Ants Marching - Join ABC for a summer picnic in Raymond Park on Saturday, August 3rd from 12-2pm! We'll provide pizza, drinks, good company, and discussion of affordable housing in Cambridge. Find us at the picnic table near the playground. Please RSVP so we can order enough pizza!

Cambridge Happenings

One step closer: at the July 17 Housing Committee Hearing, Cambridge’s Community Development Department (“CDD”) unveiled a more detailed proposal to promote multi-family housing city-wide. In short, up to six story apartments would become legal in all Cambridge neighborhoods, 20% of the units in larger projects would be set aside as below-market rate, and affordable housing developers would keep their advantage under the Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO). Though the proposal is not final, it’s a good sign the Housing Committee and CDD are on the right track.

• For those interested in zoning arcana: the proposal would allow at least 6 stories in every residential district, preserve some minimum front setbacks while removing them in the side and rear; require open space of 30%, half of which would need to be permeable at-grade (the remainder can be things like shared balcony spaces); and critically, entirely remove density-killing floor-to-area ratios (“FAR”) and minimum lot sizes / dwelling unit. Some discretionary review may still be required for larger projects, however. 20% of units in projects of 10+ units would be set aside as affordable under the city’s inclusionary zoning program. Height advantages provided to affordable housing developers under the Affordable Housing Overlay would scale with changes to base zoning.
• In plain English? Cambridge could finally start building the housing it desperately needs.

All in all, passing this would be a landmark win for housing affordability and make Cambridge a model for the country. The next Housing Committee hearing will be on August 21 and CDD anticipates zoning language in the fall. Be ready to lend your voice as it will be a fight.

We Better Tip Our Caps: thank you to the ABC-endorsed councillors - Housing Committee co-chairs Azeem and Siddiqui, Councillor Sobrinho-Wheeler, Councillor Wilson, Vice Mayor McGovern, and Mayor Denise Simmons - for their support on ending exclusionary zoning thus far. It is a political risk and we truly appreciate their efforts to make Cambridge a better place for all. (And if you feel the same, drop them a line.)

Victory on Tenant Notification! After months of partnering with the City Council to improve notice to tenants of resources available to them, including access to counsel, we have achieved a significant improvement. The Ordinance Committee voted in favor of an amendment to the Tenants Rights Notification Ordinance requiring an annual mailing to tenants reminding them of their rights and resources. The amendment now heads to the full Council for approval and ordination.

We would like to (again) thank the Council for their support, especially Councillors Sobrinho-Wheeler, McGovern, and Siddiqui, who drove this change. 

What do consultants do anyway? The June 27 Housing Committee hearing featured the testimony of an economic consultant who argued that no inclusionary zoning (i.e., featuring 20% below-market rent units) multi-family housing projects are presently viable. Uncertain economic conditions - namely inflation driving up construction costs and high interest rates driving up lending costs - are partially to blame, but Cambridge’s zoning is a problem as well. With so many restrictions on density, many potential inclusionary projects can’t reach the scale needed to break even. This makes the Housing Committee’s work on legalizing apartments city-wide ever more crucial.

A Once in a Generation Opportunity? Banker and Tradesman reported that the MBTA will seek private developers to demolish the Alewife station parking garage in West Cambridge and partner on a major transit-oriented project at the northern end of the Red Line. The disposition will be the first to test a new strategy designed to maximize the income-producing potential of MBTA real estate through joint development agreements.

“‘We have a garage that is in very, very poor condition and the decision has been made that it should come down,’ MBTA head of Transit-Oriented Development Scott Bosworth told the agency’s board in a presentation. ‘We’re looking to the private sector to partner with us to take that $175 million liability on our books and turn that into a cash positive through a joint development project.’”

Book Club at Portico Brewing - "A Paradise of Small Houses" 

ABC’s literary luminaries joined Somerville YIMBY to enjoy beers and banter centered on Max Podemski’s “A Paradise of Small Houses - The Evolution, Devolution, and Potential Rebirth of Urban Housing”. The book club took place at Portico Brewing on July 13th. If you missed this one, be on the lookout for the next meeting! 

