Thanks to so many of you who came out Monday evening for the demonstration in support of the MBTA Communities proposal before the Arlington Redevelopment Board meeting! Over 20 people were there – a substantial and notable showing, especially on such short notice. Paulette Schwarz took some photos of the demonstration early in the evening which she kindly shared with us.
by Arthur Prokosch
While acknowledging the progress that municipalities like Arlington have made, a recent Boston Globe article makes two major critiques of the effectiveness of the MBTA Communities law. The zoning that Arlington Town Meeting passed last Fall and confirmed this Spring holds up well to both critiques. At the same time, it’s clear that more needs to be done in Arlington and statewide to ensure housing access for all.
The article’s first critique is that a town’s zoning can satisfy state requirements even if it’s likely to result in few if any new homes being constructed. Towns like Norwood are placing their new zones right on top of major apartment buildings that already exist, making it unlikely that existing buildings will receive major rehabs to add just a few units. Or, towns can add enough other restrictions, even if well-meaning, to their zoning that developers won’t take the risk of trying to fit new units in.
In Arlington, it is true that existing 2-story and higher buildings impede construction of new units within the new MBTA Communities zone along Massachusetts Ave and Broadway. On the other hand, our new zoning allows enough new capacity—up to 6 stories total for projects that include bonuses like ground-floor commercial—that new homes will be built over time. Additionally, unlike some towns, we can be confident that restrictions do not make our zoning financially infeasible to construct. The state approved our affordability requirements only after concluding that our zoning is in fact feasible to construct with all restrictions.
The second critique is that MBTA Communities will result in far fewer new homes statewide than the “sticker price” of 300,000. This is true, up to a point, but is not a surprise. That number refers to “capacity,” which ignores the homes that are already there. The difference between “capacity” and actual units built is why the Arlington MBTA Communities Working Group and Equitable Arlington advanced plans that meaningfully exceeded Arlington’s mandated capacity of 2,046. Arlington took the meaningful step of passing zoning that is calculated at a “capacity” of 3,200, which is better but will certainly not result in the 2,046 new units it would take for 300,000 new homes to be constructed statewide.
So, where does that leave us? While some cities and towns are passing MBTA Communities zoning with restrictions that mean that new units are unlikely to be built, other municipalities like Arlington are using this opportunity to pass meaningful zoning. For example, Lexington went beyond the state’s requirements, especially in allowing dense development in areas near Route 95/128. Developers are already applying for permits there, suggesting that Lexington could have a fair amount of new housing sooner than most communities.
Regardless, it is clear that our work is not yet done. As Luc Schuster of the Boston Foundation put it in the closing quote of the Globe article, “MBTA Communities is a good law, and it is certainly better than nothing… [and] We have to start talking about what we can do next.”
Massachusetts’ 2020 Economic Development Bill included a set of housing choice provisions: these require communities served by the MBTA to provide a district of reasonable size where multi-family housing is allowed by right. The law gives us significant flexibility to design a district that best suits our needs, but the district must allow housing suitable for families with children, without age restrictions, and at a rate of at least 15 dwelling units per acre. Arlington is one of 175 MBTA communities in Massachusetts that share in the responsibility for meeting these requirements.
The law requires a “district of reasonable size”, but what does that mean? Throughout much of 2021 the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) worked on a set of supporting regulations that set the district requirements according to the type of transit service a community has, the number of existing homes in the community (as of the 2020 Census), and the amount of developable land near transit stations. The specifics vary by community, but here is what the requirements mean for Arlington:
The new law’s requirements provide Arlington with a great deal of flexibility. We’re free to place our district (or districts) anywhere in town, and we’ll be able to choose from a variety of options as long as they meet the requirements set forth above. For example, providing the capacity of 2,046 homes in the minimum district size of 32 acres would give us a density of 64 dwellings/acre; roughly the scale of mid-rise apartment buildings. On the other hand, if we went with the minimum density of 15 dwellings/acre, we’d have a 135 acre district that allowed smaller multi-family homes. Our district can be anywhere within this range; we also have the option of having multiple districts, with smaller multi-family buildings in some areas of town and larger multi-family buildings in others.
