A majority of Cambridge city councillors want to cap residential buildings in Inman Square at eight stories instead of the 10 proposed by the Community Development Department. The request to staff passed 7-1 at Monday’s city council meeting, with only councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler opposed. “Every additional floor we’re removing means less affordable housing,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said before the vote.
Councillors did not vote on a similar policy order for North Massachusetts Avenue, which has proposed zoning moving in parallel with one for Cambridge Street and Inman Square and would cap residential buildings at 11 stories instead of 12. That order was stopped by councillor Sumbul Siddiqui, using her charter right to bump conversation by one regular meeting, just as the Inman Square order had been charter-righted a week earlier by Sobrinho-Wheeler.
The city has enacted zoning changes since 2020 to encourage housing construction and density for affordable and market-rate units. The changes include eliminating parking minimums and making design reviews advisory in some cases to help keep rents low and stop lower- and middle-income residents from being squeezed out of the community. Each success has led to objections they will change the city’s character, including a developers’ lawsuit filed Dec. 2 that seeks to remove a requirement for affordable units in market-rate buildings under “inclusionary” laws. This lawsuit could affect both rezoning for both Cambridge Street and Massachusetts Avenue.
Though councillors passed an amendment unanimously last week to offer greater height on Cambridge Street in return for inclusionary housing – a kind of poison pill against the effects of the developer lawsuit – that didn’t dampen objections about size or process.
Several public speakers Monday repeated calls from a week ago to let the zoning petitions expire, so the new council being seated in January would have to restart the process. Councillors didn’t address these calls, but if the petitions aren’t voted next week they won’t be looked at until next year. They expire Jan. 28.
Though the Cambridge Street zoning has drawn the most outcry from residents over the two weeks it’s been before the council, the height-reduction orders share a complaint: that staff ran lengthy community processes only to suggest taller structures than participants wanted.
During brief discussion of the North Massachusetts Avenue zoning, councillor Patty Nolan, who authored the order, said “it aligns the actual zoning ordinance with the community process.”
“It really is a willingness to compromise a little bit to pass important changes,” Nolan said, noting that many residents who took part in the process did not want even 11 stories. The lower maximum height, she said, “is true to the spirit of all the work that was done by the many people who were working on this.”
In the zoning as it was presented to the council, Massachusetts Avenue could see up to 12 stories of residential uses along its length from Cambridge Common to Route 16, and up to 18 stories of residential in Porter Square in exchange for increased open space requirements and minimum retail density; Cambridge Street could see up to eight stories of residential uses along its length, and up to 10 stories in parts of Inman Square; up to 12 in the Webster Avenue and Windsor Street area; and up to 15 stories in the Lechmere area.
If the city staff accept the orders, market-rate buildings of Inman Square could be capped at eight stories, and North Massachusetts Avenue could yet be capped at 11 stories, with further changes possible.
There’s another reason to lower building heights as is urged in the orders: Affordable Housing Overlay zoning passed in 2020 and amended in 2023 gives up to 13 stories of height to towers by right if they hold only affordable units. “Maintaining incentives for nonresidential use, residential use, mixed-use and 100 percent affordable housing are important,” Nolan’s order said. In the case of Massachusetts Avenue, allowing 12 stories means “only maintaining a one-story advantage for AHO projects.”
Slightly shorter buildings also allows for experimentation with modular construction and a product called mass timber, Nolan said.
If the shorter caps don’t lead to a building boom “we can consider other options,” Nolan said, but she would “happily support” the rest of the Massachusetts Avenue zoning petition with “this one change … even though there’s other elements of it that I might in another world not want to support.”
That wasn’t all, though: After many balked at proposed rules for Inman Square that they said would make ground-floor retail more restrictive, the zoning by Toner included a call to encourage active uses by making it consistent with rules for most of the Cambridge Street corridor. Nolan’s order for North Massachusetts Avenue’s rezoning calls for a similar change to encourage active uses.
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If I thought any of these proposals were actually likely to make housing more affordable, I’d support them. I have yet to see any evidence to suggest that that is either an intention or a likely outcome. Certainly the evidence of my own eyes and the stated objectives of the massive upzoning in February are to the contrary. So all we have is the marketing hype. I leave it to the reader to draw the parallels to events at the national level.
>>[CDD] staff ran lengthy community processes only to suggest taller structures than participants wanted.
That is not accurate. The original CDD plan, after a lengthy community process, recommended SIX stories; which is what residents understood and accepted.
Then the city council told CDD to raise the height to 10 stories, which they’re now cutting to eight.
CDD and local residents weren’t in disagreement over height. The city council did this bait-and-switch to 10 stories, which they are now trying to backtrack since it’s blown up in their faces. THEY caused this disagreement.