Riverfun - ABC Table at Cambridge River Fest on June 15th 

ABC saw great foot traffic at its table during River Fest in June! According to table organizer Cathy Higgins: “We had some good conversations resulting in about 30 people signing up for the mailing list…Councilor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler and Mayor Denise Simmons stopped by....We ran out of an AHMA flyers as there were a good number of people who wanted to get connected to pro-housing groups in cities around the state.” Way to go Cathy and the rest of the ABC volunteers who spread the pro-housing word last month! 

Walking Tour de Force - ABCers took to two feet and hit Massachusetts Avenue strolling on a June 8th neighborhood walk, led by Josiah Bonsey, a member of the Mass Ave Planning Study Working Group. The tour included discussion of the history of the northern portions of Mass Ave and a critical look at the current built environment - and what might come in the future. 

Learn, Socialize, Take Action: Upcoming ABC events you can join

Advice Columns - The City’s Central Square Advisory is seeking members! If you live in Central Square or surrounding neighborhoods and want to lend your voice to the betterment of one of Cambridge’s busiest corridors, now is your chance. 

According to current Advisory members in ABC, this role is not a heavy lift, meets once a month, and is super interesting, especially now with all that is happening in Central Square with the rezoning process. The application deadline is Monday, August 12th, 2024.

Opinion Columns - Want to lend your voice in a written format? ABC is seeking members to write an op-ed in a local paper in support of legalizing multi-family housing citywide. Email [email protected] if this is you!

Regional and National Happenings

Why has it gotten so bad? (Could it be the decades-long housing shortage?) - The Globe asks why student homelessness is at an “all-time” high right now in Boston. Record-high rents are indeed mentioned, yet placed among several factors, including an ending of the pandemic eviction moratorium and an influx of migrant children filling the state’s emergency shelters. Yet if an uptick in immigration, in a state where thousands leave each year due to living costs, is enough to send youth homelessness to record highs, shouldn’t we look to the root cause of the issue - the lack of adequate housing supply - rather than blaming migrants and federal pandemic laws? It recalls some great satire from McSweenys: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes.

A Walden Square of Their Own? Also from the Globe, reports on efforts to revitalize Braintree’s South Shore Plaza mall via a large multi-family home construction and how it has faced NIMBY opposition. Braintree faces an $18 million budget shortfall after years of “stagnant economic development and [resisting] new development…And then there is the housing shortage.” Retooling an old mall to rebuild the tax base and salve the shelter shortage seems like a win-win. 

Braintree’s battle is not totally unlike the fight over Walden Square, with one crucial difference. Walden Square is able to continue despite opposition from local NIMBYs because the AHO allows affordable housing by right, not discretion. Housing opponents will always find ways to impede multi-family housing construction when given the opportunity. No matter if the construction is at an aging mall, or if it helps a town shore up its finances, or helps families find homes. This is why allowing multi-family homes by right is so important. 

An Emerging Front in the War for Housing: Elevators and Construction Costs - In a Times opinion piece, Stephen Jacob Smith, founder and executive director of the Center for Building in North America, lays out the construction economic fundamentals that are preventing much multifamily housing from being built, even where its newly legal to do so (including, locally, Suffolk Downs, where promised housing is now on indefinite hold). 

“But as zoning codes were liberalized, architects and developers soon began ringing alarm bells about the hurdles buried in the finer points of building codes and standards and other more technical rules...

...And then there are bigger-picture questions about what to do about our complex system of rules and the groups that oversee them. The federal government could raze the existing system by setting uniform rules for construction with more of an eye toward global best practices and cost, perhaps starting with elevators. The federal government could condition the billions of dollars it hands out for housing assistance on the adoption of new codes, as it has done with highway funding and the now-uniform 21-year-old minimum drinking age.”

The Big Battle for Berkeley - The city that pioneered single-family zoning is considering undoing it. Let’s see if Cambridge can beat them to it! If you don’t follow Darrell Owens' writing, now is a great time to start.