Two zoning laws that have been applauded as innovative ways to meet a housing crisis face changes proposed Monday that are meant to limit height, add open space and otherwise keep buildings from encroaching on their neighbors and be friendlier to people with cars.
Both were referred onward for discussion by the Planning Board and in committees, where Community Development staff can present their own proposed amendments. “It’s my understanding that the CDD has been working on a range,” mayor Sumbul Siddiqui said.
While vice mayor Burhan Azeem said he welcomed talk of improving zoning, a residents’ petition upset him because it will “de facto take effect” with its automatic forwarding to the Ordinance Committee, freezing every one of the projects seeking to move forward under the citywide Affordable Housing Overlay. “I don’t believe a single affordable housing project that’s under consideration right now would meet the qualifications of this new zoning,” Azeem said. “I don’t think that’s fair to hold hostage every project in the city because 10 people have an idea of what they want to do.”
An order from city councillor Tim Flaherty acknowledged the CDD work was underway – with urgency and discontent.
“Residents across all Cambridge neighborhoods have expressed widespread concern and dissatisfaction regarding the unintended consequences” since the most zoning changes were enacted less than two years ago, said Flaherty in a policy order describing his proposed changes.
The first law is the AHO, passed in October 2020 to grant density and end design limits and hurdles for developers putting up buildings of 100 percent affordable housing. (An update in October 2023 allowed all-affordable buildings to go automatically to 12 stories along the city’s main corridors and to 15 stories in Central, Harvard and Porter squares.) Resident Doug Brown is lead petitioner on these zoning changes that drew Azeem’s ire.
But the more invoked by speakers and councillors was Flaherty’s order about Multifamily Housing zoning, which passed in February 2025 to bring some of those same density and design benefits to buildings citywide even if the homes within are market-rate. It allowed four-story buildings anywhere that can go to six if developers include affordable units in 20 percent of the total square footage. With passage of multifamily zoning, the AHO was updated again to match, reducing the required number of community meetings to one from two and raising the threshold for the size of projects needing Planning Board advisory design review.
Two laws with different goals
The multifamily zoning isn’t working right, Flaherty said, and real estate developers are using it to propose projects that maximize profits while skipping the affordable-housing aspects.
A graph shared by the Cambridge Citizens Coalition, a group that shares the concerns of Flaherty and his co-sponsor, councillor Cathie Zusy, expressed concern that only 16 percent of developments include affordable units.
Estimates from staff before the law was passed – and before Flaherty was on the council, but not before Zusy was – put that figure at 21 percent by 2030. Members of the council present for the vote said the law was working as intended, and as they voted.
Councillor Marc McGovern objected to conflation of the two laws. They “are two different things with two different purposes, two different sets of tools to address our housing crisis,” McGovern said. One was to create affordable housing, and the other was to boost the amount of housing stock in the city in general, while encouraging affordable housing as a bonus, he said.
One of the biggest complaints of housing advocates in the past years has been that the most common kinds of housing stock in the city, built in decades past, weren’t allowed to be built. The proposed changes would make that the case again, councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler said.
“Why do you want to prevent more houses like mine from being built? Why do you want to prevent thousands of houses like we currently have in East Cambridge and Wellington-Harrington and Cambridgeport and Mid-Cambridge and North Cambridge and Riverside?” Sobrinho-Wheeler said. The idea that opponents of current zoning’s allowed height and form were upset at the lack of affordable units being built struck him as odd: “If you want more affordable units, the six-story buildings are the ones that are going to have them.”
Public comment
The order and petition drew hours of public comment, some of it citing both but naming the multifamily zoning as the topic – including from advocates for affordable housing who defend the current zoning such as Elaine DeRosa, of the Cambridge Housing Authority board; Kate Gilmore, director of real estate at the nonprofit builder Homeowners Rehab Inc.; and Tina Alu of the Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee.
“This policy order would have made our project impossible,” said Gilmore in reference to Flaherty’s order about multifamily zoning for a Mellen Street project going up under the AHO. “The size of the site did not allow for any surface parking, and excavating for below-grade parking is cost prohibitive. More than half of our three-bedroom units would have been downsized to two-bedroom units to accommodate the setback requirements. This policy order directly conflicts with the city’s commitment to build affordable housing that ensures individuals and families can stay and thrive in Cambridge.”
Yet Suzanne Preston Blier, in an email from the CCC, rallied speakers by saying homes and neighborhoods “are under attack by outside profiteers” backed by a “pro-luxury-developer lobby with their misleading ’affordable housing’ slogans.”
