Let us be clear: Despite the Cambridge Community Development Department’s findings to the contrary, the proposed amendments to Cambridge’s Multifamily Housing Zoning Ordinance are designed to curb the construction of much-needed housing.
It is not rocket science to say the increased setbacks and open-space and parking requirements will limit the buildable area and drive up building costs. A UCLA study earlier this year found that requiring underground parking for apartments added roughly $50,000 to $100,000 per unit. As the Housing Affordability Institute writes: “Depending on lot setback requirements, impervious surface limitations, elevation design requirements, and parking mandates, small lots may not be possible, even when permitted as a by-right condition.”
Scattered all around Cambridge are multifamily homes with small setbacks and limited amounts of open space — sometimes even none at all. Many of these buildings have been around for more than a century, often rubbing shoulders with a single-family home or triple-decker.
Rest assured, all of the inhabitants have remained safe and healthy, free from vapors or miasmas or whatever newfound argument anti-housing advocates have now seized upon.
These new requirements might sound reasonable on paper, but in aggregate, they work to reduce new housing here in Cambridge. If you cannot build on most of your lot, then you might not build at all.
This works out well for those who own their homes and are uncomfortable with the prospect of different views out their windows, different kinds of shadows, or (God forbid) new neighbors.
At the very least, when these amendments are voted upon by our City Council, let the proponents be honest — they do not want to share, and they do not want things to change. And they’d rather the rest of us continue to pay the price of a rampant housing shortage.
Noah Harper, AICP / Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
A stronger
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