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State Senator Cindy F. Friedman Supports the MBTA Communites Plan

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State Senator Cindy F. Friedman has written a letter to Town Meeting Members supporting Warrant Article 12 and a meaningful MBTA Communities Plan. She writes:

We all want Arlington and Massachusetts to remain welcoming, accessible places to live. In addition to our deficit of housing, I recognize the importance of encouraging smaller, more sustainable housing in walkable areas. Arlington’s Warrant Article 12 will provide a meaningful framework for making progress in these areas. The problems we are experiencing now —out of reach housing prices for new construction and existing homes — exacerbate the crisis and are seriously threatening the economic vibrancy of our communities.

To read Friedman’s full letter, click here for the PDF.

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  1. Housing
  2. Master Plan
  3. Sustainability
  4. Zoning

Reinhardt on Sustainable Housing Ideas

Prof. Christophe Reinhardt runs the MIT Sustainable Design Lab.  On Nov. 25, 2019 he gave a very interesting presentation, including talk and slides, that shows a pathway to make more housing, all kinds of housing, and greater housing density both more palatable in Arlington, and actually desirable.  He also stressed the importance of paying attention to housing now in order to meet the climate change challenge. Charts (starting about 10 min in) show how drastically we need to reduce our carbon footprint to reach net zero by 2050. Buildings today account for about 40% of our carbon emissions world wide. What we build today will likely be around through 2050.

Paying attention to housing design is important to create a sustainable environment.

Here is the link for the Reinhardts talk and slide show:
http://scienceforthepublic.org/energy-and-resources/designing-sustainable-urban-development

or see it on youtube: https://youtu.be/YAeCvUZmUrI

He uses research, drawn from around the world and locally, to show what measurable attributes make local communities desirable to live in and what attributes of housing make residents happy. 

Key attributes for success (slide is at about 18:15 min. in presentation):

1.  Economic opportunities (proximity to work opportunities)

2.  High quality living (daylight access for buildings, streets, walkable, mixed use, micro-units, vibrant public spaces, organic food, fitness opportunities)

3.  Sustainability (comfortable work and play and living spaces, resource efficiency)

The presentation was arranged by the Robbins Library. It was developed and recorded by Science for the Public as part of it’s lecture series.

For more information on sustainability and cities, cities and local municipalities are beginning to recognize the important linkages between urban resiliency, human well-being, and climate change mitigation and adaptation activities. https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/how-cities-can-lead-the-fight-against-climate-change-using-urban-forestry-and-trees-commentary/ Courtesy of Science for the Public Interest Weekly News Roundup.


(For more opportunities to learn about sustainability, buildings and cities, sign up for the FREE MITx “Sustainable Building Design” online course which starts January.)


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  1. Arlington
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  4. Social Justice

Exclusionary Zoning in Arlington Began in 1950’s

by Alexander vonHoffman, Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University, February 2006

The case study shows that in the 1970s the Town of Arlington completely abandoned its policy of encouraging development of apartment buildings—and high-rise buildings at that—and adopted requirements that severely constricted the possibilities for developing multifamily dwellings. Although members of the elite introduced the new approach, they were backed by rank-and-file citizens, who took up the cause to protect their neighborhoods from perceived threats.

The report outlines an intentional effort using land use and planning tools like zoning and building approvals, to exclude those with less desirable income or racial characteristics from residing in Arlington. Additional perspectives on Arlington’s exclusionary zoning efforts during this period are reported here.

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  1. Arlington
  2. Housing

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.

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  2. Housing
  3. News
  4. Parking

Communities Need Less Parking

Communities need fewer parking spaces for cars.

In a 2019 study, MAPC found that:

  1. Three out of ten spaces sit empty during peak demand
  2. 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.

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Photo of flyer that says Rent is Too High, Don't Let City Hall Block Rent Control
  1. Housing
  2. Social Justice

Rent Control and the Supply of Affordable Housing

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.

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Arlington 2020: Low Density Housing

I’ve had an annual ritual for the past several years: obtain a spreadsheet of property assessments from the Town Assessor, load them in to a database, and run a series of R computations against the data. I started doing this for a number of reasons: to understand what was built where (our zoning laws have changed over time, and there are numerous non-conforming uses), the relationship between land and building values, the capital costs of different types of housing, and how these factors have changed over time.

I’d typically compile these analyses into a fact-book of sorts, and email it around to people that I thought might be interested. This year, I’m going to post the analyses here as a series of articles. This first installment contains basic information about Arlington’s low-density housing: single-, two-, and three-family homes, as well as condominiums. Condominiums are something of an oddball in this category — a condominium can be half of a two-family structure, part of a larger residential building, or somewhere in between. There’s a lot of variety.

Here’s a table showing how the number of units has changed over time, since 2013.

land use20132014201520162017201820192020
Single Family79847983799180007994799479987999
Condominium32423304336734923552366237263827
Two-family23522332230822822263221821832139
Three-family207201196194193190185182

Arlington’s predominant form of housing — the single family home — has stayed relatively static; we’ve added 15 over the last seven years. The number of condominiums has increased significantly: +585 over seven years. That, coupled with the reduction of two-family homes (-213) and three-family homes (-25) leads me to believe that a fair number of rental units have been removed from the market.

