 Commentary by Cambridge Realtor Ed Abrams
Based on my experience with real estate development, up-zoning increases gentrification and reduces affordability. I found a study from the Brookings Institute that correlates an increase in gentrification after implementation of upzoning in New York City. The article by Jenna Davis was published July 15, 2021 and it is titled: "The double-edged sword of upzoning" https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-double-edged-sword-of-upzoning/ "Despite these tensions, minimal empirical work has examined the effects of upzonings on gentrification. Aiming to address this gap in the literature, I recently conducted a study examining how a series of upzonings implemented in New York City in the early 2000s interacted with subsequent gentrification pressures (using growth in the non-Hispanic white population as a proxy for gentrification). I find that upzoning activity is positively and significantly associated with the odds of a census tract becoming whiter, suggesting that upzonings might accelerate, rather than temper, gentrification pressures in the short-term." The reason for a reduction in affordability after up-zoning is the increase in LAND VALUE. I found this presentation that explains the economics. The amount of money that a developer will pay for land is directly tied to the amount of real estate that the developer can build and sell. For this reason, the whole premise of increasing housing supply to improve affordability by up-zoning is economically flawed. https://www.livablecalifornia.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/California.pdf The end result of Cambridge’s proposed upzoning, in my opinion, will be a frenzy of tear downs and the building of large luxury properties. Renters in naturally occurring small multi-family homes (such as three-deckers) will be evicted and will not be able to afford to rent or buy in the replacement properties.
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 Photographs and text published with permission by the resident who sent them to us and to City Council. Three illustrations from Cambridge that document how the residential upzoning as proposed would unlikely increase affordability and would lead to significant negative impacts for neighbors and abutters with no rights to do anything.
Photo #1: As one example, just last week I attended a special hearing for a house across the street. With the current zoning, the new owners were able to quickly get a building permit for a total gut renovation and addition of a finished basement unit. Basements are not included in square footage. They then applied for a special permit with an abutter neighbor review and very detailed drawings to add dormers, decks, and extend the footprint in modest ways to make the most of the house and keep the parking space. Even though this is a significant change, it got approved smoothly with neighbors in agreement. The point is that a lot of building is already happening and neighbor/abutter review is essential for positive neighborhood relations. In contrast, if the upzoning passes, this one small example would be a disaster for the next-door neighbors. The windows you see beyond are first floor and second floor condo units with those windows as the primary natural light (since they share a solid interior wall on the other side). Also, with a 5’ setback, those trees on the left would likely be lost. Even if just 3 stories, you can see the impact. Photo #2: Another example is the space between the back of our two family with multifamily housing lots that are over 5,000 sf. This example is a “shared" open space for all neighbors on two side streets and many of these are already 2-3 families or 2-3 unit condos. Infilling these sites to a 5’ setback and even just to the peak of these existing roofs (existing is actually a 2 story plus roof with dormers) has a significant negative effect on abutters and neighbor relations. We are concerned that if the up-zoning passes, we will lose this view completely with a 3-6 story building extending to the right past those garage doors to a 5’ setback and mature trees would be lost. In the current proposal, we would have no rights to do anything. This point is not just about our personal situation, but rather it could happen to anyone on these streets with the proposed up-zoning. Photo #3: Lastly, I do see significantly more tear-downs this year across Cambridge (this one a few days ago at Concord and Corp Burns as well as just saw Concord and Blanchard), so a lot is already happening and great success in affordable housing is already being planned and built without this up-zoning change. If the up-zoning as proposed passes it is "one way" to speeding up market rate residential development with no left turn and no turning back.  