A close reading of the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision that upheld both the constitutionality of the MBTA Communities Act and the attorney general’s power to enforce it may hold even better news for housing advocates than it first appeared, according to Boston zoning attorney Gerry D’Ambrosio.

Start with the official acknowledgement of the state’s “ongoing housing crisis” in the first sentence of Chief Justice Kimberly S. Budd’s opinion in Attorney General v. Town of Milton, et al., D’Ambrosio says.

Using that phrase has become “a loaded term at many community hearings on new housing because people will contest that we’re in a housing crisis,” D’Ambrosio says. “Here, you have the Supreme Judicial Court chief justice acknowledging it and sticking it in an opinion. As a matter of law, we’re in a housing crisis.”

Now, scrutinize the opinion’s oft-overlooked footnotes, he says.

“I love footnotes because they’re a precursor to things to come,” D’Ambrosio says.

Specifically, footnotes 15 and 18 may prove to be important in future fights over G.L.c. 40A, §3A, he believes.

Footnote 15 focuses on the appearance of the word “shall” in §3A(a)(1), from which the court concludes: “Thus, it is clear that the Legislature intended to require MBTA communities to comply with the act” by passing a zoning ordinance that allows for multi-family housing as of right.

What’s interesting about the footnote is that the court is definitively taking off the table the option of cities and towns choosing to forego grant money in exchange for evading the law’s mandate, D’Ambrosio says.

“There’s no default position here. You can’t say, ‘We just won’t take the money,’” he says. “The SJC is saying, ‘No, you don’t have that option. This isn’t an and-or scenario. This is compliance. You need to comply.’”

Footnote 18 provides the back half of the one-two punch, responding to Milton’s argument that the AG may not bring an enforcement action because §3A already includes a “remedy” for noncompliance, ineligibility for certain state grant funding.

Neither the statutory language nor the record before the SJC “demonstrates that the penalty is designed (or able) to accomplish the desired compulsory aspect of the law,” Budd writes.

The court cites the 1932 U.S. Supreme Court case Shriver v. Woodbine Sav. Bank for the proposition that “[t]he very fact that the [statutory] remedy is on its face inadequate to compel full performance of the obligation declared is persuasive that it was not intended to be exclusive of applicable common-law remedies, by which complete performance might be secured.”

That’s a strong signal that the AG will get a wide berth to exercise equitable powers to ensure that “complete performance” is secured, D’Ambrosio says.

Last April, the Milton Select Board approved a fixed-fee agreement to pay the law firm Goodwin $275,000 to represent it in its MBTA Communities Act fight.

Of the 30 or so cities and towns currently out of compliance with the MBTA Communities Act, others may be considering waging similar wars. But that footnote should prompt a renewed assessment of whether that would be money well spent, D’Ambrosio says.

“Some towns, especially some of these richer towns, may feel, ‘Hey, it’s only money, no big deal,’” D’Ambrosio says. “But what the SJC is clearly stating is that complete performance is required, and equitable remedies are at hand.”

In this case, that means letting the AG appoint a special master to rewrite zoning ordinances.

The MBTA Communities law is a “fairly modest” attempt to increase housing stock in cities and towns, D’Ambrosio argues.

“There’s still enough leeway and discretion that these local boards have that it’s unlikely that the high numbers [of new housing units] that are being tossed around [by §3A opponents] would ever get achieved,” he says.

A special master would be empowered to scrutinize a municipality’s compliance plan to ensure that nothing else in it would frustrate the purpose of addressing the now officially recognized housing crisis.

“You may get a local zoning ordinance that’s significantly different from what was being proposed by the town and shot down,” D’Ambrosio says. “That’s a potential real pitfall for these folks, apart from the legal fees and any lost state infrastructure grants.”

In the aftermath of the SJC’s decision, communities that missed their §3A deadlines have been given a reprieve until 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 13 to submit new action plans to the state, with district compliance applications due by July 14.

The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities has also issued emergency regulations, good for 90 days. Within that period, EOHLC should be able to complete the process of replacing those with a permanent set of regulations, D’Ambrosio suggests.

Part of that process will involve submitting a small business impact statement with the secretary of state.

“But my experience is that these type of development projects often have a very positive impact on the local economic base of the community,” D’Ambrosio says. “It usually raises property values, and it enhances the opportunity for small businesses to grow because they have more people. If you’re a sub shop, you have more sub orders. If you’re a pizza shop, you have more pizza orders. If you’re a laundromat, you may have more shirts to clean.”

The SJC’s Jan. 8 ruling failed to sway voters in the town of Needham, who less than a week later voted to unwind their Town Meeting’s support of the more aggressive of two compliance plans last year.

But it’s not hard to find data points to illustrate that the Needham Town Meeting may have had it right, D’Ambrosio notes.

In a study released on July 19, the website Construction Coverage ranked Massachusetts 48th, behind only Hawaii and Wyoming, for investment in affordable housing.

Meanwhile, in April, Boston Indicators highlighted the exodus of nearly 23,000 people ages 25 to 44 in 2021 and 2022, most of them college-educated and middle- or high-income earners.

Everyone should want to stem the flight to southern states, where the cost of living is lower, D’Ambrosio argues.

“If we don’t realize that, it’s going to be devastating to the state of Massachusetts in the long run because that kind of exodus of person power and intellectual power is corrosive to a state, and it’ll undermine the state’s long-term prosperity,” he says.