The presentation, dated March 11, 2019, includes slides used to present the information necessary to understand the rationale for zoning changes, the location of the zoning areas under consideration and the charts, tables and maps that help describe the situation. The proposed zoning changes, especially articles 6, 7, 8, 11 and 16, only cover changes affecting about 7% of the Town, those parts of the Town that are currently zoned R4-R7 and the B zoning districts.
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by JP Lewicke
When you love the place you live and you want to help it become even better, how can you make a difference? Arlington is an extremely civically active community, with hundreds of residents involved in Town Meeting, several dozen boards and committees, and numerous other groups that play an important role in improving our town. The vast array of options can be a bit dizzying for a newcomer to sort through.
Fortunately, Arlington has recently launched Arlington Civic Academy to provide interested residents with a pathway to becoming more civically literate and involved. Ably organized by Joan Roman, Arlington’s Public Information Officer, Civic Academy takes place over the course of six weeks and aims to provide participants with the information they need for constructive civic engagement. Applications are open from now until August 4th for the fall session, which will take place between September 12th and October 17th.
Find Out How the Town Works
It’s clear that town government takes the Academy seriously. The Town Manager, Select Board Chair, Town Moderator, and the heads of several town departments have stayed late into the evening to attend Civic Academy sessions. Their formal presentations do a great job of explaining how different areas of town government work and how best to get involved, but the chance to meet them and ask them questions is equally valuable. The participants usually have a lot of very insightful questions, and it’s a great opportunity to learn more and become a more effective advocate in the future.
Participants Make Arlington Civic Academy Great
The other participants are another great part of the program. It’s also a great chance to make connections with other people who are equally enthusiastic about learning and getting involved in making their town a better place. There have been two sessions of the program so far, and several participants have gone on to run for Town Meeting, join the Master Plan Update Advisory Committee, volunteer for last fall’s tax override campaign, and propose warrant articles. We just had a get-together for members of both Civic Academy sessions to meet each other and network, and are hopeful that Civic Academy alumni can help connect future participants in the program to opportunities to get involved in helping Arlington become even better.
Helping Others Learn to Navigate Town Processes
I ran for Town Meeting this spring after attending Civic Academy last fall, and I found that it served me well after I was elected. It taught me how the budgeting process worked, including all the steps from the Town Manager’s office working with individual departments, the Finance Committee compiling a cohesive budget, and Town Meeting approving that budget. When constituents from my precinct have questions about how to get help with something from the town, I know which boards or committees or town departments they should reach out to. I also have a better understanding of the current constraints and opportunities faced by our town across multiple areas.
When I started working with Paul Schlictman on advocating for extending the Red Line further into Arlington, I reached out to the members of my Civic Academy class to see if they were also interested, and several of them were incredibly generous with their time and helped us set up our website and mailing list. I would highly recommend applying to Civic Academy, and I’m very thankful that the town puts so much effort into making it a great experience.
A portion of Envision Arlington’s town day booth was designed to spark a community conversation about housing. Envision set up a display with six poster boards, each representing a housing-related topic. Participants were given three dots and asked to place them on the topics they felt were most important. There were also pens and post-it notes on hand to capture additional comments. This post is a summary of the results. You could think of it as a straw-poll or temperature check on the opinions of town day attendees.
Social Justice Issues
Aiming for a diverse population by income and race; and being vigilant about identifying and neutralizing barriers to this goal.
197 dots, plus a post-it note that reads “Increasing housing while preserving open space” (with three dots).
Lifestyle Options
Providing for different lifestyles: empty nesters, single millenials, young parents, families, walkable neighborhoods.
149 dots and four post-it notes:
- No more new 5-story buildings with no setbacks. Ugly. (3 dots)
- Why must we maintain our high carbon footprint with single family homes and cars?
- I want to live in a wofati (eco building) (Woodland Oehler Freak-Cheap Annualized Thermal Intertia). Not so legal, one day the norm. Thank you Arlington.
- Connect to transit. Less single family housing with dedicated parking.
Housing Affordability
Affordable housing from subsidies, from construction of smaller units, or from building more housing to reduce the bidding price on current Arlington homes.
308 dots, with 10 post-it notes
- We don’t need more housing. People need to be able to afford to stay in their homes.
- Get Arlington out from the clutches of real estate lobby. (1 dot)
- Wrong categories. Includes affordable housing and development which displaces low and moderate income housing
- Restrictions on teardowns of small homes
- Keep older apartment buildings. They are cheap and affordable.
- Rent control and oversight. “I can only afford to stay because I live in a place that is not secure and in disrepair.”
- Rent control. Please reinstate so that rent is affordable.
- “Affordable” subsidized housing invades your privacy. Every year need all bank stubs, 401(k), like a criminal.
- Build more housing. Build more duplexes, triplexes, etc. Upzone neighborhoods. More transit corridors. Renew calls for a red line stop. Build up the downtown to encourage more density and housing in the same buildings as businesses. More housing + transit = a better society.
- Protect neighborhoods
This was clearly the topic that drew the most response. Arlington housing is expensive.
Maximizing Flexibility of Home Space
Providing for aging parents or childcare providers with a place in your home or getting help paying the mortgage by having a rentable space.
81 dots, and three post-it notes:
- Change zoning to allow accessory dwelling apartments (aka ADUs, granny flats, in-law apartments) (1 dot)
- Want nearby widowed mom to live in own house.
- Accessible rentals, not up 3 flights of stairs.
Doing more with Existing Resources
Examining current Arlington Housing Authority, Housing Corporation of Arlington, and aging apartment buildings for addressing new housing needs.
