MBTA Communities One Year In

(by Steve Revilak)

In 2021 the Massachusetts State Legislature passed the MBTA Communities act, which requires cities and towns served by the MBTA (aka “MBTA Communities”) to create districts where multi-family housing can be built by-right, without a disretionary approval process. The law was intended to help address the Commonwealth’s housing shortage, and to encourage more transit-oriented development. Building housing near transit and walkable areas has a lot of environmental benefits; it let’s people take trips without driving, lessens congestions, and cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a solid strategey.

Arlington created its multi-family districts in the fall of 2023 and the Attorney General’s office approved them in June 2024. The laws have been on the books for just over a year — what kind of a difference are they making in Arlington?

2024 was a slow year for the MBTA Communities act in Arlington; there was one application which turned a two-family home on Belknap St into a pair of two-family homes, for a net change of two additional dwellings. 2025 has brought more activity. There are four applications under the review by the Arlington Redevelopment Board but none have been approved yet. These are:

225 Broadway, to convert a two-family home into a four-family,
126 Broadway, to convert a two-family home into a mixed use building with space for a business on the first floor, and 14 apartments,
18 Grafton, to convert a one-family home into a four-family, and
9-11 Robbins Road to convert a two-family home to nine apartments

There was an additional application to convert four apartments to five at 259 Broadway, but the applicant withdrew after their first hearing.

If all of these projects are approved, the net change will be an additional 26 homes, which represents a 0.1% increase relative to the 20,460 dwellings that Arlington had as of the 2020 census. It’s been a very slow trickle.

The MBTA Communities act was a meaningful reform which is just starting to make a difference. It’s bringing proposals for smaller multi-family homes that used to be the mainstay of our housing stock, but are generally rare today. However, the MBTA Communities Act is only one tool and Massachusetts will have to do more in order to build the 222,000 homes we need.

MBTA Communities

Developers- A Dirty Word?

Written by Guest Writer August 31, 2019

Housing

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.

housing production Housing Production Plan Outreach

Written by Steve Revilak August 22, 2021

News

Arlington’s Master Plan

Written by Steve Revilak April 15, 2019

Budgeting the Curb

(By Vince Baudoin and James Fleming)

Could Arlington be better using its curb space? Here are some ways the curb can be used to create green infrastructure, promote public safety and accessibility, support sustainable transportation, strengthen business districts, and enable new ‘car-light’ development.

Roughly six inches high and made of concrete or granite, the curb marks the edge of the roadway, channels runoff, protects the sidewalk, and gathers stray leaves. When not assigned any other use, the space in front of the curb it usually serves as free storage for personal automobiles.

Yet the humble curb is a limited resource that can serve the community in many more ways. Have you thought about how your town budgets its curb space? For that matter, has your town thought about how it budgets its curb space?

While Arlington mostly uses its curb space for parking, some areas have other curb uses designed to achieve a specific goal. Consider the streets you use often. Have you seen an unsolved problem, or a missed opportunity, that a different use of the curb could help solve?

Create green infrastructure

The Town has miles of paved roadway. When it rains or snows, water runs into storm drains, carrying salt, oil, and other pollutants with it. The storm drains dump these pollutants directly into long-degraded waterways such as the Mill Brook, Alewife Brook, and the Mystic River. The Public Works department struggles to keep grates clear and drains from overflowing.

One solution: Use the curb for more greenery! The curb can be extended to create a rain garden or tree planting strip. The rain garden helps slow runoff and filter the water before it enters the drain, while trees benefit from additional room for the roots to grow without damaging the sidewalk. A side benefit: narrowing the street encourages drivers to slow down, making neighborhoods safer.

A curbside rain garden. The curb has been bumped out, and there are tall-growing plants and flowers between the curb and the sidewalk.

Promote public safety and accessibility

Often, portions of the curb are set aside for public safety purposes. For example, a fire lane provides fire department access to key buildings, such as the high school, shown below. Fire hydrants also enjoy special curb status.

A picture of Arlington High School. Next to the curb, the pavement is painted with the words "no parking - fire lane".

Other times, no-parking zones are established to enhance the free flow of traffic, such as here at Broadway Plaza:

No parking zone in front of Broadway plaza. The plaza contains a number of trees and planters, and there are several storefronts behind the plaza.

Where pedestrian crosswalks are present, a curb extension is a key safety enhancement. By narrowing the roadway, the curb extension encourages drivers to slow down and look for pedestrians. For pedestrians, it reduces the distance they must cross and prevents cars from parking directly next to the crosswalk and blocking visibility.

