Developers- A Dirty Word?

Last Spring, as Town Meeting considered zoning options for increasing the amount of housing, including affordable housing in Arlington, some citizens rallied against this effort. The reason: Housing is built by developers. Developers are greedy and can not be trusted. Ergo the community must prohibit developers. But much of the Arlington now cherished was planned and built by developers.

This article from the New York Times helps shed a perspective on the role of developers and suggests ways they are critically important to improving and revitalizing communities over time. Yes some developers’ interests may diverge from the community’s interests. Clear land use planning and regulations make it a better opportunity for both sides. Good developers bring skills in planning, finance, architecture and community engagement. They work with the risk that if they do the job well, they make some money. They could lose money. They don’t get paid by the hour. Both sides, community and developer, take risks. But there are rewards for each side too when the sides work together.

Developers housing finance

Ease Regional Housing Crisis: Four Tasks

Written by Guest Writer December 2, 2019

Housing & Arlington: Community Discussions

Written by Guest Writer December 21, 2020

Race-based Inequality of Economic Opportunity

Written by Barbara Thornton November 11, 2020

Housing

In Support of the Tenants of 840/846 Massachusetts Avenue

Equitable Arlington, along with City Life/Vida Urbana and the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, supports the legacy tenants of 840/846 Massachusetts Avenue in their resistance to rent increases of up to 50%. We urge the buildings’ owner, Torrington Properties, to continue negotiating an agreement with the tenants rather than pursue legal action likely to end in housing court. If more gradual increases are incompatible with Torrington’s business plan, we hope to see the sale of the property to the Housing Corporation of Arlington or another buyer who is committed to keeping the existing tenants in their homes.

The property, whose two larger buildings date to 1940 and 1963, faces Arlington High School, within easy reach of shopping and transit. It occupies one of relatively few spots in Arlington where people can live without a car. (Equitable Arlington and the MBTA Communities plan seek to encourage exactly this kind of housing.) Many of the middle- and lower-income tenants have been there for decades, including teachers, musicians, and some Section 8 voucher recipients. Some are immigrants with limited English. Laura Frost, who has lived there for 20 years, describes the apartments as “unofficial,” and therefore legally unprotected, affordable housing. Erica Schwarz, executive director of the Housing Corporation of Arlington, concurs: “There are so few places where low-income tenants are in units that aren’t restricted.”

When Torrington Properties bought the buildings in 2019, it did not raise rents right away. Instead, the company pursued a familiar strategy of remodeling apartments when tenants moved out and then marketing them as “luxury” units. More recent arrivals are paying typical market rents. Of the longtime residents, several have left because they were worried about being pushed out to make way for more remodeling and steep rent increases, says Frost, who leads the tenants’ association. All have been tenants at will since Torrington bought the property, with their rents not rising but also not guaranteed by 12-month leases. In November 2022, she says, Torrington distributed a list of target rents for all of the units. A few months later, it informed legacy tenants, then about 20 in number, that they needed to either sign leases at the new rates or move out.

“Our position was never ‘You can’t raise rents ever,’” says Frost, who recognizes that Torrington can legally set rents at any level. Working with City Life/Vida Urbana, she hoped for an agreement for more gradual rent increases, like the one Torrington had just reached with tenants near Forest Hills in Boston. By last spring, however, negotiations had broken down. A rally she organized in September drew Reps. Garballey and Rogers. In February, Torrington sent the legacy tenants notices to quit. We are encouraged that negotiations have since resumed. At the same time, we support a more sustainable option for these tenants and anyone who lives there in the future, as well as Arlington as a whole: a commitment, perhaps by a new owner, to keeping some units affordable in the long term.

Schwarz, of the Housing Corporation of Arlington, has discussed purchasing the property from Torrington, which named a price she describes as “a few million dollars more” than HCA can offer. She has been exploring alternative ways to structure a purchase. This would include drawing on the Town of Arlington’s ARPA funds, as well as seeking mission-aligned equity partners for the project under a “mixed income” model. This would not displace any current tenants, but would, over time, provide a very high percentage of affordable units at a range of income levels, while also providing middle-income and market rate units.

Equitable Arlington supports common-sense reforms that allow for more housing options and tenant protections for current and future Arlington residents. We support increased funding for affordable housing, both through the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and state and federal subsidies, and a wider range of housing choice for every income level and every life stage. We also champion housing that is sustainable, equitable, and accessible, including locating additional housing near public transportation, all of which we believe will make Arlington an even more welcoming community.

Affordable housing Arlington Housing housing affordability

Written by Nicole Gustas March 17, 2024

It’s Town Meeting Time Again

It’s January 2023, and as we do every year, folks in Arlington are taking out nomination papers, gathering signatures, and strategizing on how to campaign for the town election on Saturday April 1st. The town election is where we choose members of Arlington’s governing institutions, including the Select Board (Arlington’s executive branch), the School Committee, and — most relevantly for this post — Town Meeting.

