MONOPOLY! THE "DEEPLY FLAWED" CITY-WIDE UP-ZONING PLAN: Letter to Cambridge City Council by O. Robert Simha, MIT's Planning Director 1960-2000.

7/5/2019

"The envision proposition before you is deeply flawed....step back from this panic-stricken overlay device. Demand a comprehensive housing program involving all of the players."

Letter to Cambridge City Council, July 2, 2019.

"I have been involved in Cambridge Housing issues for over fifty years. Serving in the early 1960’s as a member of the Housing Committee of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee appointed by Mayor Crane. The issue then was affordable housing primarily for the elderly and the growing university population. MIT and Harvard put up several million dollars to get the city to take steps to create new affordable housing. Both Institutions built new housing for their students. But the City Council did little but fret about the problem.
I served for 5 years as a member of the Cambridge Planning Board and in 1965 the issue of housing reached a fever pitch again and the council rushed to support zoning increases in density in existing neighborhoods to accommodate housing like Rindge Towers and Huron towers without consideration of the community facilities needed to support the people who would be living in these new high-density developments.
In 1970, the Council, again, was consumed by community pressures led by the Economic Opportunity Committee in its Cambridge Housing Convention. MIT stepped up to create 700 new housing units for the elderly in Cambridge port, East Cambridge and North Cambridge and Harvard built put name square housing for the elderly. The city still had no comprehensive plan to address this issue, save pious statements about the need. During this time some steps were taken by the newly formed Homeowners Rehab and Just a Start to develop affordable housing but always on a piece meal basis. When the council had the chance to make the Kendall Square redevelopment project into a mixed-use project which would have included affordable housing, it failed to act even though the neighborhood, MIT and the Kendall Business association urged them to do just that.
In the 1980’s as part of the University Park project, the first mixed use project the council finally weighed in to insure that it included affordable housing before the commercial developments proceeded. Not long after Harvard put forward a housing initiative that set up a 20 million dollar fund for affordable housing… a program that was successful. But never renewed. The 1990’s saw the rapid growth of new employees seeking housing in Cambridge but, still no comprehensive housing program. Here it is almost 20 years into the next century and after spending 3 million dollars the Envision process comes up with a plan that is the most divisive strategy for pitting the needs for affordable housing against the homeowners and middle-income renters who have contributed to restoring a balanced community here.
If the plan put on the table by the CDD was to be voted, the city, once again, would be driven in panic mode to 'fix' the problem for one sector of the community. Taking this action without the financial substance and the concurrent development of community facilities to support this new vulnerable population.
In the envision report on Housing there is one small paragraph that speaks to the role of the universities in the city. The largest employers in the city. Nowhere is there an expectation that the Universities and the major employers in the city have a major role to play in supporting the housing needs of the people who are employed in these institutions and companies. Why is that the case? Both Universities have stepped forward in the past when asked. Why are they now invisible? The tech companies in the city like Novartis ,Google and Microsoft all have programs for investing in Housing in their home cities. Google has invested in an affordable housing project in Allston, Novartis sets aside a significant portion of its pension fund to develop housing at its home base in Switzerland, Microsoft and google have just committed millions of dollars to build affordable housing in the San Francisco and Seattle area.
What is preventing us from asking these universities and companies to join with the city in creating a housing fund that would actually enable the development of more affordable housing. If the Council, as suggested, would be ready to put forward a proposal of adding 20 million dollars to the housing trust fund, why isn’t the city asking the Universities and major companies to commit funds in equal measure to create a100 million-dollar fund so that we could address the housing needs of both low income and middle income families?
The envision proposition before you is deeply flawed and you will only repeat the same mistakes that prior Council’s have made. For once step back from this panic-stricken overlay device. Demand a comprehensive housing program involving all of the players.
The land resources to deal with this issue are available. MIT has assembled land in Cambridgeport and on the Volpe site that can. Make a major contribution to this effort. Harvard has significant land resources in Allston that can accommodate many members of their community that are now a part of the affordable housing pressures in Cambridge. Some of the ideas that have been put forward by thoughtful citizens about incentives for developing housing on sites that now accommodate one story retail spaces make good sense as part of a balanced program.
  You don’t need to destroy the variety of housing we have in the city’s residential areas to accomplish the goal of a balanced housing program. You need to demand a much more creative plan from the city’s planning agencies …Don’t make the same mistake that your predecessors have made over and over again…Demand a higher level of quality from the planners and the cities major employers."