Cambridge receives a diversity score of 98 at the BestNeighborhood.org website considering an array of factors related to diversity. This is not the kind of map that we are used to seeing for Cambridge, particularly by our Community Development Department (CDD) and some of those addressing our up-zoning plans. It is not clear how valid this map is, but what we appear to see in the above color-coded map is that certain areas are colored bright red or shades of orange meaning areas of less diversity. Notable in the northeast (upper left) is the large public housing development on the road toward the Concord traffic circle (a site previously called Rindge towers). We have several other comparable sites in Cambridge as well. This site, which purports to help future home owners to select a home site based on factors of diversity or race, enables one to zoom in on specific parts of the city. The current identity of Cambridge neighborhoods emerged in the 1950s as part of a report on our various communities within the City. This is most closely identified with 1953 report titled Thirteen Neighborhoods of the City: HERE Little, in terms of boundaries, have changed since then. While this provides a means of longer-term assessment of changes, we must also be cognizant of core differences between these neighborhood groupings in any planning and analysis based on them. Our neighborhoods do not have the same number of residents in each. Some are relatively older neighborhoods -West Cambridge, The Port, and East Cambridge among them. Others were created more recently based as a result of the Charles River dam and the availability of new areas built on landfill. Other parts of the city are also relatively new and came into the City as land from adjacent towns, often in exchange. Parts of Strawberry Hill are an example of this. In addition to these factors, some neighborhoods house large dormitories with university students (changing the 18-24 year old demographics here), other neighborhoods house large, dorm-size publicly funded -- or partially publicly-funded --housing developments which often contain larger numbers of minority residents. In short, it is important to note that the number or percentages of minority residents in a given neighborhood means "diversity" in the core sense of the term, because as with student dorms and public housing facilities, often these communities remain rather isolated from the rest of the neighborhood. This is not the case with inclusionary housing, a term referencing newer housing projects of 10 or more units, of which 20% (2 units in the case of 10 unit buildings) must be affordable (for someone making on average 80% of area median wage).  The Cambridge Community Development Department (CDD) statistical report on neighborhoods in 2023 is an important one that has yet to receive much attention. As noted above, this is part of a plan to explore Form-Based zoning possibilities for the City, with separate plans for each neighborhood. Whatever the case, it is rich with information on our City and the changes which have happened here, often differentially, depending on the neighborhood. Read CDD’s 2023 Neighborhood Report: HERE Other important links to City data include: Statistical Atlas for Cambridge Ma. HERE Cambridge Room: Research Your House: HERE Cambridge Open Data Library and Map Viewers HERE An April 25, 2018 report on Cambridge Housing Policy’s Effect on Diversity that appeared in The Register Forum is also an important resource. This report written by Cecilia Barron and Isabelle Agee-Jacobson can be read HERE. This document addresses Cambridge diversity and housing historically up to 2018, addressing factors of slavery, factors of race, "urban blight," public housing, rent control, the Bio-tech industry as well as neighborhoods. One of the people interviewed for this report, Libby Gormley, notes that "A really neighborhood-oriented feel of the city is rapidly dissipating." Another person interviewed, Dennis Dottin, "... hopes that his grandchildren, who now make up the fifth generation of the Dottin family in Cambridge, will be able to experience a Cambridge similar to the one he grew up in: 'I’m just hoping the kids who grew up here can stay here, get a good job, and raise our families—just like we did.'” According to another individual interviewed for this article, "Laurence Kimbrough, a member of the School Committee who has lived in Cambridge his whole life, said of the end of rent control, 'In losing rent control, we certainly lost a good number of African American, middle-income families in the city.' Dottin added that the rate increase following rent control was damaging to the black community: “How many black families were able to pay 3,400 [dollars] for a two/three bedroom? Plus, people [were] buying houses left and right for a million dollars or more—not too many black people have that kind of money.'” Many of the same factors are in play today. Cristina Bratu et al, in a 2022 study in Science Direct on the effects of centrally located market-rate housing in a section of metropolitan Helsinki observes that “… large body of economic research argues that this is due to shortages in housing supply driven by local regulatory restrictions (e.g. Glaeser and Gyourko, 2018). Economists tend to offer a simple solution to this problem: allow for more housing construction in areas of high-demand and housing prices and rents will go down and more people will be able to move in…. As new residents move into the newly constructed units, they vacate their old units. These vacant units then get occupied by a new set of residents whose old units become vacant and so on.” Based on the factors of gentrification, displacement, Bio-tech and larger investment strategies in Cambridge, however, this kind of “moving chain” impact does not appear to be happening in Cambridge. The key focus of this specific blog, however, is the City's 2023 Neighborhood Statistical Profile Report that appears to have been written in large part as part of our multi-year up-zoning initiative, what insights on demographics and gentrification it offers, and how these may factor into an effort to bring Form-Based Design zoning to the City. Read our recent blogpost: HERE.  