Lack of affordability in ‘missing middle’ zoning cited as Planning Board members go 5-3 against
Most existing Cambridge housing couldn’t be built under existing zoning, say backers of proposed “missing middle” zoning. (Photo: Tyler Motes)
The “missing middle” zoning intended to bring more multifamily housing to the city got a negative recommendation Tuesday from the Planning Board. Members voted 5-3, delivering a blow to the proposal, though it will continue on with a City Council committee hearing at a date yet to be set.
It is the council that gets final say, with the board decision one factor to be considered. The zoning petition expires July 7.
All board members spoke of wanting to help ease a housing crunch and address zoning that has over the years contributed to a have-and-have-not city with housing often divided along racial lines. But a key sticking point for the majority was that the zoning offered no assurances of adding affordable housing to Cambridge.
“There’s no affordability, no one talks about homeownership,” member Louis Bacci said during deliberations. While he wanted to “err on the side of do no harm, I think there’s a possibility in here – a probability, actually – to do quite a bit of harm,” he said.
Proponents argued that the zoning would help keep Cambridge housing prices stable and equitable by allowing construction of the kind of housing stock common here but not allowed to be built under current law, such as the classic three-family triple-deckers. It would encourage the removal of single-family housing and replace it with more units costing less, even if those units might be small, they say. The zoning was backed by the group A Better Cambridge and the Sunrise Boston youth movement.
Supporters of the zoning
Associate Planning Board member Nikolas Bowie, who spoke of seeing classmates from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School continue to be priced out of the city, said rejection of the zoning proposal would be seen as acceptance of the status quo – zoning adopted a century ago with the idea it would be adjusted. “It has had its test run,” Bowie said. “And it results in unaffordable housing in Cambridge.”
After stunning listeners at a March 30 board meeting by giving a lengthy history on the racist underpinnings of zoning and its deployment in Cambridge as “redlining,” Bowie followed up at the Tuesday meeting with more details, and even a list of resources that watchers could use to learn more.
In favor of the petition with Bowie were chair Catherine Preston Connolly and member Tom Sieniewicz, who said he had “some enthusiasm for the proposal [and] believe there’s an ethical and moral reason to move this forward with a strong recommendation.” Even Sieniewicz, however, said the mechanics of the zoning needed to be understood “more deeply and rapidly.”
Long road, long meetings
The zoning proposal was introduced in February and arrived before the Planning Board the next month. Members decided at the end of a 3.5-hour meeting March 30 that they were too torn over how the zoning would work, and if it would achieve its goals, to send it onward to the City Council.
But as it returned Tuesday for a four-hour meeting again packed with public comment, so did the need to understand the zoning. Members grappled with nine amendments from proponents and further suggestions by Jeff Roberts, the city’s director of zoning and development. Among other things, the new material from backers of the “missing middle” zoning decreased proposed density and raised the amount of required open space (to one-third of a lot, up from one-fourth). But it didn’t convince the board the zoning would achieve the goals of affordability, inclusivity and sustainability.
“The way it’s drafted doesn’t hit the nail on its head,” vice chair Mary Flynn said, seeking a way to “figure out the mechanics” and refine the objectives. If the city’s goal was affordable housing citywide, “this petition doesn’t give us that.”
H Theodore Cohen said issues needed to be worked out because, nodding toward correcting a racist approach to housing enacted with the city’s original zoning, “I don’t want something to be symbolic and not work.”
The chair – clearly weary – dangled the idea of continuing the hearing to a third meeting (“God it pains me to say that,” Connolly said), but found no takers.
Council has next move
Member Hugh Russell hoped the work done on the zoning wouldn’t go to waste. He urged the City Council to convene a swift, practical task force on affordable housing that would work from materials produced for the zoning by the Community Development Department – the items presented Tuesday by Roberts.
The motion to the council, though, said mainly that while there was broad support for affordable housing citywide, the “missing middle” zoning was not the right vehicle.
Allan Sadun, a co-chair of A Better Cambridge and a presenter of the petition to the board, reacted Wednesday to the ruling. “Obviously I’m disappointed in their final inaction, but I think the most frustrating thing about the whole evening was that they didn’t engage with any of the details of the petition. Zoning has a lot of tradeoffs and limitations, and we expected to be able to answer the Planning Board’s questions about the mechanics of the petition – but they didn’t ask,” Sadun said. “It struck me as out of touch with the housing crisis and with the realities of what’s possible.”
“I struggle to see how the Planning Board advisory report will be helpful to the City Council, who presumably will have to fill in the gaps,” Sadun said.