A crosswalk, where the curb has been "bumped out" to reduce the crossing distance for pedestrians.

Finally, accessible parking spaces can be created along the curb. Arlington has at least 50 designated permit-only on-street parking spaces that provide convenient parking for residents with mobility issues or other disabilities.

A station wagon parked in a handicap space. The space is painted blue, with a white border.

Support sustainable transportation

When the curb is mostly used for cars, it is easy to overlook how curbside facilities can enhance other forms of transportation.

In the space of one or two parked cars, this bikeshare station offers space for 11 bikes. However, because it is installed on the roadway, it must be removed every winter so that snow can be cleared. If the curb were extended, the bikeshare station could be used year-round. Another nice feature is bicycle parking: the space to park one car can be used to park six or more bicycles.

A bluebikes station. The station has docking spaces for eleven bicycles.

A bus stop allows buses to pull to the curb. In some cases, it is appropriate to extend the curb so the bus would stop in the traffic lane; otherwise, it may experience delays when it merges back into traffic.

A curb-side bus stop. The bus stop is marked with a sign. There are trees, planters, and storefronts in the photo.

A bus priority lane provides a dedicated right of way for buses, helping to improve on-time performance. To date, these lanes extend only a few hundred feet into Arlington along Mass Ave. They have proven beneficial in many other communities.

A bus priority lane. It's a wide roadway lane marked with red paint. Next to the lane is a sign that says "Parking lane - Buses Only 6am-9pm Mon-Fri. Bikes OK"

Bike lanes, particularly if they are separated from cars by a physical buffer, greatly enhance the safety and comfort of people traveling on two wheels.

But with a limited roadway width, adding bike lanes is difficult unless the community is flexible enough to consider consolidating curb parking on one side of the street, or moving it to side streets entirely.

A two lane road. There's one lane for vehicles in either direction, and bicycle lanes on either side. The right-most lane provides on-street parking.

Finally, the Town could expand the use of on-street spaces for electric vehicle charging stations, such as this one on Park Ave:

An electric vehicle charging station, near the Park Ave Congregational Church. The spaces is marked with faded green and white paint. The vehicle charger is located behind two yellow bollards.

Strengthen business districts

Nowhere is the curb more valuable than in business districts. Businesses thrive when their customers have a convenient way to reach them. Metered parking encourages people to park, do their business, and move along so another patron can take that space. Revenue from parking meters can be spent to improve the business district–for example, by planting flowers and trees.

A curbside parking space with a parking meter.

Metered parking is not the only valuable use of curb space in a business district. Outdoor dining is a way the Town can directly support its restaurants by enabling them to serve additional customers. Here is one example in Arlington Center:

A pair of curbside parking spaces that have been converted to an outdoor dining area. There are tables, chairs, umbrellas, and a wooden screen.

And in Arlington Heights:

A curbside dining space that's surrounded by orange traffic barriers. The restaurant has a sign with the words "The Heights Pub", and a black awning with the words "Gather, Eat, Drink".

Other valuable curb uses in business districts include taxi stands and loading zones. Loading zones in particular are crucial to businesses’ success and help prevent the street from being clogged by early-morning delivery trucks, late-night food-delivery vehicles, and everything in between.

Enable new ‘car-light’ development

With high housing costs and a relatively small commercial tax base, Arlington could benefit from some kinds of development. However, land is valuable and lots are small, so if new buildings are required to have large parking lots, it is very difficult to build new homes and businesses. Plus, large parking lots bring more cars and more traffic. But better curb management can help resolve this dilemma, supporting car-light development that is more sustainable and affordable.

For example, on-street permit parking can enable nearby development with few or no off-street parking spaces. New housing or businesses are a better use of land than parking and will generate more property tax revenue. When parking permits are priced appropriately, they are available to residents who need them but discourage households from adding extra cars they do not need.

Take these hillside houses: access to on-street parking made it possible to build on a steep hillside, where it would have been too expensive and difficult to blast to create off-street parking.

A street where the houses are approximately 10 feet above the sidewalk level. There are retaining walls next to the sidewalk, and stairways leading up to the houses. A row of parked cars sits alongside the curb.

Conclusion

Ask your town leaders if they have a curb management strategy. Is the Town using its limited curb space in support of goals such as green infrastructure, public safety and accessibility, public transportation, local business, and car-light development?

