As written, a proposed residential upzoning before the Cambridge City Council would pour gasoline on the displacement bonfire. The authors of this essay have seen the process play out over decades in their respective neighborhoods: Wellington Harrington, North Cambridge and The Port. The only way to avoid a deepening of the housing affordability crisis is to build more deed-restricted affordable housing.
Because of the city’s inclusionary zoning law, the proposal would produce affordable units when the building includes 10 or more units. On smaller lots, though, developers would choose to stay below 10 units, even if they could build that many, to avoid this requirement. Considering existing lot sizes, the proposal seems poised to produce more of the expensive condo conversions we see hit the property market in our denser neighborhoods: A developer buys a triple-decker on an underbuilt lot, converts it into two or three luxury condos, adds a couple of new additional condos if allowed under the zoning, paves the back for parking and sells the condos at a hefty profit.
Luckily, there is a simple fix. Since we already have inclusionary zoning in place, a conditional upzoning for projects greater than 10 units makes sense, because those projects would produce 20 percent income-restricted square footage to be rented or sold through the city’s affordable housing programs. Additionally, larger projects such as those are more likely to be rental housing, allowing for more participation from renters – which is where the housing need in Cambridge is most acute. Starting a city housing voucher program would help lower-income people access these inclusionary rentals.
For smaller projects, a conditional upzoning along the lines of what former councillor Quinton Zondervan proposed in the City Council last term should be considered. This approach, explained below, would lead to additional affordable homeownership units being produced, thus truly counteracting the injustice of redlining and the denial of homeownership’s benefits to generations of Black and brown residents. As written, the current proposal will not ameliorate the deep, multigenerational harms caused by housing segregation and the racist practices of the real estate industry and our governments.
In fact, recent research on the impacts of market-rate upzoning indicates that upzoned neighborhoods often become whiter and richer, not more diverse (see Davis, 2021, for a study in New York), and have higher land and property values, potentially making the acquisition of land by affordable housing developers even more difficult (see Freemark, 2020, for a study in Chicago). This could reduce the number of 100 percent affordable units built in Cambridge under the highly successful Affordable Housing Overlay zoning passed by the council just a few years ago. A legal scholar at the University of Pennsylvania has suggested convincingly that cities that don’t get this right could even be sued for racially disparate impact (see Pough, 2018).
The Zondervan proposal, Policy Order 157 from 2023, provides another crucial means of generating more affordable housing by granting a conditional upzoning to housing developers who agree to give the city the first right to buy some of the new units to either sell or rent as affordable. The full text of the proposal can be found here.
Lastly, to protect against creating perverse incentives, the City Council should put in place the maximum allowable legal barriers to so-called down conversions, in which, for example, a six-unit rental building is converted into a two-unit luxury condo building, as happened a few years ago on Norfolk Street. Such down-conversions obviously lead to gentrification and displacement, as explained above, and they reduce the number of people housed in the existing structure.
These points urgently need to be considered by the council. The implications of down conversions, as well as the potentially racially disparate impact of market rate upzoning on our city’s tenants need to be carefully considered by the council, city solicitor and Community Development Department. Turning a blind eye to this racist gentrification accelerator would be unacceptable.
Abra Berkowitz, Sukia Akiba and Quinton Zondervan
Abra Berkowitz is a community leader and doctoral candidate in public policy and associate lecturer at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Sukia Akiba is a community advocate and doctoral candidate at UMass Boston specializing in climate and housing policy. Quinton Zondervan is a former Cambridge city councillor, serving from 2018 to 2023.
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We got into this mess because of the government. The answer is less not more.
You even go so far as to point out that developers “avoid” IZ. They do so because it is uneconomical, not because they care one way or another.
Conditional upzoning for larger projects could significantly boost affordable housing production, but some upzoning is essential.
The claim that general upzoning will “throw gasoline on the fire” is hyperbolic and inaccurate.
Critics cite studies linking upzoning to gentrification and reduced affordability, but evidence suggests otherwise.
Research indicates increased housing supply slows regional rent growth and reduces rents or rent growth in surrounding areas. While gentrification may occur, new supply hasn’t been shown to displace lower-income households significantly.
Conditional upzoning offers a balanced approach, but abandoning upzoning altogether would worsen the housing crisis, driven largely by exclusionary zoning.
Resistance to ending exclusionary practices often stems from homeowners benefiting from inflated property values. When wealthy individuals claim to act for the poor, their motives warrant scrutiny.
In short, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater by a blanket criticism of upzoning.
Exclusionary zoning is the original “racist gentrification accelerator”. Don’t inadvertently defend it with inaccurate hyperbolic statements about upzoning.
