Many issues are under discussion as a result of these proposed zoning Articles. Issues include: housing affordability, the diversity of housing and incomes in Arlington, environmental concerns and sustainability, tax burdens or tax savings potentially resulting from growth, the risk of postponing the decisions, and the image of Arlington as a community that values diversity and equitability. This one page “fact sheet” attempts to address many of these issues and concerns.
Related articles
Why Is This Our Issue & What Should We Do About It?
(presented by Adam Chapdelaine, Town Manager, to Select Board on July 22, 2019)
Overview

Since 1980 the price of housing in Massachusetts has surged well ahead of other fast growing states including California and New York. While the national “House Price Index” is just below 400, four times what an average house might have cost in 1980, a typical house in Massachusetts is now about 720% what it was in 1980. Median household income in the state has only increased about 15% during the same period. No wonder people in Arlington are feeling the stresses of housing costs if they want to live here and are feeling protective of the equity value time has provided them if they bought years ago.
In response to concerns about zoning, affordable housing and housing density, the Town joined the “Mayors’ (and Managers’) Coalition on Housing” to address these growing pressures. This 12 page slide deck presentation outlines the key data points, the number of low and very low income households in Arlington, the rate of condo conversion that is absorbing rental units, etc.
Solutions are offered including:
• Amendments to Inclusionary Zoning Bylaw
• Housing Creation Along Commercial Corridor – Mixed Use & Zoning Along Corridor
• Accessory Dwelling Units – Potential Age & Family Restrictions
• Other Tools Can Be Considered That Are Outside of Zoning But Have An Impact on Housing
Chapdelaine’s suggested next steps are:
• Continued Public Engagement
• Town Manager & Director of DPCD Meet with ARB
• Select Board & ARB Hold Joint Meeting in Early Fall
• ARB Recommends Strategies to Pursue in Late Fall/Early Winter
The Select Board approved the suggested next steps and a joint ARB/ Select Board meeting should be scheduled in the near future.
Note from Reporter: As a community, Arlington has long prided itself on its economic diversity. With condo conversions, tear downs leading to “McMansions”, higher paid workers arriving in response to new jobs, etc., Arlington is at great risk of losing this diversity that has long enriched the community. Retirees looking to downsize and young people who have grown up in Arlington looking for their first apartment are finding it impossible to stay in town. Shop keepers and town employees are challenged to afford the rising housing costs. With a reconsideration of zoning along Arlington’s transit corridors, Arlington NOW has an opportunity to create new village centers, like those recommended in the recent STATE OF HOUSING report. These village centers along our transit corridors could be higher, denser but also offer the compelling visual design and amenities desired by people who want to walk to cafes, shops and public transit.
A study by Elise Rapoza and Michael Goodman shows that new housing construction in MA does not have an adverse affect on municipal or school budgets. And when it might, state funding covers the difference. This study contradicts the often heard argument against new housing development, especially multi-family housing, because it, the argument claims, it will have a negative fiscal impact on communities.
In the aggregate, development of new housing offers net fiscal benefit to both municipalities and the state. Additional analysis validates a second study which found that increased housing production does not predict enrollment changes in Massachusetts school districts. In the new study, a distinct minority of municipalities did incur net fiscal burdens—burdens that the net new state tax proceeds associated with the development of new housing are more than sufficient to offset.
by Beth Elliott
I’m a member of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Board and an attorney with over 15 years of practice in affordable housing law. Views expressed are my own, not those of the Trust.
The Town of Arlington and the Arlington Affordable Housing Trust Fund have created the Acquisition, Creation and Conversion (ACC) Program to provide a flexible source of funding for creating deed-restricted affordable housing in Arlington. Up to $250,000 is available per restricted unit, and the Town has dedicated federal ARPA funds to support the ACC Program.
ACC Program funds can be used to build new deed-restricted affordable units, whether rented or owned. ACC funds can only be used for existing units if the current tenants will not be displaced.
