A municipality’s master plan is intended to set the vision and start the process of crafting the future of the municipality in regard to several elements, housing, history, culture, open space, transportation, finance, etc. Arlington began a very public discussion about these issues and the development of the Master Plan in 2012. In 2015, after thorough community wide discussion, the Master Plan was adopted by Town Meeting. This year, 2019, the focus is on passing Articles that will amend the current zoning bylaws in order to implement the housing vision that was approved in 2015.
Related articles
by Alexander vonHoffman, Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University, February 2006
The case study shows that in the 1970s the Town of Arlington completely abandoned its policy of encouraging development of apartment buildings—and high-rise buildings at that—and adopted requirements that severely constricted the possibilities for developing multifamily dwellings. Although members of the elite introduced the new approach, they were backed by rank-and-file citizens, who took up the cause to protect their neighborhoods from perceived threats.
The report outlines an intentional effort using land use and planning tools like zoning and building approvals, to exclude those with less desirable income or racial characteristics from residing in Arlington. Additional perspectives on Arlington’s exclusionary zoning efforts during this period are reported here.
(Elliot L. is an 8th grader at the Ottoson Middle School)
In the middle of COVID-19, I started to notice a large construction project happening right down the street in our little neck of the woods by Thompson school. I simply assumed it was another apartment building, but after asking the adults of my community, I found it was much more impactful than that. Arlington was supporting a large affordable housing project to be established, along with plans of putting Arlington EATS, a food pantry, below it. This got the gears in my tiny sixth grade mind churning. I began asking questions like: how do you apply to live there? How much does it cost? Do the owners provide you with furniture? Of course, most of those questions were answered by my parents, and then quickly put in the back of my mind. However, the idea of affordable housing stuck with me, especially when you can see it from your front porch. Upon reaching the 8th grade, where I am now, I found myself and every student in my class presented with a year long project trying to make change in Arlington. This assignment, called the Civics Action Project, or CAP, guides students to choosing a local issue they wish to address.
The premise got me thinking. How can I help my community with our rising cost of living and need for affordable housing? Initially, the other students and I were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the issue, and had trouble thinking of a reachable solution.
Despite this, a small group of classmates and I were intrigued by a bill mentioned by Claire Ricker, Arlington’s director of Planning and Community Development, during an informational panel. Ms. Ricker talked about the MBTA Communities Act, a law requiring Arlington to create higher-density housing near the T. We knew we had found our goal, to raise awareness and support zoning for affordable housing as part of the act.
However, as our research continued, we learned of the real function of this legislation. The goal of the MBTA communities act is to build more compact middle income housing. This will make it so people like young adults and downsizers can come to live in this town, building their future and contributing to a diverse community. This is an essential step in the right direction for the town, but our strides need to be longer.
In order to support our goal, we still wanted to learn more about Arlington’s affordable housing needs. We wanted to promote those issues, as well as the missing middle housing we desperately need. Our group started by conducting a survey that we posted on Arlington forums, along with directly sending it to as many people as we could. 60 residents responded, and we then shared these results with Select Board member Len Diggins. Here are some of the most interesting results of this survey!
- Many people in Arlington still struggle with home, food, and job insecurities.
- The cost of living has made almost every family surveyed have to change their lifestyle in some way.
- Over 1/3 of Arlington residents believe their salary is not enough to support their families.
- 87% of people think Arlington government is making a subpar effort at combating these issues.
- When asked what they would like to see the town do, Arlington residents supported the idea of building more affordable housing and providing aid and support to local food distribution groups, such as Foodlink or Arlington EATS.
- About half of residents have heard of and know about the MBTA communities act.
After the results of our survey, along with other actions taken to learn more about the MBTA communities act, my group and I came to a conclusion of our plan: In order to try and make a change in Arlington, we were going to spread the word to as many adults as we could in order to support both the higher-density housing the MBTA communities act is focused on, and lower cost housing. While these are separate things, our thinking is that the more people who can vote and hear about this, the more willing they will be to connect and support the different pieces of the puzzle to solve our housing issue. This is not just a one-time thing. The MBTA communities act is a planned, strategic opportunity to make Arlington a better place for the future. We hope with the information provided, you will also keep the cause of affordable housing progressing as well. Thank you for reading!
Restrictive covenants are a “list of obligations that purchasers of property must assume … For the first half of the 20th century, one commonplace commitment was a promise never to sell or rent to an African American”. [1] These covenants gained popularity after the Supreme Court’s 1917 decision in Buchanan v. Warley.
Rothstein’s book The Color of Law mentions examples from Brookline, MA; Arlington, MA has examples of it’s own. We’ll look at one from an East Arlington deed dating to 1923. Credit to Christopher Sacca for finding these documents.
First, a land plan to establish content. Below is the subdivision plan for a farm owned by Herbert and Margaret Allen. I count a little over 200 lots in this subdivision. The plan itself states that “no single house shall cost less than $6,000 and no double house shall
cost less than $8,000″. This language also appears in the property deed.