If we look at the data in the CDD 2023 Neighborhood report on Median Family Income (1999-2021) in the above chart on the right, we see notable changes taking place in terms of Median Family Income. These reflect changes both in our commercial sphere (notably the Biotech and Infotech industries), and in demographic shifts (related to race, age and other factors). In this chart specifically, we see how MIT/Area 2 median family income increased by 150% between 1999 and 2021. Strawberry Hill, in the same period, increased its Median Family Income by 70.2%; Cambridgeport b7 85.1%, Riverside by 85.6%; North Cambridge by 65.4%; East Cambridge by 52.6%. On the other hand, West Cambridge, Neighborhood 9, and Mid-Cambridge remained relatively stable at 25.6%, 28.8%, and 37.2% respectively. These last three neighborhoods represent the lowest percentage increases in the City. While these changes are significant, we would see far larger changes if this study were to be done today, based on both the impacts of the Biotech industry, and outside land/home investments in Cambridge. These economic changes, in addition to doubling of the densities of some of our largest public housing developments, also are accompanied by demographic changes that impact adjacent neighborhoods in and near East Cambridge and North Cambridge.  The 2023 Neighborhood Report by CDD provides important data on everything from housing and dwelling types to the ethno-racial backgrounds and ages of neighborhood residents. What we see on the left image taken from this 2023 report is that 38.9% of our properties are single-family homes, while the other 49.8% include duplexes, triple-deckers, and properties with 4 units. Only 2.1% of our properties are larger buildings of 28 units of more. We also learn here that only 30.7% of our housing is owner-occupied (a number that also includes condos). The renter number is more complicated because a significant number of these are local and area students. While all students are counted in the U.S. Census based on the places they are in school, many of them prefer to vote in their home communities and maintain important contacts there. In the image above on the right addresses Ethno-Racial composition and Age, we can see how much this dynamic has changed over time. Nearly all those aged 85 and older are White, and those aged 45 to 84 significantly identify as White as well, while the next largest demographic self-identify as Black. In contrast, we see that the 45-54 year old component begins to include a number of Asians, the latter population becoming especially prominent in the 20-44 year old corpus, a group that includes some undergraduates, but also an array of graduate students, post-docs, and interns, as well as members of the Biotech and Infotech workforce. Within the 0-30 year old corpus, the number of Blacks/African Americans falls precipitously. Interestingly, however, the only other significant local minority, Hispanics is particularly strong in the 20-29 year old grouping of university-affiliated groups (undergraduates and graduate students). Suggested by this is that Cambridge and area universities and commercial activities have a significant impact on the ways in which our City demographics play out. Age variables across our neighborhoods are particularly striking, and we will take up this demographic first. Our various university campuses feature prominently in this.  In the above graph, we get a pretty clear sense of how basic factors such as age vary across our different neighborhoods, with our university campuses factoring significantly. The majority of MIT's campus housing is in Area 2, so it is not surprising to see that this neighborhood has virtually no seniors or children under 5 years of age. The specific data are shown below:  YOUNG CHILDREN (under 5): The numbers are pretty low in most neighborhoods, especially MIT, Riverside and Baldwin with university housing, but also the Alewife-centered Cambridge Highlands. The largest numbers of young children are found in The Port, Avon Hill, West Cambridge, and Strawberry Hill. YOUNG ADULTS (18-24 year olds): Undergraduate and younger graduate student numbers are especially high around MIT. Harvard's student housing (both residence halls and dorms), on the other hand, are situated in Riverside, Baldwin, and Mid-Cambridge. Lesley university dorms are located in two neighborhoods, Baldwin and within their new Harvard Square campus, which is counted as part of Avon Hill (Neighborhood 9) by the City for this calculation. YOUNG CAREER (25-34 years olds): The 25-34 year old cohort, which includes both graduate students, post-docs, and interns at our various local area universities and hospitals, as well as young professionals in our still thriving Biotech industry, are most heavily focused in East Cambridge, and to some extent across out other neighborhoods, with the exception of West Cambridge. The latter is likely because property values have remained sizably higher here. SENIORS (65+): The neighborhood with our largest number of seniors (people 65 and over) is West Cambridge which houses double the percentage of seniors in other neighborhoods such as East Cambridge, Wellington-Harrington, the Port, Cambridgeport, Riverside, Baldwin, and Avon Hill. As we will see below, West Cambridge also is our whitest neighborhood (by far), consistent with the fact that many were able to buy homes here at a time when the market prices were low (during rent-control or soon after it ended in 1995), and/or were