Group member and co-author of the zoning petition Christopher Schmidt commented via social media immediately after the board’s vote. “Five members of the Planning Board voted tonight to maintain a harmful, racist, classist status quo,” he said.
The Planning Board last night reminded me of the Supreme Court in the middle of the last century. In 1954, the Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for government to provide inferior educational facilities for Black students, with remedy to follow. In 1955, the Court ruled that school districts must desegregate their schools “with all deliberate speed.”
The Planning Board was forced, by one of their members, to recognize the injustices of zoning but they just couldn’t bring themselves to do anything about it. Too disruptive, they said. Maybe next year.
Or maybe the path to fix our broken and unjust zoning system shouldn’t depend on the Planning Board, itself a key player in that broken system.
I find Mr. Zall’s analogy misplaced considering that Cambridge Schools were NEVER segregated. This switching back and forth between housing and racism does neither any justice. Permeating the MMH is the equation that poor and needy is specifically Black.
Cambridge did not have a large Black population. (4% in the 19th / 20th C; 10% by 1980s). But 1/3 of the entire population was demonized low-income immigrants- Italians, Irish, Polish, Jews- part of the working population who lived in deplorable conditions. Southern Italians (Sicilians) were sometimes called “Black wops” according to the New York Times. The proponents seem to forget that. It was/ is equal opportunity prejudice. However, out of necessity, neighborhoods were also melting pots or clustered by culture and tradition. Proponents seem to ignore that as well.
They also ignore the fact that there was a thriving middle-class Black community in West Cambridge and several other areas untainted by Redlining. Generations still live there today. These are the modest 2-family houses targeted for their yards and open space. Let’s tear these dwellings down because they are not fulfilling their 1.25 FAR!. Even though experiencing some redlining, Cambridge, for the most part, had a different experience than what happened – even in Dorchester and Roxbury.
The most vocal of the Planning Board members- a body trying to deliberate a workable, legislative program- pulled his library off the shelves admonishing members to “pick up a book and read”, commenting on national practices unrelated to historic Cambridge development and heritage. Well, does his academic prowess include, “Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State” (2019), by Sam Stein? Stein rejects the logic that the market will save us, that even so called enlightened investors will still pocket double digit returns and profits. … “Here’s the thing: building up a ton of luxury development in working class neighborhoods, even if a portion of it is set aside for lower (though usually not low enough) rents, is not going to stop gentrification because it is gentrification… It’s exploitative, racist, sexist, anti-ecological, and all the rest… The point is to de-commodify housing, to end speculation, and to expand the stock of housing permanently affordable to all of us, from those currently homeless to workers paying an exorbitant amount of their monthly paychecks to their landlords or banks.”
I applaud the 5 dissenting votes who were not deterred by the condescending pressure placed by both said member and the Chair (as well as purportedly invested city councilors), who obviously was trying to find ways to push the new MMH through without Public Notice of undisclosed Amendments. This is democratically unconscionable.
The petitioners argue that zoning has further disadvantaged already disadvantaged Black and Brown people in Cambridge, but then they show the type of housing they expect their proposal to produce, and that housing is emphatically not for low-, moderate- or even middle-income people, but for people making at least six figures with more than $100,000 saved up for a down payment. At the first hearing, their example was a small one-bedroom condo costing $550,000. At the second hearing, their example was a slightly larger two-bedroom condo costing $750,000. When they explain to me how that helps the people they claim have been harmed, people who according to a recent Federal Reserve study have an average net worth of around $8, I’ll be all ears. Until then, I’ll agree with the Planning Board members who said that this proposal was more likely to do further harm than it was to improve matters.
As welcome as the latest Cambridge Planning Board decision was on the highly flawed Missing Middle Housing proposal, this battle is far from over.
ABC continues to insist on the validity of their affordable housing plans by the MMH petition. This, however is belied by their flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants presentation of nine last minute amendments to this developer-backed travesty, and then, the petitioners expected the Planning Board and the public, as requested by moderator, Jeff Roberts, Cambridge director of zoning and development, to restrict their comments to and render a favorable decision, mere minutes, MINUTES, after the ABC presentation.
This haphazard approach is, apparently, typical to every housing proposal put forth by ABC. The presentation of the Affordable Housing Overlay was at least this disastrously flawed, and passed by highly-compromised, campaign-donated recipient members of the City Council; one can safely bet that these same tactics are beginning as I write this.
Hopefully, enough Council members are now aware of the subterfuge(s) employed by ABC with any petitions this organization puts forth dealing with housing in Cambridge and will reject the MMH proposal as well.