Arlington has a track record of producing thorough and comprehensive planning documents, such as our Master Plan, Net Zero Action Plan, Sustainable Transportation Plan, and Housing Production Plan. These plans contain plenty of building blocks that could be used to formulate a compliant multi-family district. Viewed in that light, the MBTA community requirements are an opportunity to meet some of the goals we’ve already set for ourselves; we just have to go about it in a way that satisfies the law’s new requirements.
Arlington has one unique consideration, which doesn’t apply to most MBTA communities. In 2020, Arlington’s Town Meeting sent a home rule petition to the state legislature, asking for permission to regulate the use of fossil fuels in new building construction; it’s an important component of our plan to become carbon-neutral by 2050. A number of other communities in the Commonwealth filed similar petitions, and the legislature responded by establishing a pilot program: ten cities and towns will be allowed to enact “fossil fuel bans”, but only if they (a) have 10% subsidized housing, (b) achieve safe harbor via compliances with an approved housing production plan, or (c) establish a multi-family district of reasonable size by February 2024. Arlington doesn’t meet the subsidized housing requirement (only 6.54% of our homes are on the subsidized housing inventory), and we’re unlikely to gain safe harbor status during the next year; our most viable path to participation hinges on meeting the multi-family requirements.
In summary, the multi-family requirement for MBTA communities creates new requirements for Arlington, while also presenting us with new opportunities: the opportunity to meet planning goals, the opportunity to meet sustainability goals (e.g., by regulating fossil fuel use in new construction), and the opportunity to reimagine how we do multi-family housing in Arlington as our town moves forward into the twenty-first century.
by Anson Stewart
Last year, the New York Times published The Climate Impact of Your Neighborhood, Mapped. This interactive feature shows that across the country, carbon emissions per household tend to be lower in relatively dense, walkable, and transit accessible areas. Compared to nearby communities like Winchester, Lexington, and Belmont, the average household in Arlington is responsible for much lower carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e) emissions. Allowing more housing along Mass Ave and Broadway, as proposed by the town’s MBTA Communities Working Group, would enable more households to live in these lower-emissions neighborhoods and could be a meaningful step toward reducing driving and Massachusetts’ climate impact.
As noted in the NYT feature above, “For many people today, it is often easier and cheaper to find a home in a high-emissions community than a lower-emissions one… Many cities and local governments often artificially limit the amount of denser or transit-friendly housing available, particularly in wealthier neighborhoods, through zoning that favors single-family homes or requirements around minimum lot sizes and parking spaces.” Zoning restrictions from the 1970s severely constrain housing capacity along the corridors that help reduce climate impacts in Arlington. Those restrictions push families out to places where people drive more to meet their daily needs.
Cars are mind-bogglingly detrimental to our climate. According to the Massachusetts Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2025 and 2030, “Transportation is the largest source of GHG emissions in the Commonwealth, responsible for 42% of statewide GHG emissions as of 2019… Emissions in the transportation sector have stagnated despite state and federal vehicle emissions standards that have gradually increased the fuel efficiency of vehicles. One major cause of increased emissions is the considerable increase in total statewide vehicle miles travelled (VMT) over the past 30 years.” Even as electric vehicles proliferate, the carbon intensity of our grid means driving will have a substantial climate impact, and reducing VMT must be a primary strategy.
The NYT analysis uses nationally available survey and expenditure data, so income and other effects may confound the estimates of transportation emissions. Massachusetts has a unique dataset that allows measuring driving emissions much more directly – the Massachusetts Vehicle Census (mentioned in the town Working Group report).
For each municipality, dividing the daily mileage driven (of cars registered there) by the population yields vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita, which varies widely in the Boston region. For example:
Thanks to Arlington’s walkable neighborhoods and transit access, our per capita VMT is lower than many nearby communities, and even on par with the City of Boston!
As a thought experiment, consider a climate-conscious family of four who wants to buy a condo in one of the communities above. If they can’t afford Cambridge, Somerville, or Arlington (where 2023 YTD median condo sale prices were $910k, $855k, and $810k respectively), they might consider Waltham or Woburn ($615k and $638k, respectively), or even Winchester or Lexington ($795k and $798k).