Next, I’d like to look at how these homes are spread across our various zoning districts. (The “Notes” section at the bottom of the post explains what the zoning district codes mean).

ZoneSingle-FamilyCondoTwo-familyThree-family
B18221311
B2141
B2A118
B3594
B415955
B511
I81871
R0502
R167981682007
R264718161881124
R34391117
R4237923
R5361654
R6268687
R7124321

A few points to note:

  • R0 is our newest district, which was established in 1991. It consists only of conforming single-family homes.
  • R1 is Arlington’s original (per 1975 zoning) single-family district. It’s predominantly single-family homes, but there are a fair number of two-family homes, and even a few three-families. The presence of condominiums suggests additional multi-family homes (that consist of two or more condominiums)
  • R2 is predominantly two-, and three-family homes. Although three-family homes are no longer allowed in this district, R2 has the largest number of three-families in town.
  • Residential uses are no longer allowed in the industrial (I) districts, but the I districts contain 34 homes. These buildings pre-date the current zoning laws (aka “pre-existing non-conforming”). A good portion of the Dudley street industrial district is a residential neighborhood.

I’m pointing out these conformities (and non-conformities) for a reason. The zoning map (and use tables) dictate what is allowed today, along with specifying a vision for the future. Our zoning bylaw happens to contain a strong statement to this effect: “It is the purpose of this Bylaw to discourage the perpetuity of nonconforming uses and structures whenever possible” (section 8.1.1(A)). Despite the strong statement of intent, it can take decades (if not generations) for a built environment to catch up with the bylaw’s prescriptions.

I’ll finish this post with a breakdown of how condominiums are distributed across the various zoning districts:

Zone20132014201520162017201820192020delta
(N/A)1415000000-14
B116161818182222226
B2222244442
B2A1918181818181818-1
B355556159595959594
B4474759595959595912
I18181818181818180
R114014414614815015416216828
R213551406145615181574167017231816461
R3222528313137373917
R4656767797979797914
R56166166166166166166166160
R663063263568368368368668656
R72432432432432432432432430

The last column (“delta”) shows the difference between 2013 and 2020. The largest increase occurred in the R2 (two-family) district, followed by R6 (medium-density apartments, where most of the increase took place in 2014) and R1 (single-family).

That it will do it for the first installation. In the next post, we’ll look at how the cost (assessed values, actually) of Arlington’s low density housing has changed over the last seven years.

Here is a spreadsheet, containing the various tables shown in this article.

Notes

Arlington’s zoning map divides the town into a set of districts, and each district has regulations about what kinds of buildings and uses are allowed (or not allowed). The districts mentioned in this article are:

  • B1 (Neighborhood Office district)
  • B2 (Neighborhood Business distrct)
  • B2A (Major Business District)
  • B3 (Village Business District)
  • B4 (Vehicular-Oriented Business District)
  • I (Industrial District)
  • R0 (Single-Family, large-lot district)
  • R1 (Single-Family Distict)
  • R2 (Two-Family District)
  • R3 (Three-Family District)
  • R4 (Townhouse District)
  • R5 (Low-Density Apartment District)
  • R6 (Medium-Density Apartment District)
  • R7 (High-Density Apartment District)

Arlington’s Zoning Bylaw describes each district in detail (see sections 5.4.2, 5.5.2, and 5.6.2)

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Will More Arlington Housing Raise Town Costs For Schools?

Prepared by: Barbara Thornton with the capable assistance of Alex Bagnall, Pamela Hallett, Patrick Hanlon, Karen Kelleher, Steve Revilak and Jennifer Susse.

As Arlington considers new zoning and other policy decisions to increase the amount of affordable housing in the town, a concern has been raised about the threat of greater costs to the Town’s budget from new people with school age children moving into the town. The concern: additional children in the public schools costs the town more than the additional new property tax revenue the Town collects from the new housing.

This post examines this concern, drawing on data from two recent housing developments, representing 283 units of housing in Arlington, to determine that actually the Town budget gains over 4.5 times the actual cost of paying for the students. According to the most recent 2020 tax bills, the Town expects to collect $1,250,370 in revenue and to spend an additional $269,589 for the new Arlington Public School students living in these developments.

The data suggests that the fear of increased school costs, overwhelming the potential new revenue from new housing construction is not warranted.

For more information, see the full post here.

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  1. Arlington
  2. Sustainability
  3. Zoning

“Surging Seas” Risk Zone Map Shows Arlington Wetlands Threat

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).

Arlington wetlands on interactive map set to show future 8 foot water rise.

https://ss2.climatecentral.org/?#13/42.4074/-71.1100?show=satellite&projections=0-K14_RCP85-SLR&level=8&unit=feet&pois=hide

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