Public Land for Public Good: Citywide Land Audit

This Citywide Land Audit is an inventory of all property owned by the City of Boston and its quasi-City agencies. It also identifies all property that is vacant or underutilized within that inventory. At original publication, the 9.5 million square feet of land were identified in that category, representing 5.4% of the 176.9 million square feet under City ownership. The City committed to use this data to decide how best to deploy public land to serve Boston's most urgent needs:

1. Ensuring safe, healthy affordable housing for Boston residents. The City will identify locations to develop into new affordable units.
2. Identifying transformative community development opportunities. Developing these sites can help knit together the fabric of our city.
3. Addressing homelessness through a public health lens. The City will devote public land for recovery services and transitional housing.

The Citywide Land Audit identified City-owned land that was vacant or underutilized and presented a high opportunity for redevelopment. In the last year, we are proud to have made significant progress moving many of these parcels forward to serve the needs of the city.

The Citywide Land Audit identified many small city-owned parcels across Boston that are appropriate for infill development. Mayor Wu and Boston City Council allotted $58 million in American Rescue Plan (ARPA) funding for  Welcome Home Boston . This initiative fast tracks the production of affordable new homes by making 150 parcels of City-owned land available for affordable homeownership opportunities, and help more Bostonians become homeowners by teaching them what they need to know to buy a home, repair their credit, and pre-qualify for new City of Boston-backed mortgage products. 

The Mayor’s Office of Housing released a Request for Proposals (“RFP”) for the first 20 parcels, and received proposals back for affordable development on these parcels in early June 2023. An additional 19 parcels will be put out for development in August, and the Mayor’s Office of Housing (“MOH”) expects to put out 14 more parcels by the end of 2023. Each of these will be opportunities for affordable infill homeownership.

Last year, the Land Audit identified a number of other potential large sites for redevelopment including 95-133 Magazine Street in Roxbury, 327 Forest Hills Street in Jamaica Plain,  Sargent’s Wharf Parking Lot in the North End, BPS Campbell Resource Center in Dorchester, and the BPS Central Kitchen facility in Dorchester. The City is continuing to evaluate the feasibility and potential for mixed use development that meets pressing municipal and community needs on these sites at this time. 

Use the map below, or download the dataset at   Analyze Boston  .

Do you have suggestions for uses on the City's vacant land? Do you have a comment or correction on the data? Submit them  here.