“Deed-Restricted” Is Important
“Deed-restricted” is the key component here. Housing that is “deed-restricted” as affordable housing is protected by a legally binding agreement that is recorded against the property in the registry of deeds. This agreement specifies the levels of affordability that must be maintained and for how long. It’s a public commitment to provide affordable housing that binds the current owner of the property as well as anyone else who buys the property while the restriction is in place. The ACC Program requires affordability for at least 20 years for rental units and in perpetuity for homeownership units. For rental properties, this means that tenants know that their units will remain affordable for the long term, even if their landlord changes.
Personally, I’m most excited about the potential to use the ACC Program to apply these protections to existing naturally occurring affordable housing in Arlington. For example, if an owner of an existing apartment building participates in the ACC Program, some or all of the apartment units will become deed-restricted affordable housing. Because ACC Program funds can only be used if the existing tenants aren’t displaced, this locks in deed-restricted affordability for the existing tenants. This innovative feature of the program is rare in my experience of affordable housing programs, and it has RFP potential to make meaningful change for existing tenants of naturally occurring affordable housing.
Get the Full Rules
In addition, the ACC Program can be combined with other funding sources, so there is great opportunity for owners to propose their own solutions. The Request for Proposals (RFP) issued for the ACC Program, available here, provides the full rules for participating in the program.
In 2015 Town Meeting approved the Master Plan. Following is the Housing chapter of that plan. It contains a great deal of information about details of the housing situation in Arlington, challenges of housing price increases, needs for specialty housing, opportunities for meeting these needs, etc. The authors found that “most cities and towns around Arlington experienced a significant rise in housing values from 2000 to 2010. A 40 percent increase in the median value was fairly common. However, Arlington experienced more dramatic growth in housing values than any community in the immediate area, except Somerville. In fact, Arlington’s home values almost doubled.” This and related data helps explain why the need for affordable housing is now so acute.
Some years back, I took a bus ride to a climate rally in New York City with a bunch of other activists. My seatmate was 12 years old, a smart kid from the suburbs who had never been to New York. As we approached Manhattan on the Cross Bronx Expressway, he looked out at a block of concrete apartment buildings and said something like: This is what happens when you don’t care about the environment. Actually, I replied, this is green living: People live close together; they can walk or take public transit; they live in apartments, share walls and heat and are relatively energy efficient; their carbon footprint is far lower than a family in a “green”, leafy single-family suburban house.
But my traveling companion was not altogether wrong about what he saw: New York, Boston, and every other city are now at pains to make a humane, equitable adaptation to a changing climate. We don’t want to create living spaces that bake in the sun’s heat, that have no shade or greenery or open space, surrounded by asphalt and highway, beset with deadly particulate pollution, flooding risk, and polluted stormwater runoff. Heat and air pollution are an expensive and deadly burden that fall especially heavily on low- and middle-income folks — a burden cruelly increasing with climate change.
As we decide what kinds of housing we are going to encourage in Arlington, we can do things in a more compassionate and inclusive way. We can incorporate environmental and aesthetic concerns, while allowing a mix of housing types that accommodate people of diverse incomes, family sizes, and life stages.
We can address both the climate crisis and the crisis-level housing shortage in Greater Boston. Environmental concerns are not a reason to say no to new housing. Rather, they are a part of the housing solution, in Arlington and regionally.
As Laura Wiener detailed in another post, The Housing Corporation of Arlington development at 10 Sunnyside (between Broadway and Mystic Valley Parkway, near Route 16), is an excellent example of implementing environmental/sustainability measures in an affordable (i.e. income-subsidized) multi-family dwelling. It is Passive House certified: An extremely stringent standard, using a combination of advanced and repurposed materials, high- and low-tech, to provide human comfort while bringing energy use to an absolute minimum.* The development features plentiful bike parking and a roof garden. It converts previously impervious pavement to landscaping, like planters, where stormwater can infiltrate the ground rather than carrying unfiltered pollutants into Arlington’s water bodies.
