Authors of an opinion piece on the Affordable Housing Overlay (“The Affordable Housing Overlay is generating 350 new homes less than a year after passage,” Aug. 13) address perceived successes over the past year but omit key details, such as where the 350 units are, their initiation dates or related impacts. The ordinance itself requires no annual review, leaving this up to others. While the Cambridge Citizens Coalition along with many residents opposed the overlay’s passage, once it was ordained we were eager to see and potentially support its outcomes.
Below is our overview of the overlay’s successes and the questions it raised in this initial period.
Overlay pluses include that the overlay made some Cambridge residents think more seriously about housing affordability, and it made Cambridge itself begin to address this issue citywide.
Finding AHO-specific examples that meet stated goals is harder to do, but it is not hard to guess what sites are cited by proponents as successes:
Jefferson Park: Plans call for demolishing all 11 buildings, a six-story residence and a group of three- to four-story “low-rise” buildings, then rebuilding to rehouse tenants while adding some 114 to 120 units, bringing this public housing site to 289 units from the current 175 or so. Many of the mature trees that gave Jefferson Park its name will be lost. Had state permitting known as the “40B” law been used, fewer trees would go.
New Street: This 107-unit project was well underway when the City Council voted in the summer of 2019 – before the overlay – not to support more storage units with a scattering of affordable units as sweetener. Eventually the owner transformed the use to affordable units. While not an AHO goal-based project per se, New Street represents a positive outcome.
Walden Square: This proposed 103-unit project expands Winn Properties’ existing Walden Square affordable housing development onto a parking lot, simply adding more density to an existing affordable housing development. Nonprofit developers are not competing here with market-rate investors, but the project further segregates affordable housing residents, leaving them with few amenities.
Other current affordable housing projects are also important to this overview:
2072 Massachusetts Ave.: Plans for this proposed 49-unit development have not been finalized. This project employed not the overlay, but instead the long-available Massachusetts Chapter 40B comprehensive permitting. Had overlay guidelines been used, some neighborhood opposition might be dissipated.
Rindge Tower Apartments: The expansion of Rindge Tower Apartments, like Jefferson Park, was planned before the overlay and proceeds outside its scope. The developers are adding height and density on an existing affordable housing site to be managed by private entities, segregating affordable housing tenants from other city residents.
Frost Terrace and Finch Cambridge: These homes are complete – respectively, 40 created by for-profit Capstone Properties near Porter Square and 98 by Homeowners Rehab Inc. on Concord Avenue across from the Fresh Pond Reservoir. Neither was built using the overlay.
None of the above examples represents viable overlay “success stories,” created through the AHO or achieved as it intended: by providing nonprofit developers a means to compete with market-rate investors to buy sites citywide in wealthier neighborhoods.
Nonetheless, we can learn much about the overlay’s results to date and its current and potential impacts:
- The overlay has done nothing to address ongoing gentrification and the loss of long-term residents due to escalating housing costs.
- It has done nothing to address our growing city housing unit vacancy concerns, with vacancies rising from 3,259 (6.9 percent) in 2010 to 4,343 (8.1 percent) in 2020, an increase of 1,084 over the decade (33 percent) according to the 2020 Census.
- Overlay units remain extraordinarily expensive to build – at more than $500,000 to $750,000 each, these are funds that could have been used more wisely to build housing units on city-owned land.
- While overlay proponents argue correctly that every unit “counts,” in truth state and federal overlay funding requirements mean only about 70 percent of our affordable housing units go to applicants who were city residents. Our waitlist of around 20,000 people is long because people from every municipality, even from out of state, are eligible to apply for Cambridge affordable housing. If we spent city money rather than seeking state and federal funding, all the units could go to Cambridge residents. The approach taken by the town of Lincoln is one such model for that.
- The AHO has done nothing to encourage our city government to build on its own land and create units without outside funding, which would enable our affordable housing to: designate units for Cambridge residents only or certain groups of city employees, such as teachers, firefighters and police officers. This is what Lincoln has been able to do.
- Instead, by funding overlay developments through state and federal funds, if someone’s child returns home to live or a resident gets a promotion, the resident may lose the unit.
- The overlay promotes a significant densification of existing affordable housing developments, segregating tenants – too often without core amenities such as parking, green spaces, shade trees and nearby grocery stores, adding to environmental injustice and health disparity concerns such as asthma.
- Since overlay developments are now “as of right,” the kind of project-improving critique from neighborhood residents and judiciary boards is missing.
- Because the overlay does not require annual review, the city will not have an opportunity to redress issues that arise early on around these developments.
To be fair, some people, among them then-city councillor Craig Kelley, did anticipate these likely outcomes, but proponents of the overlay and city staff advocating for the ordinance simply overlooked the concerns and feared problems. The Cambridge Citizens Coalition supports a far more wholistic and result-driven approach to housing affordability questions than the overlay has offered to date.
