A resident zoning petition that could impede Cambridge’s current spate of homebuilding got its second of two defeats Tuesday. City councillors voted 7-2 in an Ordinance Committee hearing for a “negative recommendation” for when the petition comes back to them at the full council Aug. 3 – and, since the committee is made up the whole, nine-member council, the same dynamic is likely to play out then.
Most councillors, though, agreed action is needed to tame some reactions to the zoning, including the number of demolitions taking place by eager developers.
“I walk around in Cambridgeport and Riverside and every week there’s another demolition. There have been two on my street. There’s one on a street behind me. They’re happening everywhere,” said councillor Cathie Zusy, one of the votes in favor of the petition. “Neighbors are really upset about the lead and the asbestos and the management of the demolitions.”
A councillor opposed to the petition, Patty Nolan, agreed the number of demolitions was “striking” and that a flood of potential projects “has roiled the city. I think we underestimated the the number of projects that will come forward quite this quickly.”
The changes proposed by Doug Brown would have affected Affordable Housing Overlay zoning from 2020, 2023 and last year; and the multifamily zoning passed last year that demanded updates to the AHO.
The earlier defeat was at the Planning Board, whose members voted 5-0 on July 14 to not recommend adoption of the changes, which would interfere with the housing production the council said it wanted when enacting the zoning.
Affecting AHO crosses a line
By affecting both kinds of zoning, the petition became insupportable to some councillors. While there was wide agreement that the multifamily zoning was causing shock, the petition would stop projects crafted under the less divisive AHO – and that demanded a no vote from most councillors.
“This specific petition, by touching the affordable housing overlay, is crossing that line,” vice mayor Burhan Azeem said. “It risks our state funding, and by leaving this in committee today, we will risk a lot of projects that are in the pipeline and will provide a lot of homes to low-income residents in our city, and thousands of families.”
State law dictates that a zoning petition that’s voted down, and the specific goals it’s trying to achieve, can’t come back for two years, city solicitor Megan Bayer said. The Brown petition covered a wide range of issues – how a structure is set back from a property line, parking requirements, open space and more – that even councillors opposed to the Brown petition think deserve some review.
Related items initiated by city councillor Tim Flaherty are in committee separately and drawing recommendations from the Community Development Department, though, and can still be considered no matter what happens to the petition.
Naturally affordable rentals lost
Flaherty was the petition’s second “yes” vote. He expressed concern that Cambridge’s middle-class residents are being squeezed out faster by multifamily-zoning demolitions that don’t add back many more homes. A diagram in Brown’s presentation that looked at 85 current projects portrayed a net loss of units, Flaherty said, and a loss of what’s termed “naturally affordable rentals” – those owned by landlords who charge their tenants below-market rents – to developers who buy them and are intent on making money to pay off mortgages and construction costs.
The loss of naturally affordable rentals was an assumption based on demolitions, Brown said, but one backed by an example from across his street: Two two-bedroom apartments that cost $2,400 a month per apartment but sold in April, when all tenants – “including residents of the city for more than 65 years” were forced out with a month’s notice. The project sold for $3.4 million, then flipped two weeks later for $4.1 million, Brown said. Meanwhile, there are few affordable homes going into these multifamily-zoning buildings because “most developers on smaller lots are choosing to remain below the threshold” that would trigger a requirement for them.
Demolition and permitting set apart
Brown wanted to slow the change, as residents citywide say reckless demolitions affect neighborhood character, kill mature trees and other greenery and add burdens to power grids and other utilities, as well as add traffic and create impossible parking situations. The resident petition he led asked several changes around building size; shape; open space around buildings within a lot; parking and traffic; and approval process. There was “recognition now by all parties that maybe it’s not perfect,” Brown said of the zoning.
Still, risking AHO projects was a no-go for councillors when there were already separate discussions of zoning and parking reforms underway. On July 6, a demolition request was rejected by the Mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Conservation District Commission because members felt the proposal wasn’t in the spirit of multifamily zoning.
An example of the demolition problem was raised by councillor Marc McGovern, who said he’d attended a morning meeting about 66 Kinnaird St., Riverside, where a developer didn’t get the needed permits before tearing down a building.
“He says he didn’t know he needed to get them. Who knows?” McGovern said. “Clearly there are times when demolitions are happening without permits, or they’re not following what it is they got that they’re supposed to do. We do need to deal with that … But that’s not zoning. That’s a different conversation.”
Brown responds
After the meeting, Brown said he was disappointed in the council, which he felt was presented with a reasonable start to a conversation but rejected it in favor of political games.
“It was short-sighted on the council’s part, but I feel like I’m more than happy to continue exploring other options,” Brown said.
Though he agreed the full council was all but certain to vote down his petition, he believed there were a number of ways to come back at addressing its concerns sooner than two years. “There are plenty of other things that would achieve the same result – a limitation on floor-area ratio across the district, a limitation on height across the district, a limitation on building permits issued in the wake of demolitions, a full moratorium across the city. All are discrete zoning petitions that could be filed in serial for the foreseeable future.”
Waiting for CDD’s recommendations to Flaherty’s policy order didn’t make sense to him, as “that thing could sit out there for six months or a year before they finally feel like it’s in good enough shape that they can talk about it.” The issue was urgent, he said:
It’s damaging our neighborhoods to have hundreds of teardowns. It’s not low-income housing being torn down. It’s not market-rate housing being torn down. It’s just naturally occurring middle-income family housing that is being flattened to build market-rate units and to build some small amount of affordable that doesn’t replace the existing affordable.
What he presents next “is less likely to be reasonable, and unfortunately, that’s what they chose,” Brown said, referring to the council – but his next attempt is less likely to involve the AHO.
“‘Maybe I touched the third rail of Cambridge politics,” Brown said.
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