Ya gotta love the double standards.
Build baby build in Central/Kendall.
But Inman?
Oh no! Now we’ve gone to far!
Hmmmmm……..what could be the difference between the two areas…..can’t quite put my finger on it….can you?
Oh right…money.
@HeatherHoffman the law of supply and demand applies to housing. More construction (of all types of apartments) has been shown to lower rents, see https://furmancenter.org/thestoop/entry/supply-skepticism-revisited-research-supply-affordability Without taller buildings everywhere, not just at busy noisy streets, each OLD apartment and house cost thousands to rent and millions to buy.
Bahmutov, I offer the following quote from George Orwell’s “1984”, “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” The only question is which one of us is doing that.
It looks to me as though you think that the size of the demand isn’t playing a part here, that somehow we’re just a few more million-dollar apartments away from satisfying it and then rents will start plummeting. Perhaps in two weeks.
Cambridge is so expensive, no one can afford to live here anymore. Just like that restaurant in my neighborhood – its so busy that no one goes there anymore.
If just adding high-rises will lower rent, then tell me why is Manhattan so expensive and why is Seaport even more expensive than Cambridge? Revere/chelsea hardly hava any hi-rises, yet it is cheaper than Cambridge? Could it…just be…that people are willing to pay a premium for open spaces, parks, well-planned streets, restaurants, and quality of life?
@EastCamb Manhattan and Cambridge are both very expensive because there is huge number of high paying jobs while the housing stock has not been built even close enough to satisfy all the new demand. And I would say good public transportation is a huge plus that makes it attractive to live in both places.
@HeatherHoffman
Since you brought up “1984”: I grew up in Soviet Union where you had to have a party/government’s approval to live in a specific place (called “housing prescription”). You could not just pick up and move to Moscow for example, even if you found a job there! Which brings me back to your “limit the demand” idea. Unless you institute Soviet-style “only some people are allowed to live in Cambridge”, it is simply unworkable and should be unthinkable in our great U.S. of A.
@HeatherHoffman, you are exactly right. @bahmutov and others continue to peddle the myth that somehow we can outstrip demand and make material impact on housing affordability in Cambridge. This is an outright lie, not supported by data.
What the city should be doing is acquiring land and buildings for social housing for low-income residents.
We are already one of the densest small cities in the country, with an extremely limited amount of land (~7 square miles) on which to build. If it’s not already clear enough, there are a large number of residents that DO NOT WANT TO LIVE IN NY. Or, any city of comparable urban design.
As such, the proposition is to replace existing residents with new residents. Thank you, but we will continue to fight against our own displacement, and the destruction of the city in favor of sterile architecture, additional crowding and overwhelmed city resources.
The idea that Boston/Cambridge have “good” public transit is also laughable.
We do have good transit—only people who never ride the T still peddle these outdated views and don’t have any idea about how much better it’s gotten since Phil Eng took over.
The ridiculous CDD process for Cambridge Street came to a ridiculous conclusion. A bunch of residents told them to raise the heights and build more housing at every chance and then CDD offered pathetic recommendations so the NIMBYs didn’t yell at them.
Adiletta, you don’t fear displacement—you own a home—and more homes means less displacement, not more.
The real misinformation here is the idea that building more housing can’t bring down costs. It can, and it does.
We’ve seen this play out in real cities. Zoning reforms have reduced or clearly slowed housing cost growth in places like Minneapolis, Houston, Auckland, and Portland. And across the U.S., cities that allow more housing see rents and prices rise more slowly than similar cities that don’t.
Despite what you may have heard, the evidence is there. Multiple studies show that upzoning and increased housing production help temper housing costs.
https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2024/01/04/minneapolis-land-use-reforms-offer-a-blueprint-for-housing-affordability
https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2023/09/lot-size-reform-unlocks-affordable-homeownership-in-houston
https://commonwealthbeacon.org/housing/study-says-boosting-housing-production-tempers-rents/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10511482.2024.2418044
@adiletta @HeatherHoffman You can lower housing costs by building more housing. Extensive data from cities across the country and around the world show this.
The real myth is the claim that it won’t work here. There is no evidence to support that. In fact, it hasn’t been tried here at scale. So, how can you know?
What evidence we do have, from elsewhere and from basic supply and demand, indicates that it will work. The only myth being peddled is that it won’t.
@Reader First, on transit, I ride the T frequently. “Better than before” does not mean good. NY, London, Paris = good transit. Boston is not that. Worcester ought to be an easily accessible suburb of Boston with frequent high-speed rail access, for example.
Second, it has nothing to do with fear – yet another trope. I don’t want to live in NY. I moved to Cambridge 25 years ago because of what was, not because it could become what Kendall is now.