143 dots, and five post-it notes:
- Fix transportation infrastructure. Peope can live farther out and still get to work. (4 dots)
- Extend red line to Arlington center and heights. (7 dots)
- None of the above. Keep taxes low. (1 dot)
- Accessible for aging residents. Age in place.
- Do something about empty store fronts.
Setting a ten-year goal for new housing
Determining what Arlington’s housing goals should be, and setting about following through on the necessary zoning and incentives to get what we want.
119 dots, and three sticky notes:
- Why is America low-density? Why is this country slave to the auto? More housing near transit!
- Who is “we”?
- There is too much housing density now. Need business area to attract business.
Observations
As noted earlier, the cost of housing seemed to be the main issue of concern. This is understandable: housing prices in Arlington (and the region in general) have been on an escalator ride up since about 2000 or so. That’s led to our current high cost of housing, and also to a form of gradual gentrification. When housing is more expensive than it was last year, a new resident in town has to make more money (or be willing to spend more on housing) than last year’s new resident.
I see at least two broad responses to this: one is to keep the status quo, perhaps returning to the inexpensive housing of decades past. The other is for more multi-family housing, and more transit-oriented development. It will be interesting to see how these dynamics play out in the future.
There’s also recognition of the importance of older “naturally affordable” apartment buildings. Arlington was very pro-growth in the 1950s and 1960s; that’s fortunate, because it allowed these apartments to be built in the first place. On the downside, we haven’t done a good job of allowing new construction into the pipeline during recent decades. Buildings depreciate, so a new building is worth more than one that’s ten years old, which is worth more than one that’s twenty years old, and so on. At some point, the old apartments are likely to be refurbished/upgraded, and they’ll become more expensive as a result.
This is only the beginning of the conversation, but at least we’re getting it going.
Massachusetts’ 2020 Economic Development Bill included a set of housing choice provisions: these require communities served by the MBTA to provide a district of reasonable size where multi-family housing is allowed by right. The law gives us significant flexibility to design a district that best suits our needs, but the district must allow housing suitable for families with children, without age restrictions, and at a rate of at least 15 dwelling units per acre. Arlington is one of 175 MBTA communities in Massachusetts that share in the responsibility for meeting these requirements.
The law requires a “district of reasonable size”, but what does that mean? Throughout much of 2021 the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) worked on a set of supporting regulations that set the district requirements according to the type of transit service a community has, the number of existing homes in the community (as of the 2020 Census), and the amount of developable land near transit stations. The specifics vary by community, but here is what the requirements mean for Arlington:
- Our district needs a capacity of (at least) 2,046 homes. This isn’t a requirement to build 2,046 additional homes; instead, it reflects the total number of homes that district might contain in the future. For example, if a parcel with a two-family home were rezoned to allow a three-family home, that single parcel would have a capacity of three.
- Our district needs to allow multi-family housing by right. “By right” means that the development only requires a building permit, where the Building Inspector determines whether the project complies with zoning and building codes. While Arlington allows multi-family housing (three or more dwellings on a single parcel) in some areas, such projects are not allowed by right.
- Our district needs to allow (at least) 15 dwellings/acre. This is more or less in line with the density of the streetcar suburbs that were built in East Arlington during the 1920s. Although portions of Arlington likely meet the density requirement, none of these areas currently comply, as they don’t allow multi-family housing to be built by right.
- Our district needs to be at least 32 acres, but it could be larger. We have flexibility here, as we’ll discuss in a moment.
- Finally, due to the lack of developable land around the Alewife T station, Arlington is free to locate its multi-family district (or districts) anywhere in town. We’re not tied to any particular geographic location.
The new law’s requirements provide Arlington with a great deal of flexibility. We’re free to place our district (or districts) anywhere in town, and we’ll be able to choose from a variety of options as long as they meet the requirements set forth above. For example, providing the capacity of 2,046 homes in the minimum district size of 32 acres would give us a density of 64 dwellings/acre; roughly the scale of mid-rise apartment buildings. On the other hand, if we went with the minimum density of 15 dwellings/acre, we’d have a 135 acre district that allowed smaller multi-family homes. Our district can be anywhere within this range; we also have the option of having multiple districts, with smaller multi-family buildings in some areas of town and larger multi-family buildings in others.
Arlington has a track record of producing thorough and comprehensive planning documents, such as our Master Plan, Net Zero Action Plan, Sustainable Transportation Plan, and Housing Production Plan. These plans contain plenty of building blocks that could be used to formulate a compliant multi-family district. Viewed in that light, the MBTA community requirements are an opportunity to meet some of the goals we’ve already set for ourselves; we just have to go about it in a way that satisfies the law’s new requirements.
Arlington has one unique consideration, which doesn’t apply to most MBTA communities. In 2020, Arlington’s Town Meeting sent a home rule petition to the state legislature, asking for permission to regulate the use of fossil fuels in new building construction; it’s an important component of our plan to become carbon-neutral by 2050. A number of other communities in the Commonwealth filed similar petitions, and the legislature responded by establishing a pilot program: ten cities and towns will be allowed to enact “fossil fuel bans”, but only if they (a) have 10% subsidized housing, (b) achieve safe harbor via compliances with an approved housing production plan, or (c) establish a multi-family district of reasonable size by February 2024. Arlington doesn’t meet the subsidized housing requirement (only 6.54% of our homes are on the subsidized housing inventory), and we’re unlikely to gain safe harbor status during the next year; our most viable path to participation hinges on meeting the multi-family requirements.
In summary, the multi-family requirement for MBTA communities creates new requirements for Arlington, while also presenting us with new opportunities: the opportunity to meet planning goals, the opportunity to meet sustainability goals (e.g., by regulating fossil fuel use in new construction), and the opportunity to reimagine how we do multi-family housing in Arlington as our town moves forward into the twenty-first century.