The coalition’s key concerns about the overlay remain: the lack of independent project design review, since the overlay removed Planning Board oversight; that previously existing tools could be and still are used, notably state 40B laws, to consolidate affordable housing project development; the lack of viable neighborhood input on design; allowing nonporous surfaces such as porches and roof decks to count as “open space”; the frequent removal of green spaces and mature trees in overlay developments, raising issues of environmental equity; issues of resident parking for those needing cars to get to work; lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest in the selection and funding of overlay developers; that units funded in part by state and federal resources must include non-Cambridge resident applicants (with roughly 30 percent of units going to these nonresidents), making it harder for locals to find housing; and the lack of built-in regular accountability through annual reporting for overlay projects. For the most part, these concerns were on target.
Suzanne Preston Blier is writing to represent the Cambridge Citizens Coalition
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You want to forgo state and federal funds so that you can exclude certain people from being able to apply for housing support? People who weren’t “here already”?
How does this make you better than anti-immigrants and the dreaded gentrifier?
“Our waitlist of around 20,000 people is long because people from every municipality, even from out of state, are eligible to apply for Cambridge affordable housing.”
Arguing against making space and resources available (including federal funding – not even “our” resources!) to anyone who doesn’t already live here is an explicitly anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-working class position.
Also, those who currently live or work in Cambridge are already given wait list priority. CHA advises applicants that their wait may be extremely long even if they have priority status.
That’s because we don’t have nearly enough affordable housing, NOT because people from Somewhere Else are taking housing from locals. Suggesting otherwise is an ugly lie designed to pit struggling people against each other in a competition for scarce resources, when what we should be doing is increasing available resources!
When the Cambridge Citizens Coalition complains about low-income families from other cities and towns being eligible to apply for subsidized housing in Cambridge, do they realize that ending that policy would result in ending many poor Cambridge families’ access to housing outside of Cambridge? Trapped among decades of exclusionary zoning laws, CCC’s fierce opposition to AHO and even 40B affordable housing, and now this heartless twist, low-income households would be pushed onto an accelerated path to temporary shelters and living on the streets. Certainly, such an extreme policy preference exceeds the capacity for cruelty of most Cantabrigians.
James, Jess, and Sam. Thank you for commenting. No one is saying Cambridge should be for current Cambridge residents in financial need only. As we take care of the many Cambridge residents (the unhoused and others) a lot of issues come into play. What we need is a holistic, city and area-wide approach. How do we accommodate everyone fairly? How do we do any of this in the most cost effective and transparent way, and in a manner that will promote both environmental and health equity?
As you must know, the City could use its own land to build more housing for the same roughly 70-30 percent Cambridge residents to national applicants with or without state and federal funds. Indeed, urban planners like Vancouver-based Patrick Condon, are strongly advocating the use of City owned land for housing developments because it is less likely to increase property values, e.g. housing cost increases for renters and owners alike. What we need is a thoughtful way to address what the AHO has and has not done this first year, and how it can be made more effective in meeting its stated goals, while looking at other available options for advancing housing affordability in the city and in the area. In the case of Jefferson Park, for example, using 40B might have allowed the creation of more affordable housing than with the AHO supporting greater environmental equity. ABC with which you are associated, seems more interested in attacking than in a thoughtful discussion of our city’s housing needs and solutions which is where I hope we can turn the discussion in the future.
“Using 40B might have allowed the creation of more affordable housing at Jefferson Park” is a statement without any basis in reality: the BZA has established that they consider the AHO to be an effective cap on any BZA approvals, so 40B can only make projects contain *less* housing with the current BZA. (There’s also no reason to think that the 40B process would produce “greater environmental equity”, as nothing in the 40B process would have been any different with regard to the trees often used as a weapon on fighting development.)
The article makes clear why the author believes that Cambridge should consider avoiding state and federal funds: “If we spent city money rather than seeking state and federal funding, all the units could go to Cambridge residents.” The author responds in the comments “the City could use its own land to build more housing for the same roughly 70-30 percent Cambridge residents…” No one has opposed using city land; the pivot away from the blatant nativism in the article is not a response to the comments criticizing the author, it’s just a poor attempt at spin.
It’s worth noting that both the Finch project (98 units) and the proposed 2072 Mass Ave project (48/49 units) *are* on ‘city land’: It’s land the city paid for to use for affordable housing development. There *are* no vacant parcels owned by the city larger than that, other than Vail Court, which is currently involved in a complicated legal proceeding that has encumbered the property and prevents development.