One of the deeds from these parcels appears in book 4631 page 218 and book 4631 page 219, in the Southern Middlesex registry of deeds.
Here’s page 218; the deed begins at the bottom.

Here’s page 219. The racial covenant appears halfway down the page. It reads “No sale or lease of any said lots shall be made to colored people, no any dwelling on any said lots be sold or occupied by colored people”.

The 1920’s were a time of significant residential growth in Arlington, as farmers (called “Market Gardeners” at the time) subdivided and sold off their land. This example shows that Arlington, MA landowners employed some of the same discriminatory tactics for segregation as other communities in the United States. It would take further research to determine how common the use of such covenants was early twentieth-century Arlington.
Footnotes
[1] The Color of Law. Richard Rothstein. pg. 78
This is the second in a series of “Arlington 2020” articles. The first article looked at the number of one-, two-, and three-family homes and condominiums in Arlington, and how that housing stock has changed over time. This article will examine changes in the value of those properties. We’re going to look at “value” through the lens of property assessments, so we should start with an explanation of what property assessments are and how they’re used.
A property assessment is simply the Town Assessor’s best estimate of what a property is worth, based on market values. The assessor’s office inspects properties every ten years; during intervening years, assessments are adjusted based on sale prices of similar homes in a given tax neighborhood. For all practical purposes, assessed values tend to trail market values by two years. In my neighborhood, property assessments are spot on — my house was assessed at $501,000 in 2020; during 2018, sales of similar homes in the neighborhood ranged from $495,000 to $520,000.
Condominiums have a single assessed value, which includes land and buildings. Otherwise, assessed values are broken down into land value, building value, and yard items (e.g., a garage or a shed).
Assessed values are used to determine the tax rate. The assessors page on the town website has calculations in worksheet form, but for all practical purposes, it’s just a division problem. One takes the total tax levy and divides by the sum of all property assessments (in thousands of dollars), and that’s the tax rate. An individual’s taxes are the assessed value of their property (in thousands of dollars) multiplied by the tax rate. If an individual owns (say) 1% of the assessed value in town, that individual will pay 1% of the property tax levy.
The main point is that assessed values are based on market values, but with a two-year lag. Consequently, we can use them as a way to see how home prices have changed over time.
With that background information out of the way, we can look at some numbers. Here’s a graph of the median assessed values for condominiums, one-family, two-family, and three-family homes from 2013 through 2020. (the “median” is a value such that half of the assessments are above, and half are below).

year | Condominium | Single Family | Two-family | Three-family |
2013 | $297,800 | $472,850 | $532,650 | $581,600 |
2014 | $300,150 | $484,400 | $530,000 | $574,800 |
2015 | $318,200 | $507,900 | $572,000 | $616,300 |
2016 | $351,050 | $546,300 | $623,150 | $673,550 |
2017 | $357,750 | $581,200 | $663,900 | $714,800 |
2018 | $395,400 | $618,800 | $732,100 | $787,600 |
2019 | $463,250 | $701,550 | $851,200 | $897,500 |
2020 | $473,100 | $771,900 | $944,000 | $1,010,850 |
%change | 58.87% | 63.24% | 77.23% | 73.81% |
As one would expect, two-family homes are worth more than single-family, and three-family are worth more than two. Condominiums have a lot of variety; they could be half of a duplex, or a single unit in an apartment building. But a general upward trend is clearly evident.
These values are straight out of the assessor’s database, and not adjusted for inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistic’s inflation calculator shows 12% inflation between 2013 and 2020; the %change is pretty considerable, even if one deducts 12% for inflation.
Next, I’d like to dig further into the 1–3 family assessments, by breaking them down into the value of land vs the value of buildings, and showing how that’s changed over time.
Single-family homes:

