Support for Staying the Course

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.

News

Arlington 2020: Low Density Housing

I’ve had an annual ritual for the past several years: obtain a spreadsheet of property assessments from the Town Assessor, load them in to a database, and run a series of R computations against the data. I started doing this for a number of reasons: to understand what was built where (our zoning laws have changed over time, and there are numerous non-conforming uses), the relationship between land and building values, the capital costs of different types of housing, and how these factors have changed over time.

I’d typically compile these analyses into a fact-book of sorts, and email it around to people that I thought might be interested. This year, I’m going to post the analyses here as a series of articles. This first installment contains basic information about Arlington’s low-density housing: single-, two-, and three-family homes, as well as condominiums. Condominiums are something of an oddball in this category — a condominium can be half of a two-family structure, part of a larger residential building, or somewhere in between. There’s a lot of variety.

Here’s a table showing how the number of units has changed over time, since 2013.

land use	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Single Family	7984	7983	7991	8000	7994	7994	7998	7999
Condominium	3242	3304	3367	3492	3552	3662	3726	3827
Two-family	2352	2332	2308	2282	2263	2218	2183	2139
Three-family	207	201	196	194	193	190	185	182

Arlington’s predominant form of housing — the single family home — has stayed relatively static; we’ve added 15 over the last seven years. The number of condominiums has increased significantly: +585 over seven years. That, coupled with the reduction of two-family homes (-213) and three-family homes (-25) leads me to believe that a fair number of rental units have been removed from the market.

Next, I’d like to look at how these homes are spread across our various zoning districts. (The “Notes” section at the bottom of the post explains what the zoning district codes mean).

Zone	Single-Family	Condo	Two-family	Three-family
B1	8	22	13	11
B2	1	4		1
B2A	1	18
B3		59	4
B4	1	59	5	5
B5			1	1
I	8	18	7	1
R0	502
R1	6798	168	200	7
R2	647	1816	1881	124
R3	4	39	11	17
R4	23	79	2	3
R5	3	616	5	4
R6	2	686	8	7
R7	1	243	2	1

A few points to note:

R0 is our newest district, which was established in 1991. It consists only of conforming single-family homes.
R1 is Arlington’s original (per 1975 zoning) single-family district. It’s predominantly single-family homes, but there are a fair number of two-family homes, and even a few three-families. The presence of condominiums suggests additional multi-family homes (that consist of two or more condominiums)
R2 is predominantly two-, and three-family homes. Although three-family homes are no longer allowed in this district, R2 has the largest number of three-families in town.
Residential uses are no longer allowed in the industrial (I) districts, but the I districts contain 34 homes. These buildings pre-date the current zoning laws (aka “pre-existing non-conforming”). A good portion of the Dudley street industrial district is a residential neighborhood.

I’m pointing out these conformities (and non-conformities) for a reason. The zoning map (and use tables) dictate what is allowed today, along with specifying a vision for the future. Our zoning bylaw happens to contain a strong statement to this effect: “It is the purpose of this Bylaw to discourage the perpetuity of nonconforming uses and structures whenever possible” (section 8.1.1(A)). Despite the strong statement of intent, it can take decades (if not generations) for a built environment to catch up with the bylaw’s prescriptions.

I’ll finish this post with a breakdown of how condominiums are distributed across the various zoning districts:

Zone	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	delta
(N/A)	14	15	0	0	0	0	0	0	-14
B1	16	16	18	18	18	22	22	22	6
B2	2	2	2	2	4	4	4	4	2
B2A	19	18	18	18	18	18	18	18	-1
B3	55	55	61	59	59	59	59	59	4
B4	47	47	59	59	59	59	59	59	12
I	18	18	18	18	18	18	18	18	0
R1	140	144	146	148	150	154	162	168	28
R2	1355	1406	1456	1518	1574	1670	1723	1816	461
R3	22	25	28	31	31	37	37	39	17
R4	65	67	67	79	79	79	79	79	14
R5	616	616	616	616	616	616	616	616	0
R6	630	632	635	683	683	683	686	686	56
R7	243	243	243	243	243	243	243	243	0

The last column (“delta”) shows the difference between 2013 and 2020. The largest increase occurred in the R2 (two-family) district, followed by R6 (medium-density apartments, where most of the increase took place in 2014) and R1 (single-family).

