Undo the racist legacy that continues to exclude, hurt Black residents: Support the Missing Middle
A toxic trend began in the 1920s when Cambridge started passing laws explicitly designed to exclude Black people: the infamous redlining. Unfortunately, the trend endures. Our laws still exclude Black people disproportionately. (Here’s the redlined map of Cambridge. Does it remind you of our current racial makeup?)
Undoing redlining is more than symbolic; its tenets need to be repealed, outlawed and replaced with anti-racist policies. That is, assuming that our city wants diversity and cares to repeal inherently racist policies that disenfranchise Black residents.
While some may point to the inclusion of affluent Black residents, this is exceptionalism. If you think there’s no problem today, you’re justifying policies that oppress middle- and lower-income Black residents.
Our high housing costs are not solely the product of market forces. Racist laws intended to exclude remain in place and are to largely blame:
- Our laws have incentivized developers to build “luxury market rate” single detached housing. From August 2018 to December 2020, 79 percent of construction permits were for single- or double-detached housing. Of those, 75 percent required no variances or special approvals. White residents and foreign investors primarily occupy these homes. They, in turn, rent to primarily white tenants.
- By contrast, our policies disincentivize developers to build more affordable homes such as triplexes or townhouses. In the same 2018 to 2020 period, only 13 multifamily homes were permitted, of which 85 percent required special permits or variances.
Our current building laws are rapidly depleting our stock of housing configurations that people can afford – replacing them with higher profit-margin homes catering to predominantly white demographics. By doing nothing, we’re exacerbating displacement. We’re approaching a tipping point to full gentrification.
The Missing Middle petition will change our building laws to reflect antiracist values: It will legalize affordable home choices where the law today allows only for the most expensive type (single detached). This is key to reversing the city’s ongoing legacy of economic and racial exclusion.
Note: the petition also makes it legal to build homes without driveways (SunriseBoston is a co-sponsor). Driveways could still be built if desired. Allowing more people to live walkable lives in transit-rich cities is the single best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – but that’s a topic for another op-ed.
Opponents to Missing Middle zoning are gathering, arguing that undoing exclusionary laws will make the city … more exclusionary. Unsurprisingly, it’s easy to rebut these bad faith claims.
More likely, opponents are worried about things such as aesthetics. But Missing Middle will let Cambridge keep its characteristic look. That’s because about 80 percent of Cambridge’s housing stock was built before our current draconian building laws passed. (Yes, most Cambridge housing stock would be illegal under current law.)
First, Missing Middle will complement our Affordable Housing Overlay zoning. Passed in 2020, the overlay makes it easier to build affordable housing. The all-volunteer A Better Cambridge organized and rallied around it, and supported 2019 City Council candidates only if they supported it (see the organization’s election platform). Missing Middle zoning is designed to keep affordable builders’ significant edge over market-rate builders. Opponents are trying to smear the petition as harming the overlay, but actual affordable housing builders don’t share their “concerns.”
Second, Missing Middle will feed the city’s program for affordable homeownership HomeBridge by allowing lower-cost homes to come on the market. To make homes available to families via HomeBridge, we must create housing that could actually be eligible.
Third, while this petition will likely prevent displacement, we need different tools to address this huge issue. Today, it’s relatively easy for owners to displace tenants or raise rents arbitrarily. To stanch displacement, the city needs targeted laws. Promising examples are in the Mayor’s Tenant Displacement report. These should pass, along with Missing Middle. Still, bringing down home prices tends to mitigate displacement, which grows greater as home prices rise.
Finally, creating an antiracist city is hard. Opponents of Missing Middle zoning say it doesn’t do enough. They want it to require affordable units. (They say this even though most opponents opposed the Affordable Housing Overlay!) They acknowledge that it will help middle-income people, but want it to also be about helping low-income people.
By fighting change, they’re shoring up the status quo. That is to deem Cambridge a solely affluent community. Without a middle-class. Cambridge then is available only to the very richest, along with a lucky few who get off affordable housing waitlists. Cambridge excluding diversity, with no hope to regain its Black middle class.
That’s not acceptable. We demand change. We demand a strike-through of all racist laws. We demand equity in forward-looking policies. We can’t sacrifice the good in pursuit of the perfect. We’re focused on actually doing something.
Ming-Tai Huh and Jeffrey Allen are Black residents of Cambridge, each living in multifamily buildings in The Port. They want a more diverse and inclusive city. They speak only for themselves.
This is a beautiful illustration of the saying about lies, damn lies and statistics. Did you know that a building with 500 apartments in it requires only one building permit, just like a single-family house or a two-family, etc.? Hundreds upon hundreds of apartments, both affordable and not, have been built in the past few years, and the vast majority of them are in multifamily buildings, big multifamily buildings, which only require a single building permit for each building.
Did you know that the building code makes it much more expensive to build a three-unit building than a one- or two-unit building? Once you add that third unit, you move up to the next level of fire suppression, including sprinklers. That might have some small effect on developers’ desire to build something that size. I will note that relaxing building codes is on the wish list of the National Association of Home Builders, as is the so-called Missing Middle Housing initiative. Personally, I don’t want my home burning up, as has happened too often around here, just so some developer can pad the bottom line.
If you read what the NAHB has written about the MMH, you will find that what ABC has proposed is far more extreme than what the NAHB proposes, both much denser and lacking design standards. That’s why the NAHB and the Planning Board member whose day job is being a developer both say that the proposal on the table will not produce what the proponents say it will. I commend the president of ABC for admitting that this proposal is aimed at providing housing for people who make more than $100,000 a year, not exactly the people who are getting gentrified out of Our Fair City.
What’s creating our housing squeeze is not the zoning that’s been in place for decades; it’s the City’s insatiable appetite for high-end commercial development, which keeps bringing more and more people making those big bucks to work here. Contract zoning is selling our city for parts and tossing crumbs to the people being left behind, and all the cries of racism and wishful thinking won’t change that.
This is one of the most misinformed opinion pieces Cambridge Day has ever published. Nothing in the so-called Missing Middle Housing proposal will protect existing middle-income housing or encourage new middle-income housing. Allowing existing single-family homeowners to double their permitted floor area won’t make homes less expensive, nor will allowing for-profit developers to build bigger boxes stuffed with tinier units. Instead, it will only promote more gentrification and displacement as middle-income families increasingly realize that there is nothing left for those few who remain behind.
I’m not sure how the authors are able to make a connection between relaxing multi-family zoning and decreasing housing prices. With the housing pressure in Cambridge estimated to be that 1 MILLION people wish to move here, adding a few thousand market-rate dwellings (at $1.5 to 2 million each) will only encourage more high-end home sales. What’s needed is truly “missing middle” housing to serve the huge number of residents who have been displaced by a real estate industry and housing “policy” run amok. The AHI and other proposed measured must focus on this critical goal without falling for developers’ disinformation campaign.
WHAT?!! The Avon Hill area is red lined?! I’m shocked! SHOCKED I tell ya!
I’m all for this if they first use it to tear down those ivory walls.
I want to live on Beacon Hill. I love the history, architecture, location. They used to have a thriving black population hence the African Meeting House. It was close to my school and work. But it is too expensive. But I WANT to live there. There are rich people who live there and they keep lower income people out. I think they should tear down some buildings and build 100% affordable towers for those who want to live there. Historic preservation is over-rated. And the urban renewal of West End has nothing to do with rent prices or demographics. I deserve to live there. I am entitled to live there!. These people who bought 40 yrs ago or inherited their town houses are elitist and racist. Beacon Hill needs more equity. Let’s re-zone Beacon Hill!