Lexington in particular might be appealing, especially as their Town Meeting recently adopted MBTA Communities zoning that allows much more multifamily housing than the minimum required (see the Lexington Cluster Housing Study Group materials in support of meaningful new housing supply). But even with that new capacity, the pace of development will be slow and most of the transportation “bones” of Lexington will be fixed. It is generally less transit accessible than Arlington, and all else equal, the family would likely end up driving more than if they lived in Arlington.
Assuming the average VMT per capita figures above, a family of four would end up driving an additional 2,920 miles per year living in Lexington versus Arlington. Assuming 30 mpg fuel efficiency and 8.9 kg CO2e per gallon of gas, the incremental emissions from this one family would be 865 kg of CO2e, equivalent to the annual carbon sequestered by six half-century-old red oak trees (according to Forest Service data here).
If this family moved to Woburn instead of Arlington, the incremental annual driving would be 14,600 miles. Associated emissions would be over 4.3 metric tons, equivalent to the annual carbon sequestered by 32 of those red oak trees.
How does this example of one family relate to the level of development Arlington might see from MBTA Communities zoning updates? The Working Group’s proposal had a nominal capacity of just over 7,000 housing units in an area that currently has about 2,100. The ARB recommendation to Town Meeting cuts the nominal capacity to around 3,400, for a possible net change of around 1,300 units theoretically allowed. Recent estimates (following the approach here) suggest that this capacity might result in 100 to 300 new housing units built in Arlington by 2033.
If new units enable 250 families like the one above to live in Arlington instead of Woburn, these back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest the avoided annual emissions from VMT reduction would be over 1,000 metric tons CO2e in the year 2033.
Of course these are rough estimates, and the actual climate impact will depend on wider development trends, grid decarbonization, MBTA service, and the details of the zoning that Town Meeting adopts later this month. Low parking requirements (as originally proposed by the Working Group) and robust transportation demand management could help strengthen the climate change mitigation potential of Arlington’s MBTA Communities zoning update. On the other hand, further reductions in Arlington’s multifamily housing capacity would exacerbate emissions. Those concerned about reducing our collective climate impact should take note.
Massachusetts is experiencing a housing affordability crisis and a climate crisis. For these reasons, Mothers Out Front Arlington supports changes in zoning by-laws that allow greater density in housing near public transit. Mothers Out Front is supportive of the passage of a meaningful MBTA Communities Act that encourages the development of more multi-family housing and a greater diversity of home types in Arlington. A revised zoning by-law to allow for more multi-family housing will reduce pressure to build single family homes on undeveloped land elsewhere in Massachusetts. This safeguards undisturbed ecosystems and provides real alternatives to automotive commutes in the region, reducing both congestion and fossil fuel emissions. In addition, passing this by-law will allow Arlington to participate in the Massachusetts pilot for communities to build fossil fuel-free homes, thus ensuring that new construction in Arlington supports our net-zero climate goals.
Mothers Out Front Arlington respects the public engagement activities that inform the Working Group’s MBTA Communities Act proposal. We appreciate that the Working Group is working with the Town to identify opportunities for developer incentives to encourage public open spaces, mitigate heat islands, and increase the tree canopy. Similarly, the Town’s commitment to maintaining current (and incentivizing higher) zoning requirements for affordable housing also is important to our group. For these reasons, Mothers Out Front Arlington strongly urges the Arlington Redevelopment Board to accept the MBTA Communities Act plan as proposed by the Working Group.
The kick-off event for updating Arlington’s Comprehensive Plan (formerly called the Master Plan) is just around the corner on April 3rd from 7-8:30 PM in the Arlington High School Cafeteria!
A Comprehensive Plan is a long-range plan for the Town, and an opportunity for the community to come together and imagine what Arlington could look like in ten or fifteen years. It covers things like housing, business development, parks and open spaces, town services and facilities, and transportation. The kickoff meeting is the first step in building that vision.
Arlington residents of all ages are invited to attend this event, where you can expect a presentation followed by small group discussions. The effort will continue throughout the year, and it’s important to hear from as many residents as possible. Please join if you can!
For more information and to add the meeting to your calendar, see ArlingtonMA.gov/CompPlan.