If you’re new to New England, Town Meeting is an institution you may not have heard of, but it’s basically the town’s Legislative Branch. Town Meeting consists of 12 members from each of 21 Precincts, for 252 members total. Members serve three-year terms, with one-third of the seats up for election in any year, so that each precinct elects four representatives per year (perhaps with an extra seat or two, as needed to fill vacancies). For a deeper dive, Envision Arlington’s ABC’s of Arlington Government gives a great overview of Arlington’s government structure.

As our legislative branch, town meeting’s powers and responsibilities include:

Passing the Town’s Operating Budget, which details planned expenses for the next year.
Approving the town’s Capital Budget, which includes vehicle and equipment purchases, playgrounds, and town facilities.
Bylaw changes. Town meeting is the only body that can amend the towns bylaws, including ones that affect housing and commercial development.

Town Meeting is an excellent opportunity to serve your community, and to learn about how Arlington and its municipal government works. Any registered voter is eligible to run. If this sounds like an interesting prospect, I’d encourage you to run as a candidate. Here’s what you’ll need to do:

Have a look at the town’s Information for new and Prospective Town Meeting Members.
Contact the Town Clerk’s office to get a set of nomination papers. You’ll need to do this by 5:00 PM February 8th, 2023 at the latest.
Gather signatures. You’ll need signatures from at least ten registered voters in your precinct to get on the ballot (it’s always good to get a few extra signatures, to be safe).
Return your signed nomination papers to the Clerk’s office by February 10, 2023 at noon.
Campaign! Get a map and voter list for your precinct, knock on doors, and introduce yourself. (Having a flier to distribute is also helpful.)
Vote on Saturday April 1st, and wait for the results.

Town Meeting traditionally meets every Monday and Wednesday, from 8:00 — 11:00 pm, starting on the 4th Monday in April (which is April 24th this year), and lasting until the year’s business is concluded (typically a few weeks).

If you’d like to connect with an experienced Town Meeting Member about the logistics of campaigning, or the reality of serving at Town Meeting, please email info(AT)equitable-arlington.org and I’d be happy to make an introduction.

During the past few years, Town Meeting was our pathway to legalizing accessory dwelling units, reducing minimum parking requirements, and loosening restrictions on mixed-use development in Arlington’s business districts. Aside from being a rewarding experience, it’s a way to make a difference!

Written by Steve Revilak January 25, 2023

The Artemis Arlington. An old brick factory building attaches to a new modern building with beautiful landscaping in front.

Housing

Overwhelming Demand for Arlington’s New Affordable Housing Units

Written by Guest Writer June 14, 2024

Consider the Schools: Add More Housing

Jennifer Susse authored this letter on January 20, 2020. Ms. Susse is a member of the Arlington School Committee and a Town Meeting Member. She closely follows the costs and demographic trends of school enrollment and of Town finances.

I write in support of efforts to increase housing in Arlington, both as a resident and as a member of the School Committee. I support these efforts not in spite of their potential effects on our schools, but because of their potential effects on both schools and town.

I have often spoken to the community about our rapid enrollment growth — over 2,000 students added in the last 25 years, 60 percent of those in the last 10 years. Because of these large enrollment increases the Arlington Public Schools have had to add capacity, which the town has generously supported. So how can I be in favor of adding more housing to Arlington, and thus potentially adding even more students to our already stressed school facilities?

Losing diversity
I will get to the capacity issue in a bit, but first I want to point out that in the last 30 years Arlington has lost both economic and generational diversity. The story about the loss of economic diversity is well known; the loss of generational diversity less so.

Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of residents between 20 and 34 dropped from 28 percent to 17 percent. During that same period, the population over 65 dropped from 18 percent to 16 percent. What replaced these demographic groups were primarily residents between the ages of 35 and 54 and 0 and 14. In other words, mostly families with school-aged children. The loss of both types of diversity weakens the fabric of our community. However, the loss of generational diversity also weakens the town’s finances.

The average cost to the town of an additional student is about $8,500, a number that includes what’s known as the Enrollment Growth Factor (the amount that the town gives to the schools for each additional student in the system, currently at 50 percent of the per pupil cost of the preceding year, or $7,297), as well as the average cost of the benefits that the town pays for new hires.

What this means is that during the time a household has children in the school system, it is likely receiving more in benefits than it pays in taxes. For the town’s finances to work, we also need people who do not have children to live and pay taxes in Arlington, including young adults and older adults for whom Arlington is becoming less affordable because of condo conversions, teardowns, etc.

Overcrowded classrooms
But what about our overcrowded classrooms? The answer is that given the type of housing likely to be created on the main corridors, and the timing of that housing construction, I am not worried about further stresses to our school facilities.

By the time new housing is built, our elementary-aged population will likely be in modest decline. Five to 10 years out we expect to see enrollment stabilize at the middle and high school levels as well. That does not mean that we will have tons of extra space; just that we will no longer be in danger of taking over art, music, and literacy rooms for general classroom use.

Enrollment projections made by Dr. Jerome McKibbin in 2015 have so far been fairly accurate. His revised projections show that, without additional housing, we are expected to have 350 fewer elementary-aged students in the Arlington Public Schools 12 years from now than we have today.

