Black Response Cambridge on upzoning petition: ‘Missing middle’ fails for housing affordability
Cambridge construction spotted in October. (Photo: Marc Levy)
Asking for-profit developers to fix the affordable housing problem is like asking an arsonist to put out their own fire. What is their incentive?
For-profit developers know what we all know about Cambridge: It is a playground for liberal elites. We have Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Google, Microsoft and Amazon in one city of 100,000 residents. No wonder single-family house prices are in the millions. The recent “missing middle” upzoning petition led by for-profit developers does not result in the housing that we, The Black Response Cambridge, want to see. Furthermore, upzoning without strategic government intervention rooted in a community process serves to reinforce the underlying failures of zoning, resulting in further segregation and race and class stratification.
As The Black Response Cambridge, we cannot neglect the racist roots of zoning in the United States. Richard Rothstein states in “The Color of Law”: “Segregationist officials faced two distinct problems … how to keep lower-income African Americans from living near middle-class whites and how to keep middle-class African Americans from buying into white middle-class neighborhoods.” Zoning ordinances have been used as a tool to maintain race and class separatism.
Inclusionary zoning, while good, is not good enough. The barrier of entry is too high. The area median income for Cambridge is over $95,000. The barrier for entry into inclusionary zoning is at 60 percent to 80 percent of that – with a Section 8 voucher, it is 30 percent to 60 percent; and for the missing middle proposal, households earning between 80 percent and 120 percent of AMI. At 20 percent of units in larger developments, the inclusionary zoning program does not produce the amount of “affordable” housing needed to keep up with demand.
Furthermore, the program does not provide a steppingstone for low-income families to escape the trap of low-income housing. So why not create a program for nonprofit and cooperative developers to have priority? Why not make all inclusionary housing a rent-to-own program? This would help low-income residents build equity and create intergenerational wealth through the purchase of a home of their own. (We know the city has first-time home buyers programs.)
In our conversations with allies at the Cambridge Residents Alliance, they’ve said, “The increase in land values will make it much harder for the Affordable Housing Overlay to result in affordable housing. The point of the AHO was that you can build more affordable housing on a lot than you can build market housing. If the advantage for affordable housing is lessened, we will get less of it.” The missing middle proposal is likely to raise land values because more units will be built on the same parcel. “Affordability” is a convenient catchphrase to mask the increased profitability for the developer without real consideration of the consequences of these developments.
Many have voiced concerns about the upzoning petition because it will “increase the density of housing in the neighborhood.” While this is not our primary concern, the environmental impacts of more development will disproportionately affect Black and Brown low-income residents without providing long-term, sustainable and affordable housing options. For example, the current proposal provides no mandate for the preservation of existing facades, which increases the chances of bulldozing. As we know from discussions about rats and other rodents in Cambridge, drilling and bulldozing drives rats to nearby residences, including public housing developments. The proposal would also result in less open and green spaces than we have now. The reduction in green-space disproportionately affects the health and welfare of the lowest-income members of the Cambridge community. The streets with more pavement and fewer trees are the hottest during the summer months. The health impacts are significant too, considering the amount of young people in the projects who live with asthma.
The density issue is not our primary concern at the moment. But this upzoning increases density without providing truly affordable housing. At the end of the day, we are most concerned about the lack of truly affordable housing in Cambridge. We have not yet felt the full harshness of the impending Covid recession, and affordable housing is at the forefront of our minds in discussions regarding zoning. We need to be talking about the role that housing plays in maintaining inequality. Zoning today is a tool of the wealthy. As they say, history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. Zoning can be reduced to a tool that reproduces racial and socioeconomic class oppression. We look forward to having discussions that will improve the lives of low-income Black and Brown Cantabrigians. Let us know when you put forward petitions that favor upzoning by nonprofit developers and cooperative owners to house low-income populations, and when you propose rent-to-own (locally sourced) public housing.
Unfortunately we won’t be holding our breaths while waiting for that call.
Stephanie Guirand is a member of The Black Response Cambridge, a coalition of Black members from Black-led, Cambridge-based organizations formed to represent the voices of Black communities in Cambridge.
This post was updated Feb. 17, 2021, with changes requested by the author.
FINALLY someone saying something sensible about the housing situation in Cambridge.
None of the current proposals address the trap of affordable housing. Until viable rent-to-own options are available it is yet another transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector.
Unless of course we just give pot shops to all….that should solve the problem.
We might have “missing middle” zoning competing with AHO for available land and buildings that could be turned into rent-to-own. I agree that the qualifying salaries for most plans are way too high. And while we are carving out categories for particular populations, why don’t we add senior housing to the list of tidy little check boxes. Seniors need housing as much as missing middle. MM has a better shot at rents than either working poor or seniors.
Thank you for this insight and well articulated points of view.
Cambridge already has a “Middle” that needs strengthening.
Lower residential areas, which includes conservation districts, house the most affordable residences for both renters and yes even those who have access to liquidity for purchase properties. While not cheap by any standard, per sq/ft the high residential developments are way less accessible to the most.
Strengthening the lower residential base, with its ability to provide a wide range of access points into residing, when not owning, in Cambridge, would stranghten a middle we should foster and not bulldoze.
CoVid highlighted the need for streetscape experiences that are safe to share, with safe walkable streets, parks and tree canopy.
in the last few months the higher residential complexes suffered the harshest vacancies in decades, while our “Middle” was thriving with social interactions aimed at providing a common space to wade these harsh times together.
Lower residential areas cater to the most and not the few, are our main street development encroached by the “Wall street” propaganda.
