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.
Related articles
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.
It’s New Year’s eve and I’m determined to get my third and final “Arlington 2020” article written and posted before 2021 rolls in. I’ve written these articles to paint a picture of Arlington’s housing stock, and how our housing costs have changed over time. The first article looked at the number of one-, two-, and three-family homes and condominiums in Arlington. The second article looked at how the costs of these homes has varied over time.
In this article, I’m going to look at the per-unit costs for our different housing types. The per-unit cost is just the assessed value, divided by the number of units. For condos and single-family homes, the unit cost is simply the assessed value. For two-family homes, it’s the assessed value divided by two. For a ten-unit apartment building, it’s the assessed value divided by ten. We’ll look at the price ranges within housing types, as well as the general differences between them.
The information here doesn’t include residential units from Arlington’s 76 mixed-use buildings. (My copy of the assessor’s data doesn’t distinguish between residential and commercial units in these buildings; I’ll try to say more about them in 2021.) It also omits units owned by the Arlington Housing Authority.
Condominiums
Condominiums provide the most variety and cost diversity. A condo can be half of a duplex, or part of a much larger multi-family building. The low end of the scale tends to be 500–600 square foot units that were built in the 1960’s; the high end tends to be more spacious new construction.
This graph is a histogram, as are the others in this article. The horizontal axis shows cost per unit, and the vertical axis shows the number of units in each particular cost band.
The per-unit price distribution is
min | 1st quartile | median | mean | 3rd quartile | max |
$92,600 | $344,450 | $473,100 | $500,086 | $640,850 | $1,241,000 |
Single-family homes
Single family homes are heavily concentrated around the $700,000 mark. There’s very little available for less than a half million dollars.
Per unit rice distribution:
min | 1st quartile | median | mean | 3rd quartile | max |
$103,700 | $679,900 | $771,900 | $825,172 | $908,750 | $3,232,700 |
The $103,700 single-family home deserves some explanation. The property straddles the border between Arlington and Lexington; it appears that the $103k assessed value reflects the portion that lies in Arlington.
Two-family Homes
Two-family homes are the bread and butter of East Arlington; they’re also common in the blocks off Mass ave near Brattle Square and the heights. Many of these homes are older and non-conforming, and they’re gradually being renovated and turned into condominiums.
As a reminder, these are costs per unit (as opposed to the cost of the entire two-family home).
Per unit price distribution:
Min | 1st quartile | median | mean | 3rd quartile | max |
$209,050 | $440,550 | $472,000 | $479,175 | $508,588 | $1,140,450 |
Three-family Homes
Unlike Dorchester and Somerville, three-family homes are not a staple of Arlington’s housing stock. But we have a few of them. Most were built between 1906 and 1930.
Per-unit price distribution:
Min | 1st quartile | median | mean | 3rd quartile | max |
$227,567 | $313,733 | $336,950 | $344,292 | $362,600 | $719,000 |
Small Apartments (4–8 units)
The majority of Arlington’s small apartment buildings were constructed during the first half of the 20th century. The most recent one dates from 1976.
Per-unit price distribution:
Min | 1st quartile | median | mean | 3rd quartile | max |
$154,950 | $202,950 | $227,775 | $231,619 | $255,775 | $403,875 |
Large Apartments (9+ units)
You’ll see three outliers in the per unit-cost distribution for large apartment buildings. These correspond to the newest apartment complexes in Arlington: The Legacy (2000), Brigham Square (2012), and Arlington 360 (2013).
Per-unit price distribution:
Min | 1st quartile | median | mean | 3rd quartile | max |
$117,013 | $141,383 | $153,006 | $195,789 | $170,973 | $474,631 |
All combined
Finally, we’ll put it all together in one picture, representing nineteen-thousand and some odd homes in town.
Per-unit price distribution:
Min | 1st quartile | median | mean | 3rd quartile | max |
$92,600 | $417,175 | $555,825 | $587,975 | $759,900 | $3,232,700 |
While there are lower-priced options available, a person coming to Arlington should expect to buy (or rent) a property that costs just shy of half a million dollars (or more).
Here is a spreadsheet with the cost distributions mentioned in this article.
(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!
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.
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.