part of the generation that emerged before professional schools began redressing the lack of minority representation in its student body. If West Cambridge has also been especially vocal about the street direction modifications and other changes that accompanied the incorporation of bike lanes, it is likely in part because many are seniors who are car-dependent and live far from public transportation. LOCAL POLITICS, AGE, AND SINGLE-FAMILY HOME OWNERSHIP: It is not surprising that in the 2023 City Council election, candidate Joan Pickett won her seat in large part with support from the West Cambridge neighborhood area, in addition to her own neighborhood of Mid-Cambridge. It is also not surprising that Council candidates most closely aligned with the bicycling alliance did the best in places like MIT, East Cambridge, and Wellington-Harrington where 18-34 year old residents are most numerous. Note that in this same 2023 election, none of the successful candidate owned single-family homes. And, in the prior one, the sole single-family home owner was Quinton Zondervan. With the replacement of Joan Pickett as Councillor, after the latter's death, by Cathie Zusy, she became the only Councillor to be a single-family home owner. In short, despite the fact that 9.3% of our units comprise single-family homes, these interests appear not to have been a major factor in our last election. The next two graphs address race and ethnicity alongside age in our 13 neighbors: Race, Ethnicity And Age Differences across our Neighborhoods WHITES: Here we note not only the predominance of Whites across our various neighborhoods, but especially n West Cambridge where Cambridge's oldest population is also located, and the fewest in East Cambridge, which also has a large 25-34 year old population as well as a sizable Asian/Pacific one, reflecting the important impact here of our Biotech industry and proximity to MIT. BLACKS The Port (Neighborhood 4) is where the largest numbers of our African diaspora communities have their homes. North Cambridge and Strawberry Hill where several of our public housing developments are located. ASIANS & PACIFIC ISLANDERS: This group is a growing demographic here in both our universities and Biotech industry. Not surprisingly, the neighborhoods of MIT, Alewife (Cambridge Highlands), and East Cambridge are particular standout neighborhoods for our Asian population. The fewest numbers are in West Cambridge, where our largest number of older residents and fewer homes have come up for sale in recent years. HISPANICS: This diverse group is relatively broadly found across our various neighborhoods, with Avon Hill, East Cambridge, and Strawberry Hill housing more of our non-white Spanish speaking population. MIXED/OTHER: These residents are quite broadly dispersed across our various neighborhoods, with Cambridge Highlands having the fewest in this category.  Here is another visualization of the same data, highlighting the results more clearly by neighborhood grouping. Again the predominant White cohort across our various neighborhoods is clearly evident, with West Cambridge housing the largest percentage, consistent with the increased number of seniors among this cohort. East Cambridge has the smallest percentage of Whites which may complement the recent addition of the Biotech and Infotech industry here.  Issues around displacement and gentrification are critical to understanding the dynamics behind racial and ethnic change in Cambridge. The City lost sizable numbers of its African American population with the end of rent control. So too with the new Biotech era and the arrival of sizable numbers of wealthier younger workers assuming positions in this industry as well as allied fields of Information-Technology and Software design we are see important demographic shifts in neighborhoods consistent with gentrification.The 2023 CDD report offers sizable evidence of this as we can see in the two charts above from this report.  Between 1999 and 2021, family poverty rate went down pretty much all over Cambridge with the greatest decreases in MIT (-66%), West Cambridge (-72.4%), Strawberry Hill (117.9%), and North Cambridge (-160.5%). The fewest changes in poverty occurred in Cambridge Highlands (0%), and East Cambridge, where poverty decreased 7.1%. This can likely be accounted for by a combination of factors from state and federal funding, plus changing demographics.. Riverside (-34.7%) and the Port (-42.1%) also saw notable decreases, with gentrification probably factoring into this. The Port remains the neighborhood with a poverty grouping at 17.8% in 2021. West Cambridge remains the community with the fewest residents in poverty (0.8%), but Cambridge Highlands (2.6%), Mid-Cambridge (2.6%), Baldwin-Agassiz (3.6%) and East Cambridge at 4.9% are close runners-up. As to persons in poverty, the City of Cambridge itself has a poverty rate of 12.3% with a net change of 9.7% between 1999 and 2021.The lowest percentage is West Cambridge at 3.2%, down 40.7% between 1999 and 2021. The highest rate are MIT at 18.6% (down 53.8%), Riverside (17.8% which increased 5.9% between 1999 and 2021) and the Port (at 15.4% down 42.3% between 1999 and 2021). Neighborhood Locations of Partially or Fully-Funded Public HousingAnother factor we must take into account are the locations across the city of our various partially-, or fully-funded-public housing, developments, because these units and their residents clearly impact racial, ethnic and demographic factors in the U.S. Census reports, as much as our universities .  