Besides building more affordable housing, we should also make sure people can afford the homes we build, perhaps by providing these classes of disenfranchised people true opportunities, beyond the smokescreens.
Thank you again!
Without going in to too much detail, three things:
1. To say that this petition is “led by for-profit developers” is blatantly false.
2. While the missing middle housing petition is not an affordable housing petition (it’s not trying to solve every problem all at once, just some problems!), it will help with affordable housing. The City has an affordable homeownership program, Homebridge, but a big problem with it is that the city cannot help people buy million-dollar homes, and there are not a lot of sub-million-dollar homes out there in Cambridge. “Missing middle housing” is much more likely to go for sub-million-dollar prices. If the City had a rent-to-own program (sounds like a good idea!), it would have the same problem – to be effective, the units would have to not be extremely expensive.
3. The petition authors HAVE discussed with NONPROFIT affordable housing developers, who have expressed support and said that they do not see the missing middle housing petition as likely to undermine the AHO. Affordable housing developers prefer large building sites, and this petition primarily will affect small building sites (in addition to the fact that this petition does not allow for nearly as much density as the AHO does).
I hope the author will reach out to [email protected] to discuss more.
Before I get to how much I agree with this piece, I need to point out an important factual error in it. Inclusionary housing is for the next income tier down, 50-80 percent of Area Median Income. Please fix this.
Now to the agreeing. This really bad idea comes to us courtesy of the National Association of Home Builders, as I pointed out in my public testimony when this arrived at the City Council. I do appreciate that the proponents have dropped any pretense whatsoever of caring about affordable housing because, as this piece points out, there’s nothing whatsoever in it that requires anything to be affordable. In fact, it will just radically increase the value of any site amenable to its tender mercies.
The effect of that immense increase in value will be to vitiate any possibility of making use of the Affordable Housing Overlay, which now turns out to be a Trojan horse designed to stack the City Council with enough Councillors who can be counted on to fall in line reflexively for anything the real estate industry wants.
The Council has already proven itself to be eager to silence neighborhood groups who dare have their own opinions. I welcome The Black Response Cambridge and hope for the opportunity to learn from and work with them to make Cambridge a place that will continue to welcome people who rely on actual speech rather than money to speak for us.
I really like the rent to own idea and have been trying to get the city to build a path to low-income home ownership for years. However the city’s back room deals with developers, both profit and non-profit preclude this. Frankly, the non-profit developers are run by paternalistic neo-liberals who do not listen to the voices of the residents they purport to serve. The city and these developers love giving each other awards. Housing is a human right.
Ms. Guirand points out a critically important issue: that the Missing Middle Housing petition may actually make the housing situation much worse for low- and middle-income residents, particularly those of color. In truth, the only way that the petition results in more mid-sized, middle-income housing is if it set new limits on maximum Gross Floor Area (GFA) allowed per unit, while simultaneously allowing more GFA per lot. It does the latter but not the former, with the likely result being that it will generate larger existing homes, not an increasing number of new smaller homes. In the end, this will further escalate land values per unit, the lowering of which was one of the stated goals of the petition. As a result, the MMH will make it more expensive both to rent and also to own, and render home ownership opportunities almost non-existent by targeting currently affordable parcels for “improvement” by for-profit developers, out-of-town landowners, and other opportunists. It may be good for current homeowners, especially older owners looking to sell, but it hurts those looking to buy by forcing them to compete with deep-pocketed investors. Thanks to Ms. Guirand for raising this important issue.
Peace Be Unto You,
The City Municipal Policy Makers can’t be trusted with handeling the affairs of the local Homeless sector and mosaic. For over 10 years I have attempted to get them to come to the aid of the homeless segment of our community by advising them to prepare the Foundry Building,Sullivan Courthouse House, And Volpe Properties for Homeless poverty housing, but to no avail. All my efforts were sent straight up to the trash. They rejected the opportunity to installed homeless housing in vacant and abandon government properties. When it comes to building permanent housing from the ground up, this the municipal policy makers are shown to be the enemies of the local homeless sector and mosaic. Not only the present City municipal policy makers but previous ones also.
Now they want the stakeholders publics at large to settle for a proposal to rent non-congregate housing for the city’s unhoused population. This is only another fanatical piecemeal solution to a social problem that is in need of much much more to solve it. Take it from me the municiple policy makers are in violation of the public trust now and for sometime in the past, when it comes to solutions for ending and erradicating homelessness. They mis-allocate the resources to do so all the time, that means often.
Oh by the way,after intense lobbying by the real estate industry, Gov. Baker vetoed “The Tenant Right to Purchase (TOPA) Provision,” it would have given tenants a right of first refusal to purchase for-sale rental and multi-family properties throughout the state, with some limited exceptions.
Yours In Peace
Mr. Hasson Rashid
Concerned Citizen
Cambridge,MA
Thank you Ms. Giurand for your insight on this.
Now Angstrom, your #1 shows either a pitiful ignorance of the subject or a cynical disregard for the truth. below are three web pages on the D.C. based lobbying group The National Association of Home Builders that will bear me out.
Jan. 8 article on Missing Middle
https://www.nahb.org/advocacy/industry-issues/land-use-101/What-is-the-Missing-Middle-of-Housing
Missing middle search result on home page
https://www.nahb.org/search#q=missing%20Middle&t=coveo79b6ec88&sort=relevancy
BUILD-PAC, NAHB’s political action committee
https://www.nahb.org/advocacy/get-involved/BUILD-PAC