Cambridge’s Affordable Housing Overlay is a Win-Win-Win
Cambridge’s proposed Affordable Housing Overlay is a rare situation in housing: a win for low income families, a win for the groups that work to help support them, and a win for protecting our character as a community.
A Win For Low Income Families
Cambridge’s proposed 100% Affordable Housing Overlay would help create a greater number of homes for residents who currently don’t have them in Cambridge. The average rent for a three bedroom apartment in Cambridge is $3350/month — out of reach for many middle income families, let alone for the half of the residents who are living below our area median income. With tens of thousands of residents unable to find affordable rents, every move that we can make towards greater affordability will be a step in the right direction.
Under the Affordable Housing Overlay, the housing that is created will be permanently deed restricted to only be available to families making less than the median income. In some cases, this may be significant less: each project is different, and based on how the project is designed, the units may be available across a range of incomes from very low income households making less than 30% of median income up to 100% of area median income — a range that most people think of as more “middle income” than low income housing.
These developments will largely be developed by Cambridge’s existing affordable housing development partners, including non-profits like Just-a-Start and Homeowners Rehab. Working with the Cambridge Affordable Housing Trust, these partners have a long history of developing high quality housing for low income families in Cambridge — and the overlay will reopen the doors to new opportunities citywide.
Every home built under this proposal will be one more home that is permanently available as a home to protect our friends and neighbors, even as prices in Cambridge may continue to climb. Whether they are rental or ownership units, ever home is one more step towards providing homes that cover the range of incomes we have in our city.
A Win For Housing Support Groups
Months ago, I wrote about the Possibilities Under the 100% Affordable Housing Overlay. A relative newcomer to the housing debate, it was eye-opening to me to realize that so many of the things I love about my city are remnants of a past we have all but outlawed. In Cambridge’s residential districts, more than 75% of homes would not be allowed under current zoning.
Even if you were to build a unit in every legally available housing space in Cambridge’s residential districts under current zoning laws, it would not be enough to support the needs of our existing waiting lists for public housing. This is how far we’ve gone: We’ve made it impossible for anyone to build the housing we need in our city.
The overlay changes that.
The overlay shifts away from a highly restrictive form of zoning. By specifying aggressive limits on number of units inside a building, requiring parking that often goes unused, and limiting floor space inside buildings, we have created a legal blueprint for Cambridge that has no relationship to the actual blueprint of the city.
The 100% Affordable Housing Overlay takes a less restrictive approach. It removes strict unit limits based on lot size, and removes the highly varied density limits throughout the city — limits that don’t meaningfully represent the reality of Cambridge. As a result, it makes it possible to create new buildings in the dense building style that Cambridge has throughout the city today.
For years, large sections of Cambridge have been effectively off limits to affordable housing development: large lot sizes and restrictive single or two-family zoning regulations have made it impossible to create supportive housing for low income families. By eliminating these limitations citywide, we create an amazing new set of opportunities in our city, to create these homes for people citywide, rather than restricting them to the few remaining pockets of available zoned capacity in our city.
With less restrictive limits on floor space, the Cambridge Affordable Housing Trust can focus on creating the type of units that our residents and families need.
A Win For Cambridge
I’ve worked alongside friends who live in the San Francisco area for the past 15 years. As a result of those close associations, I have been given a front row seat to the downsides of stalled housing construction on thriving communities. The last thing I want to see is Cambridge falling into the same trap: to lose its arts community, its diversity, and the unique characters who make up the character of our city.
The Affordable Housing Overlay creates more opportunities for families across a range of incomes — creating greater opportunity to protect the remainder of what makes Cambridge great.
We’ve watched as developers purchase community arts assets and convert them to commercial space; watched as the city fights to maintain affordability guarantees on properties built decades ago; watched as the ongoing housing crisis has reduced the economic diversity of the City’s population.
This process is not new or recent, of course. A 1998 study of Cambridge’s need for affordable housing made it clear: even then, while Cambridge had 15.7% of its units available as units for lower income residents, low and moderate income families made up 40% of the household population. This gap — always present — is likely growing even wider, as we fight to provide for housing which represents the economic diversity of our city.
Housing developed under the affordable housing overlay will help mitigate the rising forces of inequality in the city. These homes will not be available for those making above the area median income: instead, strict income requirements will need to be met. Since maximum rents and sale prices will be strictly controlled relative to median income, it is not possible for these homes to be used as a way to speculate on property: their relatively fixed sale prices will not appreciate with the rest of the market, making them useless as a form of speculative investment.
In short, these permanently affordable homes — across a range of income levels, from no income up to (in some cases) the median income — will provide for long-term economic diversity in the city, providing housing at price points that are far below the market rates, providing for residents: those who live in Cambridge, work in Cambridge, and make Cambridge what it is today.
By protecting these neighbors of ours, we go some way towards ensuring that Cambridge can remain welcome to as broad of a community as possible. We can provide opportunities for teachers in our school system, or municipal workers in our City, or retail staffers at our favorite stores to have a way to live in the city where they work. We can protect housing access for families who might otherwise lose it, or provide opportunity for someone who might have no housing options at all.
We can work together to provide what we all think is right: access to homes across the income spectrum.
Win, Win, Win
Across the board, the Affordable Housing Overlay is positioned to help improve the reality of housing in Cambridge in important ways.
For low-income Cambridge families, the housing created by the overlay will provide more opportunities for access to affordable housing. For the non-profits and other groups who support them, it will increase the opportunities to develop that housing citywide. For Cambridge as a whole, the overlay will help meet Cambridge’s goals of maintaining economic diversity among our residents — and help provide greater resources to protect our community character.
I support Cambridge’s proposed 100% Affordable Housing Overlay.