Map source from CDD and Marc Levy, Cambridge Day 9.29.2018 enhance here with rough neighborhood boundaries. As we look at the Census Data on specific neighborhoods, it is clear that certain neighborhoods are also impacted by the number of public funded housing developments that are hosted in these communities. Some of the earliest of these were set up in the 1950s with Federal funds as part of a broader effort to convert former now empty factory areas into more usable and viable spaces. Cambridgeport, the Port, and Wellington-Harrington (Inman Square) featured prominently in these efforts, as did Riverside, North Cambridge, parts of Neighborhood 9 (Avon Hill) and Strawberry Hill. In 2025, the Baldwin area is expected to build several large developments of this sort as well. Those neighborhoods that to date have advanced relatively few of these are West Cambridge and Mid-Cambridge, but for different reasons, although both share the reality that in the early twentieth century, neither had large, vacant factory spaces that would have been viable for Federal funding. Moreover, West Cambridge properties have remained among the most expensive in the City, so neither public housing developers nor the City have been able to afford the prices required to acquire large properties and build here. An additional factor is that properties in West Cambridge do not turn over very often (possibly due to the advanced age of the area’s population), and when they have, they have been acquired for non-profit use such as by the Lincoln Institute or Lesley University. Another result of the dispersal of public housing developments in various parts of the City, is that these have sometimes led to separate, in some ways segregated communities. Once one is in a housing unit, one can apply to move to another city housing site, so over time, different ethnic and racial groupings have prioritized particular public housing developments in the city. This in turn has led to the unfortunate result that Cambridge was identified in a January 5, 2025 Boston Globe article by James Vaznis as fostering a segregated school system. The article is titled "Cambridge tried to get better racial and economic diversity among students. Now it has one of the most segregated schools in the state." The factors behind this unfortunate situation are many, including the choice by some minority parents to have their children attend schools closer to home, even if the schools do not have the same academic ranking or are seen as less successful than other schools outside their neighborhoods in the City, even though all parents can apply to have their children attend any Cambridge public schools. Some of these issues are framed even earlier with the preference ratios for individuals and families applying for Cambridge publicly-funded, or partially public-funded, housing. In addition to lower incomes, priorities are given to minorities and single parents with young children which makes good sense, although recently the City decided that in addition to the c.3,700 Cambridge residents or workers given priority for this housing, successful applicants can come from other areas in the state or around the country. Again, this may be positive, and certainly the cause is a good one, and the new availability of universal Pre-K citywide hopefully will have important long-term impacts. However, given the market forces and gentrification in play in our housing situation, this also means that some of our long-term minority and lower income residents are being forced to leave the City. That is where the issues around our growing gentrification problem emerge. Stated another way, the problem we are trying to solve is being created (and or countered by other actions we are taking with respect to housing. and the types of new housing. Gentrification
GENTRIFICATION AND UP-ZONING ISSUESThe parts of the City facing gentrification forces most severely, through demolitions, renovations, additions to buildings and/or sales to wealthier owners in our once poorer neighborhoods. In the maps below, it is important to note the size and value-distribution of homes across the City. This chart offers clues as to where the demolitions most likely are to occur to build new and larger housing. If, as proposed, only 5,000 SF larger lots will be considered for the larger developments (6 stories or more), you can see in the 5,000-5,999, 6,000-6,999, and 7,000-7,999 areas that these are most likely to have an outsize impact on Cambridge Highlands, North Cambridge, Strawberry Hill, Riverside, Cambridgeport, the Port, Inman Square and East Cambridge. We have learned of one Cambridge developer and multiple property owner who has sought to buy as many of the large residential properties as he can in order to profit from the new up-zoning. In our up-zoning plans, however, we have made no effort to protect those forced out of their homes through lease terminations or evictions. We have provided no means for them to return to the City, even if they are long-time residents. The maps below were created using AI to mine the City's online databases, looking specifically at three-family properties, especially on larger lot sizes. These images also address issues of financial cost, by differentially color-coding those of higher and lower value. To"pencil things out", developers and investors look at the bottom line when acquiring such properties. Much like the data on gentrification in the CDD 2023 report, these maps show greatest potential risk for current housing to be demolished by investors and developers particularly in areas such as North Cambridge, Strawberry Hill, Cambridgeport, the Port, Inman Square and East Cambridge (for 4000-6,900 SF properties). We have very few properties available in the 7,000-7,999 SF range, but here too, North Cambridge, East Cambridge and the Port appear most likely to be hit. In the 4,000-5,999 SF range parts of West Cambridge closer to Fresh Pond, Huron, and Coolidge Hill may be likely targets.  