A word cloud, which includes the phrases "bluebikes station, loading zone, curb extension at crosswalk, handicap parking, outdoor dining, bus priority lande, bike parking, tree planter, electric car charging, metered parking, bus stop, taxi stand, permit parking, free parking, bike lanes, and rain garden".

Bike Parking Bikeshare Buses Curbs Economic Development Green infastructure Outdoor Dining Public safety

Written by Guest Writer August 25, 2024

Accessory Dwelling Units in Arlington: FAQs

Written by Barbara Thornton May 16, 2021

Housing

Will Arlington Set A Housing Goal?

After a week of good coverage on the need for more housing units in the greater Boston region, on August 2, 2019 the GLOBE carried the following editorial, mentioning the situation in Arlington.

Good news? On housing? In Massachusetts?

Yes, that’s right. Even here in the land of the $600,000 starter home, a few forward-thinking cities and towns are starting to make progress on what sometimes seems like an intractable problem: the inadequate production of new housing that has sent the cost of renting or buying in Greater Boston into the stratosphere.

It’s way too soon to declare victory — not when the median sale price for a house in Massachusetts is $429,000 and $420,000 for a condo, according to the Warren Group. High prices happen when demand gallops past supply, causing buyers to bid up prices of existing homes to insane levels. In addition to squeezing renters and contributing to gentrification, the skyrocketing price of housing has evolved into a real threat to the region’s economic competitiveness.

“Greater Boston is losing current and potential domestic residents,” warned the Boston Foundation in its annual housing scorecard, “who are voting with their feet to live elsewhere for a variety of reasons.” Just on Tuesday, another report — this one from the real estate website Apartment List — found that only San Francisco has done a worse job than Greater Boston building new housing to respond to demand.

Thankfully, last year 15 cities and towns in Greater Boston made a joint pledge to pick up the pace of new housing construction by permitting 185,000 new housing units by 2030. Collectively, meeting that goal would mean tripling the pace of housing production. Some of the members of the group, called the Metropolitan Mayors Coalition, are doing their part to reach that goal faster than others — but almost all 15 report progress.

Even outside those three, there’s some impressive municipal-level progress. The Revere City Council approved development on the portion of the former Suffolk Downs racetrack that sits in that city, which will eventually bring in a whopping 2,700 housing units

Leading the way have been Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, each of which has set numerical goals for housing production. Boston has been on a building spree and is on track to meet its goal of 69,000 new units by 2030. Cambridge volunteered 12,500 new housing units; and Somerville has said it will build 6,000. Committing to a specific goal is crucial: A hard number creates accountability for officials.

In Quincy, 1,500 housing units are under construction, and another 1,030 are either permitted or in the process of receiving permits. Medford has 497 housing units in construction. More than a thousand units are expected in Brookline over the next few years, in part thanks to the state’s 40B housing statute that lets developers bypass local zoning when towns have insufficient levels of affordable housing. Newton has 471 units under construction and another 273 permitted.

Other municipalities are working on plans or reforming zoning bylaws to set the stage for future growth. Austin Faison, Winthrop’s town manager, says that will involve setting a housing production goal. Everett rezoned land near the newly extended Silver Line, setting the stage for development. Braintree is in the process of updating its zoning bylaws that would include provisions for denser multi-family housing.

Arlington experienced a setback when its town meeting rejected an innovative plan to spur denser housing and allow so-called accessory dwelling units. Town manager Adam Chapdelaine said the town was now launching a “more cooperative effort” and would try again, and that the discussion would include coming up with a numerical goal.

The experience in Arlington points to one way the state can help municipalities. Town meetings and city councils require a two-thirds vote to change zoning, which can empower a small minority to thwart reforms needed to encourage housing. Governor Charlie Baker’s housing bill would change that by reducing to one-half the vote needed to change zoning — and deserves legislative approval pronto.

There’s one other way that the state can help, and this one won’t come as a surprise: better transportation. Access to transit can be a key to successful development. For instance, Revere wants a commuter rail stop at Wonderland. Without direct access to any rail service, Everett is banking on buses as part of its development plans.

Cities and towns that are moving forward on housing production inevitably encounter resistance, and they deserve great credit — not just for taking badly needed steps to build housing, but for doing so in a coordinated way. Keeping municipalities on the same page is part of what’s necessary to break down the longstanding barriers to housing in Massachusetts. As Chelsea city manager Thomas G. Ambrosino put it: “Having it be a region-wide effort and everyone rowing toward the same goal makes it easier for us to defend our efforts, because we can tell those who are critical about building that this is a regional need and everyone is in it together.”

