The latest effort to block multifamily housing comes in the form of a policy order to add costly and contradictory new requirements to the 2021 Tree Protection Ordinance. Our trees certainly need and merit proper care and attention, and Cambridge's recent efforts are already producing results. Similarly, our 2025 Multifamily Housing Ordinance has opened up many sites around Cambridge that are newly available for adding to our woefully-deficient housing stock, and we are seeing new proposals in neighborhoods across Cambridge. 

Housing opponents in Cambridge support this policy order not to protect trees, but to add additional bureaucratic hurdles that will interfere with our ability to build multifamily housing in formerly exclusionary neighborhoods. The existing tree ordinance–requiring replacement tree plantings and charging tens of thousands of dollars or more for each tree removed–already suffices to manage any tradeoffs that may occur without creating a new venue to litigate land use.

Please sign up for public comment on Policy Order #4 and email your comments to [email protected], cc [email protected] and [email protected], and bcc [email protected] to ask City Council to vote NO.

Additional issues with the tree ordinance amendments include the following: 

• The requested amendments propose changes that restrict and impose greater costs on multifamily housing. They do not, however, offer site flexibility to avoid conflicts or consider removing street parking spaces or converting streets to one-way to allow for more and larger new street trees and protect existing street trees.
• One amendment would require homebuilders to have building plans approved before receiving any tree removal permits. But if a property owner wanted to change the plans because of the tree removal, existing procedural rules would require submitting the plans for approval again!  
• Other amendments import concepts like special permits and setbacks from the zoning code. These zoning barriers were revised just last year by the Multifamily Zoning amendments. Cambridge should not allow entitled residents of Cambridge to change zoning and litigate every tree removal to achieve their real goal–blocking multifamily housing.
• The policy order declares the need to enact these amendments as “urgent,” calling for the city to draft these amendments by June 22, for the “greater good of the City,” with no apparent consideration of their impact on housing or on the residents of the City who lack access to housing they can afford.   

This request appears in the context of housing opponents pushing two nearly identical petition campaigns calling for a pause–of unspecified duration–in issuing residential building permits. One would affect only one neighborhood, the other would apply all over Cambridge. 

These petitions appeared after West Cambridge, historically the most affluent and exclusionary part of Cambridge, finally got its first few plans to build multifamily housing. This policy order now seeks to change the rules for building housing disguised as protecting trees.

These amendments will not only hurt multifamily housing, particularly inclusionary housing proposals. They will also negatively impact affordable housing built under the 100% Affordable Housing Overlay by requiring these lengthy and costly approval and special permit processes before building can move forward, a step in the wrong direction. 

Please email City Council to tell them to vote no. The tree protection ordinance as it currently stands works—from 2018 to 2024, the canopy increased 5%. We should not create additional barriers to multifamily housing.