year | Land value | Building value | Total assessed value |
2013 | $243,700 | $226,300 | $472,850 |
2014 | $253,750 | $227,050 | $484,450 |
2015 | $272,700 | $229,900 | $507,900 |
2016 | $296,400 | $243,950 | $546,400 |
2017 | $326,400 | $246,400 | $581,250 |
2018 | $360,900 | $248,100 | $618,800 |
2019 | $440,400 | $250,400 | $701,600 |
2020 | $448,600 | $316,300 | $771,900 |
%change | 84.08% | 39.77% | 63.24% |
Two-family homes:

year | Land value | Building value | Total assessed value |
2013 | $202,500 | $320,550 | $532,650 |
2014 | $212,250 | $307,800 | $530,000 |
2015 | $256,400 | $309,800 | $572,000 |
2016 | $262,500 | $349,400 | $623,150 |
2017 | $307,000 | $350,700 | $663,900 |
2018 | $352,500 | $373,900 | $732,100 |
2019 | $478,300 | $374,850 | $851,700 |
2020 | $454,500 | $486,100 | $944,000 |
%change | 124.44% | 51.65% | 77.23% |
Three-family homes:

year | Land value | Building value | Total assessed value |
2013 | $200,100 | $377,900 | $581,600 |
2014 | $209,100 | $364,100 | $574,800 |
2015 | $249,800 | $366,550 | $616,300 |
2016 | $259,950 | $412,350 | $673,550 |
2017 | $298,100 | $412,500 | $714,800 |
2018 | $343,050 | $438,800 | $787,600 |
2019 | $459,000 | $440,100 | $897,500 |
2020 | $440,100 | $578,450 | $1,010,850 |
%change | 119.94% | 53.07% | 73.81% |
There are several things worth pointing out in these breakdowns.
First, note that the land and building values “jump” a bit between 2019–2020. 2020 was one of our full reassessment years, so I’m willing to attribute this to a periodic course correction. The total increase is generally linear, but the land/building composition has changed.
Second, the median land value for single-family homes is higher than the median building value, for all years between 2013–2020.
Third, most of the increases come from changes in land value. I believe this comes down to location, location, and location. Arlington has a well-respected public school system, and it’s close to universities and tech centers is Cambridge and Boston, and office parks in Lexington, Waltham, and Burlington. City amenities are close at hand.
So what does one do about our rising home prices, and in particular, the rising value of land? The first (and perhaps default) answer is to do nothing. Rising property values are a boon to homeowners who purchased a capital asset (i.e., a house) in the past, and have seen its value appreciate over time. The downside of doing nothing is that each year, increasing housing prices create an ever-increasing income threshold for new residents.
An alternative approach would be to allow more (and smaller) units to be built on each lot. This requires reconstruction or redevelopment, but it allows the cost of land to be amortized among several households. More units/lot means more people and more density, but it reduces the income threshold for buying in to Arlington. (Note that the per-unit cost for three-family homes is lower than the per-unit cost for two-family homes. Similarly, the per-unit cost for two-family homes is lower than the cost of a single-family home).
A third article will look at the distribution of housing prices in Arlington, and how the distribution varies by housing type.
Here is a spreadsheet of data shown in this post.
This timely report on the question of affordable housing vs. density comes from the California Dept. of Housing & Community Development and mirrors the situation in the region surrounding Arlington MA.
Housing production has not kept up with job and household growth. The location and type of new housing does not meet the needs of many new house- holds. As a result, only one in five households can afford a typical home, overcrowding doubled in the 1990’s, and too many households pay more than they can afford for their housing.
Myth #1
High-density housing is affordable housing; affordable
housing is high-density housing.
Fact #1
Not all high density housing is affordable to low-income families.
Myth #2
High-density and affordable housing will cause too much traffic.
Fact #2
People who live in affordable housing own fewer cars and
drive less.
Myth #3
High-density development strains public services and
infrastructure.
Fact #3
Compact development offers greater efficiency in use of
public services and infrastructure.
Myth #4
People who live in high-density and affordable housing
won’t fit into my neighborhood.
Fact #4
People who need affordable housing already live and work
in your community.
Myth #5
Affordable housing reduces property values.
Fact #5
No study in California has ever shown that affordable
housing developments reduce property values.
Myth #6
Residents of affordable housing move too often to be stable
community members.
Fact #6
When rents are guaranteed to remain stable, tenants
move less often.
Myth #7
High-density and affordable housing undermine community
character.
Fact #7
New affordable and high-density housing can always be
designed to fit into existing communities.
Myth #8
High-density and affordable housing increase crime.
Fact #8
The design and use of public spaces has a far more
significant affect on crime than density or income levels.
See an example of a “case study” of two affordable housing developments in Irvine CA, San Marcos at 64 units per acre.