@Frank @Jerry – Is NY affordable? We will not bring down housing costs. If the goal is to moderate increases, the destruction of the city with sterile boxes and overcrowding is not worth some marginal relative decrease in rent rises as compared to outlying areas. To what end are you willing to go? I’ve heard such insanity as filling in Cambridge Common with housing.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/10/28/Vancouver-New-City-Plan-Not-Enough/
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/01/the-only-thing-worse-than-a-nimby-is-a-yimby
When someone says “what I see with my own eyes”, they mean “what I want to believe”. Data, not beliefs, tell you what is really happening. The data shows that building more housing lowers costs.
It is easy to say “I don’t want things to change” when you already own a home here and have benefited from the rising home values created by exclusionary zoning. But maybe we should consider the situation of our community members who struggle with affordability.
We’re begging the real question. Why does Cambridge need more people living here.?
We have a dense and highly diverse city. Let’s leave it at that.
Why does Cambridge need more housing? Everyone who lives here has housing. We do not need more people coming to live in Cambridge.
And, if you make the argument that we need more housing because more people are working in Cambridge, why don’t you put the people who work for the city at the top of the list for getting any new housing.
“Build baby build in Central/Kendall.
But Inman?
Oh no! Now we’ve gone to far!
Hmmmmm……..what could be the difference between the two areas…..can’t quite put my finger on it….can you?”
Subway stations.
@adiletta No, NYC isn’t proof that building doesn’t work. It’s what happens when a major jobs center chronically underbuilds housing, which is exactly the path we’re on.
Why fixate on NYC and ignore cities where sustained building has slowed rent growth and reduced pressure on lower-income renters, including evidence from NYC itself? A broad set of studies shows that adding homes generally lowers or slows rents relative to where they otherwise would have been.
So the right question about NYC isn’t “why are prices high?” It’s “how much worse would they be without the new homes that did get built?”
Will more homes help here? The best evidence from U.S. cities says yes. Let’s build housing for people who need it and find out, instead of looking for excuses to stop it.
@Frank You do know that the cities you mention are on MUCH greater land mass, right?? Minneapolis, MN 59 sq miles, Austin, TX is 320 sq miles, Houston, TX 640+ sq miles, Aukland, NZ 419+ sq miles, Portland, OR 133+ sq miles.
Cambridge, MA is 6.4 sq miles!
@ Jerry
Tell us who the people are who need affordable housing. Are they people who already live in Cambridge? If so, why do they need other housing?
Are they people who do not live in Cambridge? If so, why do we need more people living in a very dense city?
Are they people who work for the city? If so, place them at the top of those who will get the first available new affordable housing that is built.
What am I missing?
Citing studies showing results of relaxing zoning constraints in cities across the world years ago does not offer a way for Cambridge to build housing fitting the needs of people living and working here today. Cambridge has relaxed zoning constraints and provided incentives for developers to building affordable and mixed income housing. These efforts have not produced building the additional housing we need nor lowered rents or sale prices. Market rate developers can pay more for sites because they can charge higher rent and sales prices. The primary goal of these zoning changes was to retain current residents, workers, and businesses. Expanding opportunities to build denser, taller housing should be based on evaluating the results and obstacles of Inclusionary Zoning, AHO and the recent MFH law including the environmental and infrastructure impacts of these zoning changes. Facts should drive these decisions; facts based on the results of robust policies already adopted here.
JSH is correct: reducing heights in code cements a perpetual housing crisis.
A floor lost here. 2 lost over there. Once a shorter building is built, those potential homes will never get built.
And the people fighting tooth and nail against more homes will be long gone (morbid, sure. But factual). But their grandchildren will pay the price.
So NIMBYs: just stop.
It will be interesting to see what all the progressives say when rent control comes up for a vote next year.
Everyone keeps citing Minneapolis. They did eliminate single-family zoning. But most areas are still limited to duplexes and triplexes, with a 28-foot height limit, lower than Cambridge’s prior limit. They allow mid-rise buildings on corridors.
There would be many fewer objections if Cambridge took a similar approach. Allowing triple-deckers is how this zoning was sold, but it was dishonest. The problem is 74-foot cubes 5 feet from your fence, blocking out any hope of seeing sunlight again.
I know of no other first-world city that allows buildings this tall and close together indiscriminately in all neighborhoods. NYC certainly doesn’t. They’ve done plenty of upzoning in outer neighborhoods recently, but it thoughtfully manages height and bulk. For example, Park Slope streets with 4-story buildings limit new buildings to 50 feet, stepping down to 40′ at the streetwall.
Cambridge is trying a radical experiment which is going to have long-term consequences.