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.
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Dave Weinstock, an Arlington resident interested in affordable housing wondered about the concept of “developer math”. The math involved in planning an affordable housing projects is a problem that needs to get solved in order to have anything built here in Arlington, or anywhere. This topic comes up frequently in community discussions about the need for more housing.
Questions are raised around:
- 1- Why build so many units vs. smaller buildings
- 2- Why parking is costly and inefficient use of land
- 3- Why can’t more affordable or all affordable units be built?
- 4- The cost of subsidizing affordable units and how that may translate to higher rental rates/costs, etc.
Dave found a great Architecture and Development firm in Atlanta (Kronberg Urbanists + Architects, based in Atlanta GA) that lays out a nice presentation, includes sample proformas, and real life scenarios that may help us understand this piece of the puzzle better when evaluating any project and how developers may be incented to build certain types of projects or do certain types of work.
Here is a link, reformatted to be within this website, to the presentation, showing the varieties of choices, costs, formulas and outcomes developers consider before deciding if the project can be built: https://equitable-arlington.org/developer-math_kua_071420/
Much of our hope for more affordable housing depends on the market forces of capitalism and the willingness of developers to build for good, not just for profit. But the developers must be able to cover their costs. Many communities are highly skeptical of developers, assuming the community will get tricked, the developer will get greedy and the promised housing will be a disappointment. Trust is needed. But so is verification. We all need to learn the developer math.
What are the math factors that a developer considers before deciding to build affordable housing?
Here is a link to the original presentation. https://www.kronbergua.com/post/mr-mu-let-s-talk-about-math
(by Steve Revilak)
In 2021 the Massachusetts State Legislature passed the MBTA Communities act, which requires cities and towns served by the MBTA (aka “MBTA Communities”) to create districts where multi-family housing can be built by-right, without a disretionary approval process. The law was intended to help address the Commonwealth’s housing shortage, and to encourage more transit-oriented development. Building housing near transit and walkable areas has a lot of environmental benefits; it let’s people take trips without driving, lessens congestions, and cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a solid strategey.
Arlington created its multi-family districts in the fall of 2023 and the Attorney General’s office approved them in June 2024. The laws have been on the books for just over a year — what kind of a difference are they making in Arlington?
2024 was a slow year for the MBTA Communities act in Arlington; there was one application which turned a two-family home on Belknap St into a pair of two-family homes, for a net change of two additional dwellings. 2025 has brought more activity. There are four applications under the review by the Arlington Redevelopment Board but none have been approved yet. These are:
- 225 Broadway, to convert a two-family home into a four-family,
- 126 Broadway, to convert a two-family home into a mixed use building with space for a business on the first floor, and 14 apartments,
- 18 Grafton, to convert a one-family home into a four-family, and
- 9-11 Robbins Road to convert a two-family home to nine apartments
There was an additional application to convert four apartments to five at 259 Broadway, but the applicant withdrew after their first hearing.
If all of these projects are approved, the net change will be an additional 26 homes, which represents a 0.1% increase relative to the 20,460 dwellings that Arlington had as of the 2020 census. It’s been a very slow trickle.
The MBTA Communities act was a meaningful reform which is just starting to make a difference. It’s bringing proposals for smaller multi-family homes that used to be the mainstay of our housing stock, but are generally rare today. However, the MBTA Communities Act is only one tool and Massachusetts will have to do more in order to build the 222,000 homes we need.
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
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.