San Paulo at 25 units per acre.

Both are designed to blend with nearby homes.
(By Vince Baudoin and James Fleming)
Could Arlington be better using its curb space? Here are some ways the curb can be used to create green infrastructure, promote public safety and accessibility, support sustainable transportation, strengthen business districts, and enable new ‘car-light’ development.
Roughly six inches high and made of concrete or granite, the curb marks the edge of the roadway, channels runoff, protects the sidewalk, and gathers stray leaves. When not assigned any other use, the space in front of the curb it usually serves as free storage for personal automobiles.
Yet the humble curb is a limited resource that can serve the community in many more ways. Have you thought about how your town budgets its curb space? For that matter, has your town thought about how it budgets its curb space?
While Arlington mostly uses its curb space for parking, some areas have other curb uses designed to achieve a specific goal. Consider the streets you use often. Have you seen an unsolved problem, or a missed opportunity, that a different use of the curb could help solve?
Create green infrastructure
The Town has miles of paved roadway. When it rains or snows, water runs into storm drains, carrying salt, oil, and other pollutants with it. The storm drains dump these pollutants directly into long-degraded waterways such as the Mill Brook, Alewife Brook, and the Mystic River. The Public Works department struggles to keep grates clear and drains from overflowing.
One solution: Use the curb for more greenery! The curb can be extended to create a rain garden or tree planting strip. The rain garden helps slow runoff and filter the water before it enters the drain, while trees benefit from additional room for the roots to grow without damaging the sidewalk. A side benefit: narrowing the street encourages drivers to slow down, making neighborhoods safer.

Promote public safety and accessibility
Often, portions of the curb are set aside for public safety purposes. For example, a fire lane provides fire department access to key buildings, such as the high school, shown below. Fire hydrants also enjoy special curb status.

Other times, no-parking zones are established to enhance the free flow of traffic, such as here at Broadway Plaza:

Where pedestrian crosswalks are present, a curb extension is a key safety enhancement. By narrowing the roadway, the curb extension encourages drivers to slow down and look for pedestrians. For pedestrians, it reduces the distance they must cross and prevents cars from parking directly next to the crosswalk and blocking visibility.

Finally, accessible parking spaces can be created along the curb. Arlington has at least 50 designated permit-only on-street parking spaces that provide convenient parking for residents with mobility issues or other disabilities.

Support sustainable transportation
When the curb is mostly used for cars, it is easy to overlook how curbside facilities can enhance other forms of transportation.
In the space of one or two parked cars, this bikeshare station offers space for 11 bikes. However, because it is installed on the roadway, it must be removed every winter so that snow can be cleared. If the curb were extended, the bikeshare station could be used year-round. Another nice feature is bicycle parking: the space to park one car can be used to park six or more bicycles.

