected opposition, in a way, either it's split up enough among members of local control advocacy groups, or it's people who have seen some of the more ambitious, preemptive stuff the state has done and said, "Well, this is single family homes in the suburbs. It's family-oriented housing. It's incremental, and I like that a lot better."
What is the progress on things like backyard cottages and creating coach houses, or the technical term being ADUs for that? Are you also seeing a parallel effort there? Or is that something where there's been effort made to address that, but not to do anything about minimum lot sizes that are actually standing in the way?
Accessory dwelling units or backyard cottages, or basement and attic apartments, whatever you want to call them, they're legal statewide in Massachusetts. I think we can go further. I've advocated for what California has, where you by default allow a baseline, prototypical ADU on a lot, as opposed to making it more contextual, like we do, where you just can't have more restrictions than would be in place for a single family home on the same lot in the same zoning district.
But we've certainly seen progress on that, and it's going to dovetail with our petition to create even more homes, more flexibility for folks who want to accommodate multi-generational households or just make some extra rental income in their retirement for those downsizing seniors I mentioned.
I feel like this is one of those areas where there's a Strong Towns argument to be made for taking action at the state level on state level policy that can certainly make a difference. You want to address some of the challenges of the trade-offs that are necessary when people want to simultaneously assert local responsibility for things that are simultaneously being held back or persistently blocked along the way.
I know state preemption isn't always Strong Towns' MO, but I think we—I can point to some of the material like the Housing Ready city toolkit. It uses a lot of the same language we do in our messaging documents to describe why it's necessary to legalize starter homes in all residential zones. You do need to allow homes on smaller lots, and it is a regulatory issue, as well as a financing issue and some other things that we aren't addressing in the campaign because of constitutional prohibitions on asking voters multiple questions at once in a ballot question.
But I think this is an issue where we want to be careful to avoid making it seem like a one-size-fits-all solution. Really, it's a baseline, because there are—Chuck has said on his podcast—really, in existing neighborhoods, we shouldn't have minimum lot sizes at all in a lot of contexts. But if we're giving communities that nudge to think about this, maybe some will go further than we do in the language of the law itself. So it's going to automatically create some of the variety that reflects the local conditions that folks are seeing. We just need somebody to get that off the ground.
What stands out too is this is clearly and squarely behind enabling the construction of housing in places where it belongs, rather than prohibiting or adding layers of restrictions. I think we've taken the same approach with statewide parking reform on other efforts related to housing reform in Colorado, in Montana, in California, and certainly that's part of the challenge.
But as I think about it, this is something where you're obviously very knowledgeable about this and helping to inspire a lot more people to dive in and say, "Hey, here's a very tangible thing that I can do." I took note, you emailed Chuck on the 29th of December, which means that that's not just about crossing I's and dotting T's. That's a passion for you.
Do you want to share what your experience so far has been in getting you to the point where you're taking these efforts to be at the head of a ballot amendment measure? I mean, that's a significant step forward, but also seems to be in line with your story going back as well.
I mean, I've tried to make a more hands-on impact in the realm of housing abundance and affordability for a long time. I tried my hand at being a local official. I decided that work wasn't quite for me. I wasn't quite getting the kind of long-term strategic work I wanted.
I also tried doing market research for a developer investor for a while. That was something where I hoped I would get a full picture of the process, but it turned out that for one reason or another, it didn't make sense to keep me on in that role. I think a lot of economic uncertainties around development, especially with tariffs and high interest rates and whatnot, made it so that I had a less necessary position than some folks who were doing the acquiring and the financing and stuff.
So this is the most recent iteration of that. I want to see this process from start to finish, where I do something, get something off the ground and make a difference. I've found that my connections in the policy world and among land use attorneys and other advocates really have been fruitful for this effort. It feels like I'm just doing this every day with my friends, which is the best part.
I love that. I mean, that's so much of what Strong Towns feels like as well. You said that you came across Strong Towns stuff in 2017. Was there anything that stood out from those early years or earlier years that you'd love to share?
I'm not sure how early this was, but Daniel Herriges wrote an article a few years ago about why developers are only building luxury housing. That really stood out to me because it put the perspective on—so much of the on-the-ground housing reform-related stuff is from the perspective of the person who's buying or renting the housing. That's, of course, very important. But getting the perspective of someone who needs to build that housing before anyone can become part of that community is also very, very necessary.
As I think, you know, is very much in Strong Towns' wheelhouse, we want that developer to be as close to the community as possible. So understanding that perspective and what it takes to have development that is responsive to community needs—articles like that, I think, really get to the heart of the issue that we've made it really, really hard to build housing that is responsive to community needs. We can change that. It's in our hands.
I'll put a link to your website as well as to that article by Daniel on why developers only build luxury housing. It's connected also to an article—maybe I can convince our team to include this—"Our Self-Imposed Scarcity of Nice Places," and the way that we've also used so many of these types of codes and things like that to actually drive away much of the things that now we wish that we had more of.
As you use a pretty powerful tool, the ballot question, and the efforts that you're doing here to move change, do you have any suggestions or advice for folks that are interested in maybe taking up the torch and doing something similar in their own state or province?
Talk to people. Go to events where you might feel like the odd person out, either because it's all practitioners and you're a policy person, or it's all attorneys and you're not one. You'll learn a lot from getting a perspective that's outside of your bubble. I think everyone has a bubble, in a way.
Has there been a communication tool that's worked well for amassing an audience?
We've certainly done a lot of media appearances with different audiences in mind. We had a contractor until recently, actually, who helped book those things for us as a campaign. She was really great at getting us in front of people who might not be receptive to some parts of what we were doing, but still wanted to hear us out. I think that's how you move the needle.
Especially in an issue like this, where it is, again, single family homes in the suburbs that we're talking about here, which I think for a lot of urbanists is not really what they want to do. But sometimes incrementalism is about starting from where people are with what they want in the communities where they live. Especially in a place that's as politically fragmented as Massachusetts, you have a lot of communities that don't think of themselves as part of Greater Boston or connected to the city, even though they're 12 miles away and have half-acre zoning and have three train stations. I'm describing my hometown, Wellesley.
We've done this curious thing where, up until recently, we had a very clear distinction of what was rural and what was urban, and then we were like, "What if we added this third category?" We just got to create, in a sense, the ideal version. The only trouble is, it actually doesn't work that well, and it starts to break down quite significantly.
As we close, I always love hearing, what is it that gives you hope in the work? What is it that drives you? But also, what are some of the things that, yeah, especially fill you with a sense of hope or optimism here?
Just the ability of different stakeholders to come together on this issue. I mean, I've talked to bankers, I've talked to the business community. I've talked to really gung-ho activist types who don't want anything to do with the business community around any other issue. It just feels like the conversation is moving in the right direction. Now we just need to change some laws too.
100%. Well, Andrew Mikula, thank you for being on Bottom-Up Shorts. Definitely head over to legalizedstarterhomes.com. That's your best opportunity to see what they're doing in Massachusetts, and also perhaps consider, is there a way that you can develop a coalition in your community as well as in your state or province to be able to drive these similar types of changes forward?
We have a lot of resources on the Strong Towns site to help guide you, but I would also recommend checking out what Andrew and his team have been putting together. Andrew, thank you for being on Bottom-Up Shorts today.
Thank you so much for having me, Norm.
Very good. Have a great rest of the day to everybody, and take care and take care of your places.
This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a non-profit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.