Who Owns a Property Matters: Residential Exemptions=Owner OccupiedOne can see some of the impacts of change as well, by looking at property ownership in the City. Among other things, the two maps show how many of Cambridge's condos are NOT owner occupied, how many likely are investment properties, and why many of these are charging higher rents to recoup the investor costs. Note: Residential exemptions refers to the the properties of those residents who live in their own homes.  BLUE refers to those condo properties that are owner occupied. RED refers to those condos that are NOT owner occupied. These and the previous grouping maps housing maps were created by mining the city online databases using AI. Not only does this impact rental pricing (and housing costs more generally), but it also shows how much non-owner occupied properties are found across the City. Here we are looking at condos, but much the same is happening with single-family homes and duplexes. This also should be factored in as we consider age, race, and ethnicity demographics and zoning. In part to address gentrification concerns, and related impacts, Denver, Colorado recently put a halt to their dense development plans in certain neighborhoods with largely minority populations: HERE Color MattersIn the above maps, sharp color contrasts were selected to be able to see the differences between owner occupied and non-owner occupied condos in Cambridge. Blue in this contexts was framed as a positive factor (calm), in contrast to the choice of red (suggesting danger) for the units that were not occupied by their owners and instead likely have increased rents because they are investor properties. Color serves in other ways to signal various ideas in maps. Note that the map below created by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies uses brown tones to signal increasing larger percentages of public funded or partially public-funded housing projects. It is not hard to see an implied racial factor in play. In some contexts, this is consistent some of the color coding used in reporting US Census data for Cambridge elsewhere as well.  Sometimes color choices in mapping can have even more symbolic impacts, as in the first two maps below. The originals feature the predominantly white neighborhoods of Cambridge in bright red, referring here too, to ideas of danger. The two smaller red and blue maps are from the site Statistical Atlas and specifically the section on Cambridge and issues of Race and Ethnicity. It is hard to get beyond the very "redness" of the demographic attribution in these two maps, and for this reason, we chose to modify the colors towards purple to allow for a closer, and hopefully less-biased perspective. Mapping and Framing Whites One thing that is clear here, particularly in the Block Group perspective on the right which provides much more insight than a somewhat arbitrary neighborhood perspective is 1) Cambridge has a majority white population, but we also have significant diversity in most parts of the City. Looking at the Block group on the right, we get a sense of the impacts of corridors (Mass. Ave.) particularly from Harvard Square north to the Arlington border on demographics. But we note as well across different parts of the City, that there is considerable variety in play. What is also clear is that simplistic studies such as this that don't take into account either our increasing Asian populations or the diverse groups even within a single population such as people of African descent, or Hispanic groups, miss key elements of our demographic richness - including, for example, factors of age. The use of color to press the point on a particular issue including housing is also in play by City staff in advocating for a particular goal or agenda. One can see this clearly both on the zoning map on the lower left, and in the zoning chart on the lower right. The intent is clear, but as with the above discussion of gentrification and school segregation, will the results be what they and our residents want to see happening?  The imagery in the report advanced by CDD to the Planning Board in the January 4, 2022 report included the map above where similar color coding is employed. In the end, we applaud the City for beginning this important work of creating both an important and very functional GIS system, and initiating the hard work of analyzing and evaluating our different neighborhoods. At the same time, hoping time and outside consultations will also be done in looking more deeply at some of the historical, sociological, cultural, economic, and other factors in play in the shaping of our neighborhoods as well as the city as a whole.
Photographs and text with permission by the resident who has forwarded them to City Council. Three illustrations from Cambridge that document how the residential upzoning as proposed would unlikely increase affordability and would lead to significant negative impacts for neighbors and abutters with no rights to do anything.