Impossible to take this seriously. In practice this would codify the current condition and, as the ideologues put it, “pour gasoline on the displacement bonfire.” What these folks are advocating for are 22 down conversions in 2024 and only 48 net new units built citywide. The problem, as I see it, and my subsequent “simple fix” it to pair your virtue with achievable outcomes.
The vast majority of research has found that building more housing helps housing affordability:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10511482.2024.2418044
Freemark agrees with this assessment:
https://thefrisc.com/housing-arguments-over-sb-50-distort-my-upzoning-study-heres-how-to-get-zoning-changes-right/
It’s also worth looking at the experience of cities that have done broad scale upzonings. In Auckland, rents went up at a much slower pace compared with other cities in New Zealand after the reform:
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/assets/business/our-research/docs/economic-policy-centre/Can%20Zoning%20Reform%20Reduce%20Housing%20Costs.%20Evidence%20from%20Rents%20in%20Auckland.pdf
The same thing happened in Minneapolis:
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2024/01/04/minneapolis-land-use-reforms-offer-a-blueprint-for-housing-affordability
I would not call those results a “disaster for affordability.”
I am sorry, but I cannot agree with this letter. Housing is expensive because our _old_ housing is expensive, there is not enough right now, and no one can build enough since (drum roll) it is not allowed in the majority of Cambridge or nearby towns. Only single family houses can be built and they cost $1mil+. So any upzoning can be better than the current situation
The authors misrepresent the research on zoning reform.
For example, a study of four cities found that upzoning significantly slowed rent growth:
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/04/17/more-flexible-zoning-helps-contain-rising-rents
Additionally, upzoning does NOT cause displacement:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10511482.2024.2418044
The housing crisis is rooted in exclusionary zoning. Upzoning is not a threat to affordability—it is a crucial step toward addressing a crisis caused by exclusionary practices.
The arguments put forth here just aren’t back by evidence. Upzoning has consistently reduced rents versus the counterfactual.
In Lower Hutt, NZ a 10% increase in building led to a 20% reduction in rents.[1] In SF, within 100m of new construction rents fell by 2% and rates of displacement fell by 17% with a measurable effect out to 1.5km.[2]
We all want to improve our city, but making building more expensive isn’t how to do it.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1051137724000512
[2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/oplls6utgf7z6ih/Pennington_JMP.pdf?dl=0
Unfortunately the math for 1 affordable unit out of a 2 unit building simply doesn’t work. The developers either have to sell the market-rate unit for 50% more than market price (not going to happen), or lose hundreds of thousands of dollars (also not going to happen, the project just won’t ever start). More or less the same problem for 1 out of 3.
If we really want lots more affordable housing we should raise property taxes on _all_ the property in Cambridge, and use that to pay for affordable units. That’s way more money than you get from inclusionary units, which are limited to new construction and (if the requirements are too high) also discourage new construction.
https://letschangecambridge.us/articles/inclusionary-zoning/
Inclusionary zoning as a policy is predicated on a housing crisis. Developers should make just enough profit to make building worthwile, not enough to fund affordable housing. They charge renters more to pay for it, and rents pay more bc of lower housing supply.
https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/building-up-the-zoning-buffer-using-broad-upzones-to-increase-housing-capacity-without-increasing-land-values/
Funded inclusionary zoning, municipal vouchers, and public housing are real ways to provide affordable housing to those who need it. Importantly, expanded housing supply is necessary for these programs to be effective on limited dollars. Of course, these require actually spending money, unlike unfunded IZ and rent control.
The proposal presented here isn’t progressive, it taxes renters and perpetuates housing inequality in order to maintain profits fort landlords and wealthy homeowners. housing is for everyone, not just the rich and lottery winners.
Regarding Zondervan’s proposal, I was curious if the financial cost of providing the affordable units fell more on the developer or the city? The policy order says:
“Prior to obtaining a building permit, the developer will confer with CDD to identify the affordable units to confirm that the city is interested in purchasing them at cost plus a fee. The price shall be negotiated and agreed upon prior to the issue of a building permit. ”
If the cost ultimately falls on the developer, then it would function like a high tax on new housing for quite small developments, likely making them economically unfeasible and thus likely to create very few affordable units. If the cost is being put on the city, then perhaps that could work, but is funding the creation of affordable home ownership units in small developments really a better use of limited affordable housing trust fund money than AHO projects, or public housing, or municipal vouchers?
The math for the specific proposal from Zondervan is a bit different than what I analyzed above, but I’m pretty skeptical that cutting developer profits between 50% and 33% is likely to result in construction of new buildings.