Another example of green infrastructure lives charmingly and unassumingly on some of our street corners. In 2020, Arlington installed rain gardens at the corner of Milton Street and Herbert Road in East Arlington. These little curbside oases act as a kind of green filter for storm water, catching pollutants (Fertilizer! Salt! Dog poop! Oil! Brake dust!) before they reach Alewife Brook and the Mystic River. Perhaps co-sited with new housing, wider buildout of rain gardens could keep nutrient pollution out of Spy Pond, preventing nasty algae growth which literally suffocates other aquatic life.
A caveat: We must take care not to load so many creative requirements onto new housing that it doesn’t get built at all. We need the housing. (See “The Problem with Everything-Bagel Liberalism” by Ezra Klein in the New York Times.) And under the new MBTA Zoning that we are required to implement, we must allow three-family housing in our new multi-family zones by right, i.e. without extra requirements or rigamarole.
But we could decide to add incentives to allow more housing above those requirements if such environmental improvements (rain gardens, green roofs, pollinator habitat, Passive House innovations, etc.) are included. Every new building is an opportunity for environmental adaptation. A vision for a greener, cooler, more inclusive Arlington takes shape. We can do this.
New housing development provides an opportunity to incorporate inclusive, environmentally friendly, win-win adaptations. Our environmental and housing goals must not be in tension with each other. With a coordinated approach, we can address the challenges of pollution, climate change, and our chronic and unjust housing shortage.
*As far as I can tell, only two other buildings in all of Greater Boston are Passive House certified: A new multi-family in Roxbury, and a single-family in Somerville.
Text of Warrant Article 8: (To be considered at Special Town Meeting (Virtual), Mon. 11/16/20 at 8:00 p.m.)
“ARTICLE 8 ACCEPTANCE OF LEGISLATION/BYLAW AMENDMENT/ MUNICIPAL AFFORDABLE HOUSING TRUST FUND
To see if the Town will vote to accept Massachusetts General Laws c. 44 § 55C, to authorize the creation of a Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Fund to support the development of affordable housing in Arlington, establish a new bylaw for the administration of same; or take any action related thereto. (Inserted by the Select Board)”
What will it do? How will it work?
A Proactive Step to Address Housing Affordability. With a municipal affordable housing trust, Arlington will join more than 113 Massachusetts municipalities that have formed a housing trust fund to support a proactive strategy for building housing affordability. The Trust is a small step the Town can take to more proactively address the housing affordability crisis that challenges many of our current residents and makes Arlington increasingly inaccessible to new residents. Creating affordable housing can also be a strategy for maintaining or increasing diversity.
Ability to Act Quickly.
A primary benefit of a housing trust is to enable the Town to act quickly to support or participate in transactions that increase or preserve affordable housing in Arlington. Without a Trust, the Town does not have the flexibility or agility to act quickly. Following are some examples, though there are many other ways that trusts can and do advance housing affordability:
• Financing the acquisition and/or development of market properties for conversion to affordable housing by a nonprofit developer;
• Purchasing an existing affordable home to ensure resale to another low income buyer, or purchasing a market rate home to create an affordable homeownership opportunity;
• Providing flexible financing to increase the number of affordable units or reduce income levels in existing or new projects that include affordable housing.
Developing a Housing Trust Strategy Over Time.
The strategies to be pursued by the Trust would be set forth by the Trustees in a plan or proposal(s) they would lay out after they are appointed, most likely after/through a process of public engagement. The specific strategies are, deliberately, not part of the warrant article or the Bylaw proposed for adoption. This allows the Town the flexibility to set and modify the Town’s housing strategies over time, in a manner that is responsive to the public and its elected representatives. The Bylaw requires the strategy or plan, and most major Trust decisions, to be approved by the Select Board, and Town investments in the Trust would still require Town Meeting approval.