Photo #1: As one example, just last week I attended a special hearing for a house across the street. With the current zoning, the new owners were able to quickly get a building permit for a total gut renovation and addition of a finished basement unit. Basements are not included in square footage. They then applied for a special permit with abutter neighbor review and very detailed drawings to add dormers, decks, and extend the footprint in modest ways to make the most of the house and keep the parking space. Even though this is a significant change, it got approved smoothly with neighbors in agreement. The point is that alot of building is already happening and neighbor/abutter review is essential for positive neighborhood relations. In contrast, if the upzoning passes, this one small example would be a disaster for the next door neighbors. The windows you see beyond are first floor and second floor condo units with those windows as the primary natural light (since they share a solid interior wall on the other side). Also with a 5’ setback, those trees on the left would likely be lost. Even if just 3 stories, you can see the impact. Photo #2: Another example is the space between the back of our two family with multifamily housing lots that are over 5,000 sf. This example is a “shared" open space for all neighbors on two side streets and many of these are already 2-3 families or 2-3 unit condos. Infilling these sites to a 5’ setback and even just to the peak of these existing roofs (existing is actually 2-story plus roof with dormers) has a significant negative effect on abutters and neighbor relations. We are concerned that if the upzoning passes, we will lose this view completely with a 3-6 storey building extending to the right past those garage doors to a 5’ setback and mature trees would be lost. In the current proposal, we would have no rights to do anything. This point is not just about our personal situation, but rather it could happen to anyone on these streets with the proposed upzoning. Photo #3: Lastly, I do see significantly more teardowns this year across Cambridge (this one a few days ago at Concord and Corp Burns as well as just saw Concord and Blanchard), so alot is already happening and great success in affordable housing is already being planned and built without this up-zoning change. If the up-zoning as proposed passes it is "one way" to speeding up market rate residential development with no left turn and no turning back.  The following are comments by a Cambridge resident and Harvard GSD-trained architect who also is founder of an important Boston area design firm (shared with the author's permission).
On how the Upzoning proposal is progressing: 5,000 sq. ft. lots aren't all that big, especially for an 8-story building. I think the main thing that seems odd is that it will result in a kind of randomness of development.
I am not an expert in urban design, but there are real social and ethical implications of having different building heights associated with 100% affordability. Mixed-income housing seems like an ideal outcome. Having zones with mixed-income six-story housing that is more urban in character, i.e., around all the squares, could result in vibrant communities.
 At the January 8, 2024 meeting of the Neighborhood and Long-Term Planning Committee chaired by Councillor Cathie Zusy, all three of the urban planning experts focused on the need for Cambridge to move to Form-Built Planning. What is Form-Based Zoning: Form-based planning comprises a variety of development regulations that emerged at the end of the 20th century as an alternative to the Euclidean zoning codes. Cambridge currently follows the latter model. With form-based standards, members of the community, or different neighborhoods in the community, are brought together to help decide what they would like their community to look like in the future: the types of buildings, amenities, and infrastructure. Plans are drawn up complete with imagery of allowable building types and amenities (such as parks, grocery stores, and other factors of importance). Form-based zoning prioritizes the physical appearance and design of buildings, focusing on how they relate to the street and public spaces, rather than strictly separating land uses, with key guidelines including: regulating building placement, facade design, street-level activity, pedestrian-friendly sidewalks, and clear visual cues for the desired neighborhood character, all presented with readily understandable graphics and clear language to promote community engagement and predictable development outcomes. Cities like Somerville and Portland Maine have already turned to form-based plans and a key question is why Cambridge so far has chosen not to. This is an especially important question because we spent so much time and money on our Envision Report, but did not take the final step to encode the desirable outcomes in that plan into actual zoning code and criteria. For this reason we have a number of criteria in the current upzoning proposal that directly contradict core criteria, values, and desired outcomes in the Envision report itself. Environment and climate change, as well as neighborhood and demographic concerns, transit considerations are key among them.  