The discussion about housing in Arlington reminds me of the discussion a few years ago over the Affordable Care Act. At that time, there was a lot of anxiety about potential changes to the health-care system, but insufficient appreciation (in my opinion) of the then current trends.

Zoning changes
Any discussion of zoning changes in Arlington must take an honest look at where we are now, and the direction we are headed in if there were no zoning changes. Our current trends have us losing natural affordability and economic and demographic diversity because of teardowns, condo conversions and sharp price increases. We don’t have the option to freeze Arlington as we know it today (or 10 years ago) in place.

In closing, I would like to say that I am proud of our excellent schools and strongly believe that families who have recently moved to Arlington have strengthened our community, but I do not want Arlington to become a place where people move in with toddlers and move out soon as their children graduate from high school. The current trends have us losing both economic and generational diversity, which threatens not only our community and civic life, but our financial health as well. Adding more and diverse housing can help.

balanced tax base Housing school building capacity school costs school enrollment zoning

Written by Guest Writer January 20, 2020

The 1988 Fair Housing Report

I recently came across a report from Arlington’s Department of Planning and Community Development, titled “Overview of Affordable Housing Challenges and Opportunities”. The report begins:

Greater Boston’s revitalization is provoking an unexpectedly severe housing challenge in Arlington. Throughout eastern Massachusetts, growth in regional demand has caused housing prices to soar. Additionally, Arlington’s neighborhood stability and recently improved accessibility makes the town particularly attractive. While this is an initial boon for property owners, it harms others.
The surge in demand and resulting tight housing market have restricted residential choice, currently locking many households into existing living situations, even as they enter new lifestages and their needs change. Although all income levels and types of households are affected, these changes tend to hit tenants harder than homeowners especially the elderly, the poor, young singles, along with growing families, minority groups, and those with special housing needs.

This report was commissioned for Arlington’s Fair Housing Committee, and presented to them in February 1988. Despite being written 32 years ago, it’s quite descriptive of the housing challenges facing Metro-Boston — and Arlington — today. These challenges include rising home prices, conversion of rental properties into condominiums, the phenomenon of being “house rich and cash poor”, pressures of speculation, and insufficient new housing production.

Figure F from the report provides a summary of what was required to purchase a median-value home in Arlington. I’ve reproduced the table here, with a few small adaptations.

	1970	1980	1986
median value	$30,000	$62,700	$169,000
20% downpayment	$6,000	$12,540	$33,800
Mortgage	$24,000	$50,160	$135,200
Interest	8.25%	13%	12%
Monthly Principal & Interest	$180.29	$559.95	$1391.21
Monthly Real estate taxes	$75.00	$110.00	$140.00
Total monthly cost	$255.59	$669.95	$1531.21
Annual income required	$10,491	$28,780	$65,623

Here’s the same table, where all values are converted to 2020 dollars [1], and where I’ve added a column for 2020 [2].

	1970	1980	1986	2020
median value	$204,739	$207,902	$397,784	$771,900
20% downpayment	$40,948	$41,580	$79,557	$154,380
Mortgage	$163,791	$166,322	$318,227	$617,520
Interest	8.25%	13%	12%	3.25%
Monthly Principal & Interest	$1,230	$1,857	$3,275	$2,687
Monthly Real estate taxes	$511	$365	$330	$711
Total monthly cost	$1,741	$2,222	$3,605	$3,398
Annual income required	$71,597	$95,429	$154,460	$135,920

This is an interesting comparison. Buying a house in Arlington today is actually less expensive than it was in 1986 (i.e., the annual income requirement is 12% less), but this is predominantly due to today’s lower interest rates. That said, the income threshold is significantly higher than it was in 1980 or 1970. (The report’s introduction refers to 1970’s home prices as belonging to a “bygone era”.)

What solutions were proposed in 1988? The ideas put forward included transfer taxes, accessory apartments (aka accessory dwelling units or ADUs), and encouraging models for cooperative ownership. While I’m unsure of what may have been done to encourage cooperative ownership, I’m pretty certain that the transfer tax and ADU options were never implemented. At the very least, they’re not a part of today’s bylaws.

Between 1975 and 1991, Arlington’s Town Meeting voted in favor of a series of downzonings, and I believe the general sentiment during this period was one of anti-growth/anti-development. Apparently we studied the town’s changing demographics and increasing cost of housing, recognized there was was a problem, but never acted on the recommendations.

Two of the ideas for mitigating housing cost have come back in recent years. Accessory dwelling units were proposed in the 2019 town meeting (Article 15), but defeated by a vote of 137–82 (zoning articles require a 2/3’s supermajority to pass; although the majority voted in favor, that wasn’t enough). The 2020 town meeting may have the opportunity to consider a new ADU article (Article 37), along with the establishment of a real estate transfer fee (Article 20).

Here is a copy of the 1988 report to the Fair Housing Commission.

Footnotes

[1] Inflation adjustments derived from https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

[2] The 2020 median value is the median value of Arlington single-family homes, based on 2020 property assessments. The 2020 tax rate is $11.06/mil.

Fair Housing

Written by Steve Revilak September 20, 2020