And also it seems like there’s a clause in there that would make it very hard to tear down small single family homes and turn them into apartment buildings, which seems bad for multiple reasons.
The whole proposal seems biased towards small buildings and high percentages of affordable units. And that’s the wrong approach, the goal should be high _absolute numbers_ of affordable units.
What’s better, 50 subsidized affordable units out of 100 (50%), or 200 subsidized units out of 1000 (20%)? The latter means four times as many low income families have a place to live, and that’s what really matters (not to mention more places for people to live in general, also useful).
@DWH333, thanks for the question. This proposal has been vetted with both nonprofit and for profit housing developers active in Cambridge. Any cost would fall on the city, because the developer would be paid the cost of the affordable unit(s) plus a fee. In addition, the developer has a greater return on investment, as they are able to build more units on the same amount of land. Lastly, the additional units are optional, so if it doesn’t make sense in a given situation, the developer would choose not to do it.
As explained in the proposal, the city has the option to buy the additional units, or to make them available to income qualified buyers, or to make them available to partner organizations.
Because they are homeownership units, the city ultimately should recover the funds used to purchase them when they sell the unit to qualified buyers. So in that sense it is an “evergreen” program.
@DWH333: Regarding your question of whether this is a good use of city funds, the answer is unequivocally yes. Here’s why: most affordable housing funds provided by the city are leveraged. The city usually puts up the money to buy the land, and the (usually nonprofit) developer obtains state and federal funding to pay for the building. This is so because the city can act quickly to subsidize the land purchase, and the developer, land in hand, can now much more easily qualify for state and federal funding.
The downside, however, is that these type of projects overwhelmingly favor larger sites, which are most suitable for rental housing construction, which is also the greatest need for affordable housing. Unfortunately, that means we produce very little affordable home ownership opportunities. So this proposal would improve on that. The city does already fund some affordable homeownership developments, but they are few and far between because of the above mentioned dynamics.
One simple statistic disproves all the arguments about this being a supply problem: we have more vacant homes than unhoused people in this country, and that’s not even counting hotels and vacation properties.
The market will take care of itself; the government’s job is to take care of the people who are structurally getting screwed by the market and are unable to protect themselves.
Absolutely love the idea on rules to limit down conversions.
But if the city think a right of first refusal on property is in its interest, then it should buy the property itself.
The vacancy thing is a lazy myth. Indeed, the cities with the highest rates of homelessness have the lowest rates of vacancy. High vacancies give renters power over landlords and reduce rents. There’s a lot of different types of vacancy, some good and some bad, and most of them aren’t just permanently empty apartments. Indeed, zero vacancies would be horrible — no one could ever move. BlackRock even says in their SEC filings that high vacancy rates could hurt them.
https://ggwash.org/view/97898/debunking-the-vacancy-myth
https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/blog/vacancies-are-red-herring
https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/vacant-nuance-in-the-vacant-housing?utm_source=publication-search
The government sets the terms of the market. Governments have set up markets to create bad outcomes, and we could have better outcomes with different regulation. And for those who never will afford housing, relaxed zoning makes it easier to provide subsidized affordable housing.
I appreciate the explanation, thank you Quinton.
Regarding the statistic that there are more vacant homes than homeless people, it is true, but I don’t think it follows that therefore we don’t need more housing. Many non-market things that left of center people want to do to address housing (social housing, rent stabilization, rental subsidies) would I think be more effective if more density was allowed and housing were more abundant. The article below made some additional points about this issue that I found convincing. For example, if few vacant homes were available then it would be very difficult to move:
https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/vacant-nuance-in-the-vacant-housing
The only thing the vacancy statistic proves is that there are many vacant homes in areas of the country with no jobs and no economy.
Doesn’t seem remotely helpful when considering the situation in Cambridge.
It’s true that there are more vacant homes than homeless people in this country, but there’s a few huge caveats to that for its relevance to the housing supply conversation.
The big issue is that it’s not really relevant to Cambridge, we have an incredible supply crunch and it’s obvious in our extremely low vacancy rates and extremely high cost of housing. We can’t just point to decrepit abandoned homes in Ohio as a solution to the housing crisis we face here.
The other issue is that the homeless are not the only people that are negatively affected by a housing shortage. A housing shortage affects people with a new job working in a lab here, young families looking for more space, seniors looking to downsize, etc.
No matter how you slice it, we do have a housing shortage in Cambridge, at least compared to a few decades ago. We’ve added tens of thousands more new high-paying jobs than we have added homes, and that has put a strain on housing.