Housing Production Plan Outreach Efforts

Arlington is in the process of update the town’s 2016 Housing Production Plan, and the Housing Plan Implementation Committee and Planning Department have put together a “meeting in a box” as part of their outreach efforts. The idea is to package a set of discussion questions and supplementary materials, so that groups can talk through the questions on their own and provide written feedback. Meeting in a box materials are available from the town website.

I tried this with a group of friends. Here are the questions, and points that came up during the group discussion. Notes that these are discussion notes (transcribed from large sheets of easel paper), and don’t represent agreement or concensus.

Question 1: Housing Needs. Arlington residents have expressed concerns about the housing needs of older adults. Other needs identified so far are the cost and condition of rental housing, the impact of Arlington’s housing sale prices on the ability of young families to find a home in Arlington they can afford, and the impact of limited housing choices on racial and ethnic diversity in Arlington. What housing needs are you most concerned about?

Address historical racial injustice and land use policies.
Diversity and types of housing. Availability and affordability.
Lack of diversity of housing types.
Every house sold is a total bidding war.
Better “stage of life housing” matches.
Having an adequate range of options for lots of different needs.
Impact on the regional housing shortage.
Arlington is served by the T and buses; we have a responsibility to provide housing because we have access to transit.
I was lucky to get in a few years ago, before prices started going crazy.
We spend too much time romanticizing our old crumbling houses with lead paint.
Arlington’s zoning encourages mansionization. As a result, we get one big expensive house rather than two smaller more affordable ones.
What’s happening in Arlington today is the same thing that happened to Lexington 20 years ago — it became a community for affluent professionals only
There’s too much emphasis on keeping things the way they were 20, 30, 40, or 50 years ago.
Housing can be about preserving economic diversity, but we need a variety of housing types to do that.
I’d be happy to see more people in town.
Getting an affordable rental unit here is like winning the lottery.
The suburbs have shut down housing production. That’s one of the things causing gentrification in Boston.
Arlington’s housing mainly caters towards families with children. For our town’s financial health, we also need housing for families without children.
With climate change, our practice of low-density, car-oriented, land-intensive sprawl is no longer sustainable. Density can be an important tool for addressing climate change, and we should use it to that effect.

Question 2: Challenges to Meeting Affordable Housing Needs. Participants in interviews conducted for the Housing Plan and at the June 9 Housing Plan Meeting were asked about challenges or obstacles to providing affordable housing in Arlington. Several challenges were identified, such as difficulty finding locations that for new housing development or redevelopment, how the Town’s Housing Trust Fund and CPA funds should be used to meet housing needs, and general tensions and disagreement about growth in Arlington that make it hard for people to agree. What challenges do you think are the biggest impediments to meeting housing needs in Arlington?

There’s not a stable funding source for Arlington’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
Housing is really expensive here.
There are not enough affordable housing developers that are willing to navigate Arlington’s anti-development stance. They’ll build in other communities, where there’s less resistance.
There’s a lack of political will to add affordable housing, or housing in general.
There’s not enough land where multifamily housing can be built.
There’s unreasonable resistance to new multi-family buildings, like apartments.
The housing production plan identifies a number of opportunity zones. But they’re small, and there’s not enough land to create much of an opportunity.
Our housing authority is not very aggressive about utilizing the land they have. Their leadership doesn’t seem to want to do it.
The belief that “Arlington is full”. In reality, we’ve just chosen to be (by virtue of current zoning).

Question 3: Opportunities for Reaching Agreement. What steps would help to bring Arlington residents together about providing affordable housing? How can the Town balance concerns about housing needs and natural resources protection? Or concerns about housing need and preserving Arlington’s built environment? What do you think most could people agree on?

Concern about exurban sprawl.
Concern about gentrification.
Our parking requirements make housing more expensive than it needs to be.
We can agree on worries. I’m skeptical that we’ll be able to agree on solutions.
There’s an unwillingness to accept incremental progress.
Many incremental changes feel too big.
If people feel threatened by affordable housing, they’ll oppose it.
Shared values around the importance of having residents of a variety of economic situations.
Do people really care about environmental sustainability when they move into a house? Not sure how you get people to sign on.
There’s a conflict between anti-density and sustainability.
If you don’t build here, there will be evergreen builds outside of 495.
Teachers who teach here should be able to afford to live here.
We need business growth and tax base growth.
New housing should feel like it blends into the surrounding neighborhood.
Our neighborhoods are changing. The fact that we’re not doing proactive things doesn’t prevent them from changing.

As you can see, our group had a range of opinions and even a few points of disagreement – for example, “there’s an unwillingness to accept incremental progress” vs “many incremental changes feel too big”. I feel like that pair is a good illustration of how different people have different comfort zones; a situation that can be challenging to navigate. Metro Boston is growing, as are metropolitan areas all across the country. Our new arrivals will need places to live, and I’d hope to see Arlington be proactive in addressing that need.

Reinhardt on Sustainable Housing Ideas

Written by Barbara Thornton December 5, 2019

The Color of Law on Sunnyside Ave

I live on Sunnyside Avenue in Arlington, Massachusetts. The neighborhood was built as two subdivisions in 1948, with 42 duplexes (84 homes total). These were starter homes with 792 square feet of finished space plus a basement with a garage. I affectionately refer to them as excellent specimens of mid-century slap-up. They were constructed in the mid 20th century, and the builder just kind of slapped them up.

Here’s one of the original newspaper ads for these homes.

Sunnyide - a Community of Duplexes in Arlington! Priced from $8750!

It’s fun to read the ad copy. The homes are “within walking distance of schools, transportation (MTA) and shopping centers” (a selling point that endures to this day); the lots are “large to provide for individual landscaping” (they’re 3,000 square feet give or take, which is unbuildably small by today’s zoning laws); and the homes have “full-sized dining rooms”, “spacious streamlined kitchens”, and “two large sunny bedrooms” (so much largeness for 792 square feet). I guess this was a time when good salesmanship took precedence over truth in advertising. It was a different time.

I have to admit, they were a pretty good deal. $8750 in 1948 is equivalent to around $95,000 in 2020 dollars; these homes, with the original floor plan, currently sell for around half a million dollars.

However, the part of the ad that most caught my attention was “All Mortgages FHA 25 years”. FHA refers to the Federal Housing Administration, who were the primary mortgage underwriters during the middle of the 20th century. They’re also an example of how the United States used housing policy as a tool for segregation; the FHA was in the business of insuring mortgages for white families in white neighborhoods. The Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston has a short summary of FHA practices. There’s also discussion of the FHA in Segregated by Design.

Which is to say, my nice little neighborhood in East Arlington was likely designed, built, and sold as a segregated development for whites.

Arlington’s biggest period of residential construction was in the 1920’s when we were building an average of 500 homes/year. But there was still a good deal of single- and two-family construction that took place from the 1930’s to the 1960’s — a bit over 5,000 homes. Since the FHA was the primary mortgage underwriter during that period, I think it’s safe to say that my neighborhood was probably not the only for-whites-only neighborhood in town.

I will end with two questions. How do we feel about this bit of history, and what (if anything) should we do about it?

FHA Redlining Segregation and Zoning Sunnyside Ave

Written by Steve Revilak February 12, 2020

Arlington Can’t Wait for Affordable Housing to Just Naturally Occur

Written by Steve Revilak December 26, 2019

Developers- A Dirty Word?

Written by Guest Writer August 31, 2019

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

Accessory Dwelling Units in Arlington: FAQs

Written by Barbara Thornton May 16, 2021

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