“The proposed zoning adjustments are not an attempt as the opposition has suggested to ’bring back exclusionary zoning’ or ’block housing.’ They are targeted fixes intended to address real concerns,” Blier said. Her group has assembled a spreadsheet that keeps track of “potential redevelopment inspired by the Multifamily Housing ordinance,” as of Monday at 98 entries as well as having 45 considered “properties to watch” because of recent sales or other activity.
Speakers also raised concerns that projects were outpacing the ability of the city to keep residents safe as homes are torn down. Sara Nelson, of Rockwell Street, said a demolition there two weeks ago “proceeded without asbestos clearance” as the front of the building dropped onto an electrical pole. “A cloud of demolition dust, likely containing lead, spread across the street where two young children live. On another project, no one figured out where the sewage lines would go until a mature public tree was in the way. You triple the permits, you triple mistakes.” Cynthia Haynes said a Sydney Street demolition site near her has been tagged for asbestos but “has been exposed for three months.”
Carolyn Fuller of The Port neighborhood, no stranger to affordable and public housing, said wearily that “we’ve had election after election that has clearly stated that Cambridge voters want more homes, and I just feel like there’s this minority that keep trying to shove antihousing agenda onto us.”
Another speaker said it was suspicious that backers of the housing-friendly zoning had received so much campaign money from developers, which drew a scoff from Sobrinho-Wheeler. He cited state election finance watchdogs in saying it was Flaherty who got the most contributions from donors working in real estate. “It’s pretty bizarre to suggest that real estate interests are controlling city councillors when you don’t like what they’re doing” but not if a councillor is opposed to multifamily housing.
The proposed changes
A year-five report on the Affordable Housing Overlay shows that staff also sees it is working: Expected to at first produce 10 to 15 rental units a year – and so far that is essentially true, as there’s been one 62-home project completed – the zoning has inspired 16 project approvals so far, totaling more than 1,000 new permanently affordable homes for low- and moderate-income residents. Still, Brown has AHO changes to propose around such things as building height, open space, parking and design review requirements toward the goal of “promoting sensible neighborhood development.”
Zoning amendments that come to the council must be referred within 14 days to the Planning Board for review, per council rules. The council also refers the zoning petition to its Ordinance Committee, according to the city.
In the case of the Multifamily Housing proposals, those are targeted to go to a joint June 25 meeting of the Neighborhood & Long Term Planning and Housing committees. That meeting has been scheduled.
Flaherty proposes five changes on multifamily housing zoning:
Building size: Explore the possibility of relating building height to the width of the right-of-way it’s on, such as allowing six-story buildings only on major thoroughfares, not on narrow residential streets.
Building shape: Cap wall lengths to 25 to 40 feet along side setbacks, allowing longer walls only with an additional 5 feet of setbacks – the distance of a structure from the property line.
Space around buildings: Require front, side and rear setbacks totaling at least 35 feet, with at least one side setback of no less than 10 feet.
Open space: Thirty percent of open space should be green open space at street level, meaning green roofs and balconies would not qualify as part of green open space, and nor would permeable pavers.
Parking: A proposed building of four homes or fewer can go without parking; each unit from five onward requires an off-street car parking space.
Brown proposes several changes to the Affordable Housing Overlay zoning:
Building size: Allowing six-story buildings only if all those abutting it exceed three stories.
Building shape: Requiring buildings to step back another 5 feet on the sides and back above the third floor, and avoiding “walling off” neighboring homes and yards by preventing structures from extending more than 60 percent of the depth of a lot or more than 80 percent of its width.
Space around buildings: The AHO eliminated minimum side yard setbacks; this amendment proposes a 10-foot minimum and doubling the minimum rear setback feet to 10 from 5, while allowing one side of a lot to see setbacks reduced to 5 feet if both sides total at least 15 (up from 10) – and keeping a rule that no part of a building can be closer than 10 feet to a neighboring building.
Parking and traffic: Proposed building of four or more homes must have at least 0.5 parking spaces per unit, meaning a building with four apartments would have at least two parking spaces. (Language explaining why requiring parking is bad, including its expense, environmental impacts and need to apply for a variance for construction, is deleted in these amendments. It also deletes a note that AHO projects don’t need to provide off-street parking.) Current zoning forbids street-level parking in a required front yard, and the proposed amendments says it could be allowed only with a variance granted by the Board of Zoning Appeal.
A traffic study will be needed for a building of 20,000 square feet in areas zoned to be Residence C1; current zoning requires one at 75,000 square feet and bigger.
Open space: Open space requirements whether public or private can’t be met with any part of a structure such as green roofs and balconies. As a result, parts of zoning law are deleted that describe sizes for balconies, decks and roofs used as private open space. Builders will need a special permit from the Planning Board to change certain open space sizes or locations.
About The Author
