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In the 1930’s the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation of America (HOLC) created actuarial maps of the United states. These maps were color coded — Green, Blue, Yellow, and Red — to reflect the amount of “risk” associated with home loans in those areas. The colors corresponded to “Best” (green), “Still Desirable” (blue), “Definitely Declining” (yellow), and “Hazardous” (red). Being in a green area made you likely to secure a federally-insured home mortgage, something that was effectively unavailable to red areas. Red areas were often associated with black populations, and these maps are where the term “redlining” comes from.
Here’s an HOLC map of Arlington, courtesy of the University of Richmond’s mapping inequality project.
Note that Arlington does not have any “Hazardous” (red) areas; 68% of the town fell into the top two grades, meaning that we were generally a safe bet as far as federal mortgage insurers were concerned. To the extent that the HOLC preferred white communities, Arlington seems to have fit the bill. According to US census data.
- 1930: population 36,094. No breakdown by race.
- 1940: population 40,013. 99.8% white.
- 1950: population 44,353. No breakdown by race.
- 1960: population 49,953. 99.7% white.
- 1970: population 53,524. 99.0% white.
- 1980: population 48,219. 97.3% white.
Today, Arlington is about 84% white. But during the time that mortgage approvals were based on the HOLC maps — the mid 1930’s through the mid 1960’s — we certainly qualified as an overwhelmingly (> 99%) white community.
Arlington had four yellow-lined (“definitely declining”) areas; about 32% of the town. C1 (on the western edge of town) was noted for an “infiltration of Jews”, a “heavy concentration of relief families”, and hilly terrain which was “not conducive to good development”. But it had good schools and a nice area along Appleton St. C2 (along Mass Ave and Mill Brook) was noted for “obsolescence” with “business and housing mixed together” and “railroad tracks through [the] neighborhood”. There was an infiltration of lower-class people, a moderate number of relief families, and “little possibility of conversion of properties to business use”.
C3 (East Arlington, around the present location Thompson School and Menotomy Manor) was noted for “Obsolescence, poor reputations” and “foreign concentration”. There was an “infiltration of foreign [residents]” and a “heavy concentration of relief families”. On the positive side, there were “a few small farms in this section of high grade development of the ground [which] may be anticipated in the early future with modest houses”.
Finally, C4 (around Spy Pond, and near the Alewife T station) was “obsolescent”, with an infiltration of foreign families, and a moderately heavy concentration of relief families. The HOLC noted that “Houses East of Varnum Street [and] south of Herbert Road are built on low ground and many have damp basements which makes them difficult to keep occupied”.
That’s what the HOLC saw as the declining side of Arlington: Jews, foreigners (mostly Italian), relief families, obsolescence, damp basements, and proximity to the Boston-Maine railroad.
Exercise for the reader. Arlington has five public housing projects: Drake Village, Winslow Towers, Chestnut Manor, Cusack Terrace, and Menotomy Manor. What HOLC colors are associated with our public housing?
Buildings last for decades, and effects of the HOLC’s underwriting policies are still with us today — sometimes in unexpected ways. A 2020 paper called “The Effects of Historical Housing Policies on Resident Exposure to Intra-Urban Heat: A Study of 108 US Urban Areas” examined 108 communities, and tried to determine if there was a relationship between redlined areas and urban heat islands. Nationwide, this is what they found:
LST stands for “land surface temperature” and shows how different HOLC risk categories compare to the overall temperature of a region. Green areas tend to be cooler, with less paved surface, more extensive tree canopies, and buildings with reflective exteriors. Red areas are warmer with more paved surfaces, less tree canopy, and building exteriors that absorb and release heat (e.g., brick and cinderblocks). While the degree varies across different parts of the country, the general trend is the same: as one goes from green to red, the surface temperature goes up. Formerly-redlined areas are far more likely to contain heat islands.
Exercise for the reader. Are there heat islands in Arlington? What (HOLC) color are they?
