Cambridge Highlands, a 110-unit project preparing for construction under Affordable Housing Overlay zoning. (Image: City of Cambridge)
Amendments proposed for Cambridge’s Affordable Housing Overlay zoning were presented Tuesday as corrections that can’t wait. Petitioner Doug Brown pointed to “the scope and the scale” of changes being seen citywide under it and last year’s Multifamily Housing zoning.
Wait they must, though, as Planning Board members voted 5-0 to not recommend adoption of Brown’s changes, but to send a memo to the City Council about what they found in considering the petition – also conscious of, as chair Tom Sieniewicz put it, “the pace at which things are happening.” The council’s Ordinance Committee will consider the amendments too.
There remains a crisis in housing production in the city, Sieniewicz said, agreeing with board member comments that “the timing is not right to begin to so dramatically change the proposal that’s beginning to produce a lot of change in our community.”
The City Council has taken a series of steps to add housing to the city, especially affordable housing. The Affordable Housing Overlay zoning passed in October 2020 to make it easier for developers to put up buildings of 100 percent affordable housing. An update in October 2023 allowed all-affordable residential buildings to go automatically to 12 stories along the city’s main corridors and to 15 stories in Central, Harvard and Porter squares. The passage of multifamily zoning brought another update to the AHO.
A year-five report on the overlay presented to the council June 8 showed there have been 16 affordable-housing developments proposed under the law in its first five years, on track to produce more than 1,000 new permanently affordable homes for low- and moderate-income residents. “The pipeline of new 100 percent affordable housing has never been so deep,” the report said.
The pace of change the board protected was what Brown wanted to slow, as residents citywide say reckless demolitions are affecting neighborhood character, killing mature trees and other greenery and adding burdens to power grids and other utilities, as well as traffic and impossible parking situations.
Staff acknowledged alarm over several projects, but said the causes were different enough that changes to zoning seemed too soon. “It is still somewhat of a learning process,” said Jeff Roberts, Community Development’s zoning and development director. “We’re starting to see the direction that some things are taking.”
Proposed amendments
The resident petition led by Brown asked several changes around building size; shape; open space around buildings within a lot; parking and traffic; and approval process, but Brown introduced it with congratulations to the city for achieving what it had with the multifamily zoning, Still, he said, there was “recognition now by all parties that maybe it’s not perfect.”
“I really see this process as sort of the first step in what’s an ongoing review process to address things that have come up,” Brown said. “We’ve heard enough serious community concerns, and that’s really across all neighborhoods,” despite multifamily zoning being targeted at specific residential districts known as C1. “If you compare what’s allowed now to what was allowed a few years ago, the multiples are as much as 12 times or more. What I’m proposing is to back off that a little bit, not take it all the way back to where it was.”
Still, in discussing when project developers have to obey the Planning Board around design elements, as opposed to taking what members say as advice, Brown said the current 70,000 square feet was too big to trigger design review. He proposed “lowering the threshold to 20,000, which is roughly in line with where it was.”
While he wasn’t trying to change current zoning’s floor-area ratio or introduce limits on the number of units or unit sizes in a project, Brown did want overlay projects within C1 districts capped at six stories from nine. “Six is a more appropriate number there,” he said, proposing also a reduction for inclusionary projects – in which developers can build bigger if they make 20 percent of their residential projects affordable – to four stories from six. “That allows for incremental growth across the neighborhood. Over time all structures would end up at four, and then once they’re at four, the mechanism would allow other new projects to go to six,” he said.
Staff responds
There were a few more changes Brown proposed as well.
Community Development staff presented a memo to the Planning Board covering them at the same time the board got Brown’s presentation. The staff memo points to some proposed amendments that “remove most of the current incentives for 100 percent affordability,” which undoes the aim of the AHO and could have immediate impact on three projects in C1, demanding “redesigning, additional review and adjustments to funding and timelines.” Some changes would have even broader impact, applying to projects citywide that haven’t secured building permits.
Inclusionary developments were also at risk from such proposed changes as reintroducing parking requirements and cutting size limits requiring a special permit to 20,000 square feet. “Threat of appeal would likely dissuade most if not all of these proposals from advancing,” staff said, and again there are several current projects that have been through advisory review stages that might need to restart their design, find more funding and delay construction.
Board members were struck by the possible impacts.
“It was dramatic, very dramatic,” Sieniewicz said.
Board members react
Member Diego Macias said he didn’t oppose all of Brown’s amendments, but “a lot of these seem really restrictive,” a view that boded poorly for the package when considered alongside the opinions of other members: Ashley Tan, who said AHO projects have been proof the process works, because “there’s nothing crazy”; and H Theodore Cohen, who was similarly happy with the projects and the processes they resulted from – and just felt the petition was “really too soon.”
Brown reminded board members that there could be less need for housing that stresses neighborhoods if the city’s universities were compelled to house their more than 6,000 students now competing for market-rate housing. And he piqued member interest in proposing a robust demolition ordinance, to encourage developers to reuse structures rather than raze them and start from scratch.
The captured energy in “even an old building” is a zoning matter, though, and tearing one down and “just putting it in a dump is probably not something that this community should be encouraging without more careful examination,” Sieniewicz said.
While the board shut down Brown’s proposed zoning, they praised the proposer. Cohen said of Brown, “his heart is to do what is the best thing for the city,” and Sieniewicz called him “the very definition of a good neighbor and a good citizen.”
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