Better use of city property is certainly always a possibility — there’s no reason that the underutilized property at 821 Mass. Ave shouldn’t be rebuilt to be a 20 story tower to act as a northern anchor for Central, with City and Community services acting as a base for a tall base for housing, for example. But to say “We shouldn’t use property the city doesn’t *currently* own” is silly: that would discount the use of property like 35 Cherry St., the use of property like the property acquired for Toomey Park, etc. as not being righteous, a senseless policy. Using Cambridge’s enormous wealth to acquire more property in the city and ensuring that it is used to provide for the social needs of the city is what government is good for; doing so with underutilized properties of all types in order to create better outcomes is exactly what the money that we give to the Affordable Housing Trust *should* be used for.
The nativist overtones in this piece are disappointing, and I hope that anti-housing residents of the city can avoid falling into a cycle of simply repeating the talking points they hear on Fox News. The rest of the city deserves better than that.
We stand by our report. The AHO was intended to help affordable housing developers compete with market rate housing investors in creating c.20-40 affordable housing unit size projects in neighborhoods where there are few for our various residents in need. This has not happened. The 350 claimed “success” stories are simply not there. Where are they? Why did the AHO not work as intended? There are many 20-40 unit size properties – city-owned and private – that might be used. ABC’s gas-lit nativism attacks, fact distortion, and group bullying are an attempt to draw attention from the issues. The BZA has not ruled on Jefferson Park because the AHO specifically excludes projects from city judicial board review – even for core design, equity, or environmental justice concerns (trees, green spaces, etc.). 821 Mass Ave is 40B not AHO and would require so many special permit variances that the BZA viewed it as outside its legal purview. CCC strongly supports smart housing policy and has been working on these issues – specifically a citywide housing strategy that advances housing affordability for everyone.
The Cambridge Citizens Coalition is clearly in love with what Lincoln Ma is doing for affordable housing. In the last ten plus years Lincoln has developed 2 units of affordable housing. Lincoln’s sole strategy is to stop the possibility of 40B developments. Since 1972 fewer than 250 units of affordable housing have been developed. Their new scheme, Oriole Landing, would provide 15 units of affordable housing in a sixty unit development. They brag that because 25% of the development would be affordable, all sixty units would be considered subsidized, so that, in effect, no further affordable housing would have to be developed for the next 40 years in order to a avoid 40B development “threats”.
I must thank Suzanne Blier for making clear what the Cambridge Citizens Coalition is all about, and I want no part of it!
It is sad, and tiresome, to see the tribalism on display in most of these comments. As we have seen at the national level for several years now, some groups have no guiding philosophy beyond opposing anything The Other Team says. Positions they argued for yesterday are now anathema because The Other Team now holds them. So we see here that helping people stay in Cambridge when they would otherwise be priced out by the incessant pressure created by too much commercial development is now denigrated as nativism, and, apparently, gentrification and displacement are the new order of the day, not because they’re actually good for anybody who wants to keep living here and keep friends and family able to live here but solely because The Other Team opposes them. If the best way you can come up with to spend your life is opposing and vilifying the people you have decided are The Enemy Who Must Be Destroyed Entirely, then I feel very sorry for you.
I have watched as those who grew up here have been forced out by upzonings; developments; and yes, outsiders with no reason to be here and actually no need to be here. While you may be touting this as Affordable Housing, truth is it is far from that and most lifelong residents would not be income eligible. The price range is more in line with beginner techies. I have met folks from different parts of the state, different parts of the country, and even different parts of the world, who have been placed in subsidized units here. What I have learned is many do not work here; have never lived here; but thought they might like to live here. While I notice here the name callers are out in full-force, I am sure I will be castigated as a “nativist.” The funniest allegation is somehow the AHO, lacking strict preference for Cambridge lifelong residents, would protect working class people. Are you kidding me? What planet are you from? Most of the lifelong residents you dismiss with a nasty phrase come from working class families. Is it “nativist” for me to want to protect people who grew up here; whose parents grew up here; whose grandparents grew up here?? Is it “nativist” to feel a loyalty and community and respect for shared lives and shared experiences? I use a pseudonym here quite purposefully since I have been horribly attacked and mocked on social media by proponents of AHO and ABC. Never in my life have I met such a nasty lot.
It is increasingly clear that a divided Cambridge is unable to build the additional density necessary to keep housing plausibly affordable. We are heading in the trajectory of Palo Alto and San Francisco where only longtime residents and the rich can afford to own here.
If you think it is bad right now, there is no reason why prices and rents won’t double in the next 10 years.
Suzanne, genuinely I do not understand what you mean when you say you’re being misrepresented. Can you point to any specific claims or quotes that you feel lack context or are not true?
If it’s the claim that the CCC opposed the AHO, you yourself said that the CCC opposed the AHO in the opening paragraph of this article you wrote: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2021/08/19/the-affordable-housing-overlay-a-first-year-report/
I’m deeply sorry if someone has threatened you, that’s not how we improve things or have healthy conversations in Cambridge, but it’s also not a reason for you to dismiss everyone that disagrees with you out of hand.