Arlington Housing Boston Globe Editorial Housing production goal for new housing

Written by Guest Writer August 2, 2019

Show Your Support With a Free Yard Sign!

Written by Equitable Arlington September 7, 2023

Housing
News

AMI Explained

by Steve Revilak

The term “AMI” or “Area Median Income” comes up in almost any discussion about affordable housing, because it’s used to set rents and the household incomes for people who are eligible to live in affordable dwellings. AMI is a fairly technocratic concept and my goal is to make the concept (and the numbers) easier to understand.

AMIs are set each year by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; broadly speaking, an AMI is the median income of a region. Arlington is part of the “Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH HUD Metro FMR Area” which consists of more than 100 cities and towns in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Median incomes represent the “middle” family income of an area—half of households make more, and half make less.

In the process of turning median incomes into income limits, HUD also considers household size: larger households are assigned larger AMI limits than smaller ones, in order to reflect the higher cost of living for more family members.

How do these limits translate into affordable housing regulations? Arlington’s affordable housing requirements (aka “inclusionary zoning”) require that rents for affordable units be priced for the 60% area median income, but the dwellings are available to households making up to 70%. Let’s show an example with some numbers.

Household size	60% Income Limit	70% Income Limit	60% Rent
1	$68,520	$79,940	$1,717/month
2	$78,360	$91,420	$1,959/month
3	$88,140	$102,830	$2,203/month

HUD considers an apartment suitable for a household if it has one bedroom less than the number of household members, so a two-bedroom apartment would be suitable for a household of three, a one-bedroom would be suitable for a household of two, and a studio would be suitable for a household of one. The monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment would be calculated as follows: $88,140 ÷ 12 × 30% = $2,203. The 30% comes from HUD’s rule that affordable housing tenants should not be cost-burdened, meaning that they pay no more than 30% of their income in rent.$88k or $102k/year can seem like a lot of money (and once upon a time it was). To get a better sense of what these income levels mean, I looked into what kinds of jobs pay these wages. To that end, I found wage information from the Arlington Public Schools report to Town Meeting, the Arlington town budget, and wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here are a few scenarios:

Scenario 1: single adult

Scenario 1 represents a single adult living alone, and earning between $68,520 and $79,940. Jobs in this pay range include:

Elementary classroom teacher ($62,000 – $75,000)
Town planner ($75,000 – 79,000)
Animal Control Officer ($72,000)
Firefighter ($73,640)
Librarian ($70,395)
Lab Technician ($70,710)
Social Worker ($71,470)
Subway operator ($72,270)
Licensed Practical Nurse ($75,690)
Paralegal ($77,500)
Chef ($78,040)
Carpenter ($78,000)

Scenario 2: single parent with household of two

Scenario 2 represents a single parent earning between $78,360 and $91,420/year. Jobs in this pay range include:

Office Manager – Assessor’s office ($80,399)
Assistant Town Clerk ($77,375)
Town Engineer ($74,000 – $80,000)
Police Department Patrol Officer ($87,000)
Town Budget Director ($88,488)
Telecommunications equipment installer ($80,350)
Plasterer and Stucco Mason ($82,250)
Electrician ($82,380)
Cement Mason ($86,250)
Plumber and pipe fitter ($90,580)

Scenario 3: household of two, both adults

Scenario 3 has two adults, each earning $39,180 – $45,710 per year. Jobs in this salary range include several that we’ve come to know as “essential workers” during the pandemic.

Special education teaching assistant ($34,290)
Arlington Public Schools Paraprofessional ($36,290 – 42,440)
Substitute Teacher ($34,921)
Inspectional Services Record Keeper ($44,481)
Food preparation worker ($39,590)
Bartender ($39,730)
Childcare worker ($40,470)
Ambulance Driver ($40,890)
Waiter ($41,440)
Pharmacy aide ($41,460)
Bank teller ($42,270)
Tailor and dressmaker ($43,790)
Restaurant cook ($44,140)

You may have noticed gaps in these lists — for example, there are no jobs listed in the $50,000 – $60,000 range because it’s in between the income limits for one- and two-income households. It’s also worth noting that a fair number of town employees’ salaries would qualify them for affordable housing (the town is Arlington’s largest employer).

So who qualifies to live in affordable housing? People with a lot of ordinary, working-class jobs, including many town employees.

Affordable housing AMI area median income

Written by Guest Writer December 4, 2024