That it will do it for the first installation. In the next post, we’ll look at how the cost (assessed values, actually) of Arlington’s low density housing has changed over the last seven years.

Here is a spreadsheet, containing the various tables shown in this article.

Notes

Arlington’s zoning map divides the town into a set of districts, and each district has regulations about what kinds of buildings and uses are allowed (or not allowed). The districts mentioned in this article are:

B1 (Neighborhood Office district)
B2 (Neighborhood Business distrct)
B2A (Major Business District)
B3 (Village Business District)
B4 (Vehicular-Oriented Business District)
I (Industrial District)
R0 (Single-Family, large-lot district)
R1 (Single-Family Distict)
R2 (Two-Family District)
R3 (Three-Family District)
R4 (Townhouse District)
R5 (Low-Density Apartment District)
R6 (Medium-Density Apartment District)
R7 (High-Density Apartment District)

Arlington’s Zoning Bylaw describes each district in detail (see sections 5.4.2, 5.5.2, and 5.6.2)

Arlington 2020 assessors data

Written by Steve Revilak July 5, 2020

News

2019 Arlington Redevelopment Board Report to Town Meeting

Written by Steve Revilak April 15, 2019

Transit Corridor Strategy for More Housing

Written by Barbara Thornton December 20, 2019

Arlington’s New Opportunity to Create Long-Term Affordability

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.

Town Manager Jim Feeney spoke briefly about the ACC RFP with ACMI’s James Milan

Affordable housing

Written by Guest Writer July 21, 2024

Housing
News

Towns Join for Regional Approach to Affordable Housing

Written by Guest Writer February 7, 2020

A vision for a greener, cooler, more inclusive Arlington takes shape

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.

environment green living rain gardens sustainability

Written by Charles Blandy June 11, 2023

Communities Need Less Parking

Written by Guest Writer August 12, 2019

The Affordable Homes Act

by Steve Revilak

On Tuesday August 6, 2024, Governor Healey signed the Affordable Homes Act (H.4977) into law. It’s a significant piece of legislation that will take positive strides toward addressing our state’s housing crisis. At 181 pages, the Affordable Homes Act is a lengthy bill, but the things it does generally fall into three categories: funding, changes to state law, and changes to state agencies.

The act authorizes more than five billion dollars to fund the creation, maintenance, and preservation of housing. This includes $425M to housing authorities and local housing initiatives (including $2.5M for the Arlington Housing Authority), $60M to assist homeowners or tenants with a household member with blindness or severe disabilities, $70M for community-based efforts to develop supportive housing for persons with disabilities, and $100M to expand opportunities for first-time homebuyers.

The Affordable Homes Act makes several changes to Massachusetts zoning laws, including the legalization of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) statewide. ADUs, also known as “granny flats” or “in-law apartments,” are a cost-effective way to add new housing, and they’re typically used to provide living quarters for relatives or caretakers, or to generate rental income for homeowners. ADUs are now allowed in all single-family zones in Massachusetts, by right, without the need for a discretionary permit. Arlington has been a leader in this area, having passed an ADU bylaw in 2021, and it’s great to see this option extended throughout the Commonwealth.

Finally, the Affordable Homes Act makes a number of changes to state agencies, especially the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC). The Act establishes a new Office of Fair Housing within the EOHLC, to “advance the elimination of housing discrimination.” The Fair Housing office will provide periodic reports on progress towards achieving this goal. EOHLC is also charged with creating and implementing a state-wide housing plan that will consider supply and demand, affordability, challenges unique to different regions of the state, and an analysis of local zoning laws.

While our legislators deserve kudos for putting this package together, they also deserve kudos for what they left out. More than three hundred amendments were filed during House deliberations, and a number of them were intended to weaken the multi-family housing requirements of the MBTA Communities Act. For example, one amendment, simply titled “Technical Correction” would have rewritten the transit community definitions, in order to reduce the housing requirements for Milton. We are heartened that our legislators did not go along with such shenanigans.

Accessory Dwelling Units ADU Affordable housing Arlington Housing benefits for people with disabilities

Written by Guest Writer August 15, 2024