As the global temperature warms, Arlington (like many other communities) will have to contend with heat islands. The treatment is likely to be area-specific, following patterns laid out in the HOLC’s maps from the early-20th century.
by Arthur Prokosch
New research from the Urban Institute shows that rent control and rent stabilization policies in 27 metro areas increased the supply of rental units with prices affordable to extremely low-income residents. However, this came at the cost of less overall housing supply, and especially fewer rentals with prices affordable to higher-income residents. If subsidization proposals return to Boston and Massachusetts again next year, they will not be a silver bullet for affordability, but could be one ingredient in a successful strategy alongside more housing construction.
As detailed in an in-depth Boston Globe article, rent control in Massachusetts was last repealed statewide, 51-49%, by an initiative petition in 1994. A year ago, as the Globe also reported, Boston and Massachusetts saw a number of “rent stabilization” proposals to reinstitute some components of rent-control policies. None of these proposals included income-specific provisions like limits on higher-income tenants occupying rent-stabilized apartments. Discussions are likely to restart next year.
The new research gives stronger evidence that achieving the goal of affordable housing at all income levels requires multiple complementary strategies, because each affordable housing strategy has its own tradeoffs. Rent control may increase the number of very-low-priced rentals across an entire region, at least in the short run, with the tradeoff of reducing housing supply and affordability at higher income levels. Thus, at best, rent control would need to be paired with greater amounts of new housing production–even more than is already needed today–to be able to give a net benefit for low-income, moderate-income, and every other income band above very-low-income residents.
Other affordable-housing strategies have their own tradeoffs. Arlington’s inclusionary zoning requirements set aside some units for lower- and moderate-income residents, with a tradeoff of increasing the prices of the remaining units, or reducing their number. Meanwhile, nonprofit organizations like the Housing Corporation of Arlington and government agencies like the Arlington Housing Authority ensure that some lower-income residents can afford housing, with the tradeoff that their limited funding only allows them to serve a small fraction of the demand.
In contrast, reducing barriers to the construction of new housing decreases housing costs across a metro area. See another recent article for a description of how housing construction has a “filter effect”, slowing rent growth at all income levels. Even so, a range of strategies would help ensure that affordable housing arrives as quickly as it is needed, at every income level, and in every neighborhood where it is needed.
In summary, rent control can be a useful tool, one that’s most effective when combined with other strategies. Our housing problems are multi-faceted, and the responses have to be multi-faceted too.
Climate Central’s Surging Seas global Risk Zone Map provides the ability to explore inundation risk up to 30 meters across the world’s coastlines as well as local sea level rise projections at over 1,000 tide gauges on 6 continents.
Set the map for Boston MA and focus in on the Arlington area to see how the town would be affected by rising sea levels, as predicted over the next few decades.
Map areas below the selected water level are displayed as satellite imagery shaded in blue indicating vulnerability to flooding from combined sea level rise, storm surge, and tides, or to permanent submergence by long-term sea level rise. Map areas above the selected water level are shown in map style using white and pale grays. The map is searchable by city, state, postal code, and other location names. The map is embeddable, and users can customize and download map screenshots using the camera icon in the top right of the screen.
For map areas in the U.S., the Risk Zone map incorporates the latest, high-resolution, high-accuracy lidar elevation data supplied by NOAA, displays points of interest, and contains layers displaying social vulnerability and population density. For map areas outside the U.S. the map utilizes elevation data from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM).
A Guide for Arlington
The Massachusetts Housing Partnership put together this 2018 guidebook, v.3, to help municipalities adopt Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Fund (MAHT) legislation to suit the specific needs of each municipality.
Arlington is considering the acceptance of enabling legislation in the November 2020 Virtual Town Meeting to create the Town’s own MAHT. This will enable the Town to create a vehicle for receiving and spending funds to assist low and moderate income individuals and families to move toward greater housing stability. The MAHT does not provide money, but it does provide a place where the Town can receive money from a variety of sources to be used for furthering affordable housing. Examples include payments from developers, contributions from bequests and, if approved, a real estate transfer tax on the sale of higher priced homes in Arlington.
Municipal Affordable Housing Trust: how to envision, gain support, and utilize a local Trust to achieve your housing goals.
For more information on how this MAHT can benefit Arlington see: https://equitable-arlington.org/2020/11/09/arlington-affordable-housing-trust-fund/