A bus stop allows buses to pull to the curb. In some cases, it is appropriate to extend the curb so the bus would stop in the traffic lane; otherwise, it may experience delays when it merges back into traffic.

A bus priority lane provides a dedicated right of way for buses, helping to improve on-time performance. To date, these lanes extend only a few hundred feet into Arlington along Mass Ave. They have proven beneficial in many other communities.

Bike lanes, particularly if they are separated from cars by a physical buffer, greatly enhance the safety and comfort of people traveling on two wheels.
But with a limited roadway width, adding bike lanes is difficult unless the community is flexible enough to consider consolidating curb parking on one side of the street, or moving it to side streets entirely.

Finally, the Town could expand the use of on-street spaces for electric vehicle charging stations, such as this one on Park Ave:

Strengthen business districts
Nowhere is the curb more valuable than in business districts. Businesses thrive when their customers have a convenient way to reach them. Metered parking encourages people to park, do their business, and move along so another patron can take that space. Revenue from parking meters can be spent to improve the business district–for example, by planting flowers and trees.

Metered parking is not the only valuable use of curb space in a business district. Outdoor dining is a way the Town can directly support its restaurants by enabling them to serve additional customers. Here is one example in Arlington Center:

And in Arlington Heights:

Other valuable curb uses in business districts include taxi stands and loading zones. Loading zones in particular are crucial to businesses’ success and help prevent the street from being clogged by early-morning delivery trucks, late-night food-delivery vehicles, and everything in between.
Enable new ‘car-light’ development
With high housing costs and a relatively small commercial tax base, Arlington could benefit from some kinds of development. However, land is valuable and lots are small, so if new buildings are required to have large parking lots, it is very difficult to build new homes and businesses. Plus, large parking lots bring more cars and more traffic. But better curb management can help resolve this dilemma, supporting car-light development that is more sustainable and affordable.
For example, on-street permit parking can enable nearby development with few or no off-street parking spaces. New housing or businesses are a better use of land than parking and will generate more property tax revenue. When parking permits are priced appropriately, they are available to residents who need them but discourage households from adding extra cars they do not need.
Take these hillside houses: access to on-street parking made it possible to build on a steep hillside, where it would have been too expensive and difficult to blast to create off-street parking.

Conclusion
Ask your town leaders if they have a curb management strategy. Is the Town using its limited curb space in support of goals such as green infrastructure, public safety and accessibility, public transportation, local business, and car-light development?

