The Housing Crisis is Solvable — and City Councils Can Solve It
Over the past several decades, a renewed interest in urban living and our high-powered university scene have turned Boston and Cambridge into a worldwide draw. With massive investment in the technology and biotech industries, companies have flocked to locate in and around Boston, connecting themselves to one of the country’s better public transportation networks and a constant source of new grads trained in the latest and greatest research in their fields.
The result of this drastically increased demand across the board is growth in population and desirability — but with relatively little growth in housing supply to match. Cambridge has added 25,000 people since 1999, but fewer than 9000 housing units. With average household sizes continuing to drop nationwide, the number of new homes isn’t coming anywhere near keeping up with the increased number of people who want to live here.
The cause of the housing crisis in the Boston area is simple enough to understand as a basic problem of supply and demand¹: Demand has drastically increased as a result of the overall employment boom in the region, and supply has done little to keep up. As demand has continued to ramp up rapidly in the area, prices have gone through the roof. Apartment searches become an onerous, months-long process. Landlords feel no motivation to maintain property, knowing that tenants have little practical recourse other than dealing with what few choices they have. And our cities lose diversity across a wide spectrum of characteristics, as long-time renters are forced out by rising prices, replaced by wealthier tenants.
In the past, I believed this was some inherent difficulty in building new homes. But over the past 6 months, I’ve learned that this is not a physical, geographical, or practical limitation: instead, it’s a political limitation. The reason that there aren’t more homes is for one reason: the rules that govern our city say you can’t build them.
Existing residents have, for nearly 100 years, gradually changed the rules to make sure that more homes can’t be built.
Of the buildings still standing in Cambridge today, 928 were built in 1873. 636 were built in 1894. Big years like this weren’t all that uncommon in the period before the introduction of zoning: there was a constant replacement of buildings with slightly bigger ones as the needs of the city grew. By comparison, since zoning was introduced in 1924, the average number of buildings built per year is just 33.
The reuse and rebuilding of older buildings, replacing them with newer, denser structures, is how cities should grow. By organically allowing single family homes to be converted into two family homes when someone has a mother-in-law move in, we can add more units to our housing stock. When someone has a child move back home while job hunting post-college, they can convert the garage to a backyard apartment. When demand is high enough, the old vacant lot on the corner can be converted to a small apartment building; and in the commercial squares, we can see developers build towers to house retail, offices, and housing.
But that’s not how our housing is built anymore, because it’s no longer allowed.
While zoning was initially meant to simply restrict the type of use — separating residential from “unrestricted” land use types, to ensure that factories weren’t placed in the middle of residential neighborhoods — over time, these restrictions became more onerous. At the insistence of existing residents, restrictions were added, and over time, narrowed, making most of Cambridge’s existing buildings prohibited under today’s zoning code.
There are more than 830 apartment buildings in Cambridge of 4 or more units. 91% of them do not conform to current zoning today: almost none of them could be built as they are without special permission. This is why we don’t have more apartments in Cambridge, or most urban areas in the US: the desire to exert control over what can be built has resulted in making sure that nothing can be.
But we could fix this.
We know that exclusionary zoning rules like those which exist in Cambridge help keep home prices high, because in places without such rules, we see lower prices. In the US, Houston, TX has explicitly avoided zoning regulations for nearly 100 years: despite its status as a major metro area, it has managed to maintain lower housing prices than typical in US urban areas. Elsewhere in the world, Japan has also avoided regulations that would limit bulk massing of buildings, and cities like Tokyo are among the most affordable in the developed world (paywall).
And we know that control over zoning is largely in the hands of local government in the US. Cities can (and do) vote to change their rules; states can (and do) choose to exert overriding rules that control what cities can and can’t do. The Cambridge City Council can change the rules in Cambridge.
In Cambridge, the City Council doesn’t have a lot of direct role in running the day to day affairs of the city. Most daily activities are delegated to the City Manager, who acts as the city’s chief executive. One of the roles the Council does play is to control zoning rules — zoning rules which end up determining who can afford to live here.
By eliminating strict limits on numbers of units based on the lot size, Cambridge could allow for property owners to elect to create new units within their existing buildings without special permission.
By changing height and density limits in commercial districts, Cambridge could open up areas like Central Square and Porter Square to new residential and commercial development, increasing both housing and office space easily accessible from public transit and helping to fight climate change. (Kendall Square is showing how this can be done: with dense housing like Proto/88 Ames, and dense commercial buildings, we know that creating these spaces works in our city, and we could do more of it elsewhere in the city.)
By making it possible to build more apartment buildings, we could build more homes, and help lower costs for newcomers to the city.
By allowing more construction to proceed, we can slow increases in rent, prevent displacement of lower-income tenants by new migrants, and create homes that provide for both our existing population and help provide supply for the massive demand we see.
The housing crisis is solvable, and our City Council can fix it.
On the Council right now, there are a majority of Councilors that are generally in favor of building more homes. They supported the Affordable Housing Overlay that was in the Council earlier this year (which I wrote about here and here); they support removal of requirements to build parking spaces, which take up valuable space and increase housing costs; they support minimum unit allowances citywide.
But a majority isn’t enough.
In order to change zoning rules, under Massachusetts State Law, you must have a supermajority of the Councilors vote in favor of changes — which means that you need not 5, but 6 Councilors who support building more homes.
We can create zoning which supports creation of new, densely constructed affordable housing. We can eliminate parking minimums that support car-driving tendencies at the cost of significantly higher housing costs. We can allow minimum zoning limits that will allow for new units to be created throughout the city.
But to do any of those things, we need pro-housing 6 votes on the City Council.
A Better Cambridge Action Fund has questioned and interviewed the City Council candidates, and identified a slate of 9 candidates who want to achieve these goals.
Together, we can elect these candidates to the City Council. But to do it, we need to get the message out now — there are fewer than 45 days to the election. And the best way to do that is to give money directly to A Better Cambridge Action Fund.
If we work together, we may be able to prevent Cambridge from falling into the trap we’ve seen in other high-demand markets. We may be able to solve our housing crisis by doing the most straightforward thing to solve it: Building more homes.
¹: The housing market is complex, and “Econ 101” style approaches will not solve all aspects of our housing crisis. But right now we’re very far away from the edge cases: more supply would help.