Funding the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
Creating affordable housing requires substantial subsidy. The Trust’s ability to cause more affordable housing to be created or preserved in Arlington will be directly related to the availability of resources to fund it and leverage additional state and federal resources. The vote before the Special Town Meeting this fall will not provide any funding for the Trust.
While it is anticipated that the Trust might receive initial funding via a grant of Community Preservation Act funds from the CPA Committee, to increase our impact, more resources will be needed.
How Other Communities Fund Their Housing Trust Funds.
The Community Preservation Act is the most common source of funding, but the most impactful trusts tend to have a variety of funding sources that result in a steady flow of financial resources into the Trust. Other municipalities have tapped into a variety of additional sources, including inclusionary zoning payments, federal HOME funds, voluntary/negotiated developer payments, proceeds from sale of tax foreclosed or other Town-owned properties, cell tower payments, cannabis-related revenue, short-term rental fees, fees for managing housing lotteries, sale of bonds, general municipal funding, and private donations. Many also donate excess town property to their housing trust for sale and redevelopment as affordable or mixed income housing. More recently, a number of cities and towns have proposed home rule petitions that would allow them to impose a small fee on the transfer of real property to fund their housing trusts, and there is state legislation proposed to authorize cities and towns to impose such transfer fees without sending a Home Rule Petition to the state legislature.
Building Trust Resources Through a Transfer Fee.
The Housing Plan Implementation Committee originally recommended that Town Meeting adopt a bylaw creating a housing trust and create a funding source for it by voting to authorize the filing of a home rule petition to impose a modest real estate transfer fee. Although the Select Board elected to defer consideration of the transfer fee until 2021, such a fee is attractive to many, because it would be borne only by those selling their Arlington homes or properties, and because it provides a mechanism to capture a very small portion of the extraordinary equity increase that Arlington property owners have realized over many years due to regional market forces. The details of such a fee are important and merit further discussion, but it presents a promising potential revenue source to empower the Trust to be proactive.
The Process.
The article in front of the Special Town Meeting would start the process of creating a municipal affordable housing trust. Once approved by Town Meeting the Affordable Housing Trust Bylaw would be submitted to the Attorney General to certify its consistency with the state law governing housing trusts within 90 days. Once so certified, the Town Manager will appoint trustees, including at least one member of the Select Board. Once these appointments are confirmed by the Select Board, the Trustees themselves would lead the process of proposing an initial set of goals and strategies for the Trust to implement, after approval by the Select Board.
Financial Stability & Accountability.
The Trust will be governed by the MAHT law passed in 2005 that specifies powers and limitations for trusts of this type. The proposed Bylaw has been reviewed and modified pursuant to suggestions of the Finance Committee to ensure accountability and financial stability. The Trust will be managed by the Treasurer, will be audited annually, will have legal and practical limitations on its borrowing capacity, and will not have the power to pledge the full faith and credit of the Town.
To learn more about municipal affordable housing trusts, refer to the MHP Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Fund Guide, v.3
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This information was prepared by Karen Kelleher, Arlington Town Meeting Member, Precinct 5, Member, Arlington Housing Planning Implementation Committee and Executive Director, LISC Boston ( Local Initiative Support Corporation)
The citizen participation process including presentations, discussions, public hearings, letters and comments has been long and arduous. The issues are complicated and sometimes feelings run high. In such situations, there can be a feeling that citizens have not been heard. This document, “Guide to Zoning Amendments Related to Multifamily Uses and Mixed-Use“, summarizes many of the issues that have been raised and the changes that have been made in the zoning Articles as a result of the citizen participation in the public review process. Citizens have been heard.
This 102 page document is the most recently revised set of recommendations by the Town of Arlington’s Redevelopment Board. The report takes into consideration the comments and information provided over the last few months’ public hearing process. It also incorporates a citizen petition which strengthens the case for increasing permanent affordable housing with the passage of these zoning related Articles. Town Meeting convenes on April 22, 2019.