Respectfully,

O. Robert Simha

Bob Simha was director of planning at MIT during the period of its major recent campus growth. He is a founding member of the society for College and University Planning and has led discussions in Cambridge on the proposed affordable housing overlay. This letter is published here with his permission.
the text published here is the slightly edited version sent by Bob to Council July 3, 2019. Emphasis added by bold text.
The Zoning Monopoly "game" shown in the photo was on display at Cambridge City Hall and published by CDD in the Cambridge Envision Newspaper.

James Zall

7/5/2019 11:46:41 am

I hope Mr Simha is correct that Cambridge's universities and large companies will donate an amount more than 15 times the universities' most recent contributions to the city. While waiting for that to happen, we should not just hold our collective breath, nor ask our displaced neighbors to hold theirs, but should continue to work on the AHO and other housing efforts now underway. The AHO will not "destroy the variety of housing we have" (as Mr Simha alleges), it will *add* to that variety and distribute it more fairly among Cambridge residents than is now the case.

CCCoalition link

7/5/2019 12:35:49 pm

Dear James - thank you for coming here to comment. I certainly do hope our universities (Harvard, Lesley and MIT) will step up to the plate on this - PLUS our big biotech, Google, and other firms. This is a key part of the problem. Note however, that Bob, a highly respected urban planner with a long distinguished career working in the city finds the current AHO proposal deeply flawed - as do many other professionals and ordinary citizens. There are FAR better alternatives. For example on Wednesday a Cambridge developer who strongly opposes the AHO told us that with Inclusionary zoning and some height increases on Mass Ave. alone we are likely to get some 6,000 units over 10 years, rather than the estimated 600 units with the AHO, and this without the need of city, state, and federal funding support, and without the weakening of design guidelines, the removal of Planning Board from building design oversight, or ending current citizen's rights to legal appeal.

7/5/2019 04:52:07 pm

If your developer friend is right, that's really good news! 6,000 inclusionary units in a decade, at the current 20% rate, implies new housing production of 3,000 units per year. This far exceeds the rate in recent years.

I hope CCC will throw its weight behind this plan and can help make it happen!

CCCoalition.org link

7/5/2019 05:44:18 pm

James - thanks again for posting here The city would have to rewrite zoning to allow it, but while the AHO is still under consideration, this can't happen. Who knows if this developer is correct - but he has worked a long time in the city. Alas the city has yet to do due diligence (economic or otherwise) on much of this - to actually explore and weigh alternatives to increase affordable housing. Since CCC members work across the various neighborhoods and districts we can help with this, but the AHO now under consideration is what we are focused on. It is not only radical AND risky but also a deeply flawed proposal. CCC wants something far smarter and far more progressive, a plan that is not based on what developers want. NB on your earlier post comment on housing - Bob is correct, the AHO would allow for - indeed encourage - the destruction of historic buildings around the city to max out density in order to make these expensive properties financially viable for developers. There are much better ways of adding affordable housing. Cambridge is a wealthy city, we need to begin making smart housing investments and zoning changes instead. Begin by ending city-wide all zoning for single family homes. That in itself that would be considered to be transformative AND progressive. And let's make new affordable housing not just limited to those residents needing subsidized housing but instead also add middle-income individuals and lows at the lower levels of income who don't make enough to get into the AHO housing. Then let's go from there and work together on a plan that will really help address this situation - including protections for renters. The gentrification problem here is destroying too many lives.

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