Data in a Mass Housing Partnership report shows how far behind the Boston metropolitan area has fallen in meeting the housing needs of its citizens. There are four primary categories for measuring the inadequacies: 1. Availability, 2. Affordability, 3. L0cation and Mobility and 4. Equitability. See the full report for more data and examples. Two slides are shown below.
This report shows a number of great, livable neighborhoods in communities like Lexington, Cohasset, Great Barrington, etc. where under the municipality’s “official” zoning, the neighborhoods would be illegal and could not exist. These are neighborhoods that residents enjoy for a variety of special characteristics that would have been blocked in typical zoning. Zoning can result in a too homogeneous community, excluding the serendipities of co-location in a land use development process evolving over a great many years. Can we anticipate these synergies and include them to enrichen our town’s neighborhoods?
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.
Why Is This Our Issue & What Should We Do About It?
(presented by Adam Chapdelaine, Town Manager, to Select Board on July 22, 2019)
(published June, 2019)
(DRAFT – 7/11/2019)