The new proposal is just the most recent step in a process that reaches back almost a decade, culminating in the Master Plan (2015), the Housing Production Plan (2016) and the mixed-using zoning amendments of 2016. The Town has consistently proposed smart growth: more development along Arlington’s transit corridors to increase the tax base, stimulate local commerce, and provide more varied housing opportunities for everyone, including low and moderate income Arlingtonians. This year’s proposals are no head-long rush into change. Today’s debate is similar to the debate before Town Meeting three years ago. If anything, progress has been frustratingly slow. To realize the Master Plan’s vision of a vibrant Arlington with diverse housing types for a diverse population, we must stay the course on which we have been embarked for so long.
(Barbara Thornton, Arlington and Roberta Cameron, Medford)
Our communities need more housing that families and individuals can afford. From 2010 to 2017, Greater Boston communities added 245,000 new jobs but only permitted 71,600 new units of housing. Prices are escalating as homebuyers and renters bid up the prices of the limited supply of housing. As a result, one quarter of all renters in Massachusetts now spend more than 50% of their income on housing. (It should be only about 30% of monthly gross income spent on housing costs.) Municipalities have been over-restricting housing development relative to need. The expensive cost of housing not only affects individual households, but also negatively affects neighborhoods and the region as a whole. Lack of affordability limits income diversity in communities. It makes it harder for businesses to recruit employees.
Over the last two years, researcher Amy Dain, commissioned by the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance, has systematically reviewed the bylaws, ordinances, and plans for the 100 cities and towns around Boston to uncover how local zoning affects multifamily housing and why local communities failing to provide enough additional housing to keep the prices from skyrocketing for renters and those who want to purchase homes.
Interested in housing affordability and why the cost of housing is increasing so dramatically to prevent average income residents from affording homes in the 100 municipalities around Boston? Arlington and Medford residents are pleased to welcome author Amy Dain to present her report, THE STATE OF ZONING FOR MULTIFAMILY HOUSING IN GREATER BOSTON (June 2019). Learn more about the so-called “paper wall” restricting production, common trends in local zoning, and best practices to increase production going forward. Learn about efforts in Medford and Arlington to increase housing production and affordable housing and how you can get involved. Thursday, July 25, 2019, 7:00 PM at the Medford Housing Authority, Saltonstall Building, 121 Riverside Avenue, Medford. (Parking is available.)
To access the full report, go to: https://ma-smartgrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/03/FINAL_Multi-Family_Housing_Report.pdf
The Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance, which commissioned the study, provides the following summary of the four principal findings and takeaways:
1) Very little land is zoned for multi-family housing.
For the most part, local zoning keeps new multi-family housing out of existing residential neighborhoods, which cover the majority of the region’s land area.
In addition, cities and towns highly restrict the density of land that is zoned for multi-family use via height limitations, setbacks, and dwelling units per acre. Many of the multi-family zones have already been built out to allowable densities, which mean that although multi-family housing is on the books, it does not exist in practice.
At least a third of the municipalities have virtually no multi-family zoning or plan for growth.
Takeaway: We need to allow concentrated density in multi-family zoning districts that are in sensible locations and allow for incremental growth over a larger area.
2) We are moving to a system of project-by-project decision-making.
Unlike much of the rest of the country, Massachusetts does not require communities to update their zoning on a regular basis and make it consistent with local plans. Although state law ostensibly requires municipalities to update their master plans every ten years, the state does not enforce this provision and most communities lack up-to-date plans.
Instead, the research documents a trend away from predictable zoning districts and toward “floating districts,” project-by-project decision-making, and discretionary permits. Dain found that 57% of multi-family units approved in the region from 2015-2017 were approved by special permit, 22% by 40B (including “friendly” 40B projects), 7% by use variance, and only 14% by “as-of-right” zoning.
There also seems to be a trend toward politicizing development decisions by shifting special permit granting authority to City Council and town meeting. The system emphasizes ad hoc negotiation, which in some cases can achieve a more beneficial project. Yet the overall outcome is a slower, more expensive development process that produces fewer units. Approving projects one by one inhibits the critical infrastructure planning and investments needed to support the growth of an entire district.
Takeaway: We would be better served by a system that retains the benefits of flexibility while offering more speed and predictability.
3) The most widespread trend in zoning for multi-family housing has been to adopt mixed-use zoning.
83 of out of 100 municipalities have adopted some form of mixed-use zoning, most in the last two decades. There is a growing understanding that many people, both old and young, prefer to live in vibrant downtowns, town centers and villages, where they can easily walk to some of the amenities that they want. Malls, plazas and retail areas are increasingly incorporating housing and becoming lifestyle centers.
Yet with few exceptions, the approach to allowing housing in these areas has been cautious and incremental. These projects are only meeting a small portion of the region’s need for housing and often take many years of planning to realize. In addition, the challenges facing the retail sector can make a successful mixed-use strategy problematic. Commercial development tends to meet less opposition than residential development, even in mixed-use areas.
Takeaway: We need more multi-family housing in and around mixed-use hubs, but not require every project to be mixed-use itself.
4) Despite their efforts, communities continue to build much more new housing on their outskirts rather than in their town centers and downtowns.
About half of the communities in the study permitted some infill housing units in their historic centers, but her case studies show that these infill projects are modest in scale and can take up to 15 years to plan and permit.
On the other hand, many more units are getting built in less-developed areas with fewer abutters. This includes conversion of former industrial properties, office parks, and other parcels disconnected from the rest of the community by highways, train tracks, waterways or other barriers. This much-needed housing can be isolated even when dense, and still car-dependent because of limited access to public transportation and lack of walkability.
Takeaway: We need to allow more housing in historic centers as well as incremental growth around those centers. Furthermore, we need to plan an integrated approach to growth districts so that they can be better connected to the community and the region.