Minneapolis is the most recent governmental entity to disrupt the almost 110 year old idea of local zoning in America by overriding single family zoning. Zoning was developed in the the early 1900’s to control property rights and, in part, to limit access to housing by race. These early laws were upheld by the courts in the 1930’s and the use of zoning to control private property for the interests of the majority became common. Houston Texas did not adopt zoning, an outlier in the nation.
But recently governments are rethinking zoning in light of evidence of exclusionary practices including racism and inadequate supplies of affordable housing. In July Oregon’s legislature voted to essentially ban single family zoning in the state.
Most recently, in the end of July, Minneapolis became the first city this century to remove single family zoning, allowing two family housing units to enter any single family zone as of right. According to the Bloomberg News article, the city took action to remedy the untenable price increases do to single family homes taking a disproportionate amount of city land and services. They hope a wider range of housing, and more housing, will reduce housing costs in the future.
Read the full story from Bloomberg News.
In a 2019 study, MAPC found that:
- Three out of ten spaces sit empty during peak demand
- The key factors that drive parking demand are parking supply, transit accessibility and the percentage of deed-restricted units
This study raises important questions about the wisdom of continuing to commit large sections of the land area of our municipalities to be on reserve for parking cars. Such extra space could be used to benefit the open space, environmental sustainability and the need for more housing.
(This post was originally an email message, discussion open space changes proposed by an Affordable Housing article during the Arlington, MA’s 2019 town meeting. It’s also a decent description of our town’s open space laws.)
Sorry this turned out to be a long post. Our open space laws are kind of complicated.
Arlington regulates open space as a percentage of gross floor area, rather than as a percentage of lot area. Let me give a concrete example: say we have a-one story structure with no basement. It covers a certain percentage of the lot area, and has an open space requirement based on the gross floor area (i.e., the interior square footage of the building).
Now, suppose we want to turn this into a two- or three-story structure. The building footprint does not change, and it covers exactly the same percentage of the lot area. However, the open space requirements double (if you’re doing a two-story building), or triple (if you’re doing a three story building). If that quantity of open space isn’t on the lot, then you can’t add the stories.
For this reason, I’d argue that our open space regulations are primarily oriented to limiting the size of buildings. You really can’t allow more density (or taller buildings) without reducing the open space requirements. Alternatively, if the requirements were based on a percentage of lot area, we probably wouldn’t need a reduction. (Cambridge’s equivalent is “Private Open Space”, and they regulate it as a percentage of lot area.)
The other weird thing about our open space laws is that we define “usable open space” in such a way that it’s possible to have none. (Usable open space must have a minimum horizontal dimension of 25′, a grade of 8% or less, and be free of parking and vehicular traffic). I live on a nonconforming lot that does not meet these requirements, as do the majority of homes in my neighborhood.
Suppose I wanted to build an addition, which would increase the gross floor area. With the non-conformity, I’d have to go in front of the ZBA and show that the current lot has 0% usable open space, and that the house + addition produces a lot with 0% usable open space. Because 0% = 0%, I have not increased the nonconformity, and would be able to build the addition, provided that all of the other dimensional constraints of the bylaw are satisified. Although this isn’t directly related to Article 16, it’s an amusing side effect of how the bylaw is written.
Finally, roofs and balconies. Section 5.3.19 of our current ZBL allows usable open space on balconies at least six feet wide, and on roofs that are no more than 10′ above the lowest occupied floor. We allow 50% of usable open space requirements to be satisfied in this manner.
The relevant section of Article 16 would create a 8.2.4(C)(1) which includes the language
Up to 25% of the landscaped open space may include balconies at least 5 feet by 8 feet in size only accessible through a dwelling unit and developed for the use of the occupant of such dwelling unit.
Article 16’s incentive bonuses strike the usable open space requirement, and double the landscaped open space requirement. With only landscaped open space, 5.3.19 doesn’t apply (it only pertains to usable open space). The language I’ve quoted adds something 5.3.19-like, but for landscaped open space. I say 5.3.19-like because it has a 25% cap rather than a 50% cap, and requires eligible balconies to be at least 5’x8′, rather than 6′ wide.
Here are a few pieces of supporting documentation:
- definitions of landscaped and usable open space from our ZBL
- a diagram to illustrate the difference between landscaped and usable open space.
- The text of section 5.3.19 (which is referenced by the diagram)
- the main motion for Article 16