The City's GIS system is now complete, a first-step to undertaking the community meetings to undertake Form-Based zoning plans. The city staff and consultants who built our City GIS system did an excellent job. Their site allows you to look up every property in the city by street address and view it in different formats. You can find the searchable city GIS website HERE We also must consider some related factors around minority impacts of gentrification. One of the things that good form-based planning can take into account is important factors such as minority residences and nearby properties, as well as environmental and other factors allowing greater heights and densities primarily in those areas where these individuals and related factors are less likely to have an impact. None of this is considered in the current Cambridge up-zoning proposal. Form-Based Planning in Cambridge has long been part of the Cambridge planning considerations, going back at least to the Fall of 2021 prior to the January 4, 2022 Community Development Department Report to the Planning Board of Cambridge Single-Family, Two-Family and Multi-Family Zoning Districts: PDF HERE. Citizen Petitions to End Exclusionary Zoning: Donovan & Ronayne The image at the top of this page is taken from that report, and appears to have been in response to the first of two citizens petitions to end exclusionary zoning in Cambridge known as the Advancing Housing Affordability Petition, otherwise known as the Donovan Petition, named after Francis ("Fritz") Donovan, consistent with city tradition to name a petition after the petition's first official signer. Fritz Donovan, the former President of the Mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Association is one of the founders of the Cambridge Citizens Coalition, and still is an active member of our advisory team. One can read the Donovan Petition HERE. Cambridge Citizen Coalition members and others had worked over the spring and summer of 2021 to research and write the petition and had submitted it on September 1 with the hope of passage in January or February of 2022. A key aim of the Donovan petition was to preserve as much as possible the historic architecture of the city and the distinct qualities of our various neighborhoods, while providing guidelines for additions and modifications toward the backs of these structures that would facilitate the additions to increase the number of units in each. In the Apr 8, 2024 citizens up-zoning petition to end exclusive single family zoning districts in Cambridge submitted by Joe Ronayne, and others, what stands out today, is not only that City Council and the Planning Board refused to seriously address this document, but also that, incorporated among its pages, was the document positioned at the top of this report. The Ronayne Petition proposed a means for increased density - HERE - also was a citizen led effort to allow multi-family housing in every neighborhood. . Both to these proposals were turned down by City Council. The City's Community Development Department (CDD) Up-zoning Plans as Presented to the Planning Board January 4, 2022Instead of following the guidelines advanced in both the citizen-led Donovan and Ronayne petitions, Cambridge's CDD presented to the Planning Board a January 4 2022 report that included the chart at the top of the page of various paths to move forward. They also are considering different changes to base zoning (and related maps) and are suggesting to study how zoning works in various neighborhoods. They consider increasing FAR (density - how many people can live within a given building). They consider changing set back and open space requirements to allow larger buildings, and they are looking at how larger lots (especially in A-1 and A-2 districts can be subdivided. In short they also want to see us, rather than maintaining neighborhood uniqueness to have "equitable treatment" everywhere, though acknowledging that there will be different market conditions and physical realities that will have an impact as well. What we see here most significantly on the top line of this chart is a desire to change all districts to the criteria of the most dense districts of the city (C or C-1). We note in turn on the bottom line, that doing a large scale study and redrawing boundaries would take time. Also of concern is the issue of "Preservation" versus adding "New housing opportunities" Note that none of the "preservation" versus " new housing opportunities" issues are addressed in the current up-zoning proposal (although it is in the rezoning of other cities. Note too, that no where in this January 4, 2022 CDD report is there any desire or suggestion to raise heights everywhere as of right and without design oversight to 4, 6 or 9 stories.  In this same January 4, 2022 report, CDD proposed rezoning all city districts to a single district city-wide. CDD here suggests choosing the densest of our city districts (C-1) as that standard that could be sought for the rest of the city. See chart below. Other proposals that could be done but would take more time and expense including a broader study of conditions and in each district and adjusting them to meet desired outcomes. Included as well was a possible plan to study and redraw all the residential zoning districts and overhaul development standards citywide, redrawing the zoning maps along with this.  Coloring and Bias in Content SelectionThe approach advanced by CDD to the Planning Board in the January 4 2022 report included the chart at the top of the page of various paths to move forward. This chart reads: CDD HAS RANKED THE MOST ACTIONABLE CHOICES TO ELIMINATE SINGLE AND TWO FAMILY ONLY ZONES LEASE EXPENSIVE (time, resources): Study Existing conditions: lot area, unit density, FAR, height; use Cambridge Assessing Dept., GIS MEDIUM-LOW (time, resources): Study Development trends/changes; Resources: Building Permits, Census Data. MEDIUM-LOW (time, resources): STUDY Existing setbacks & open space; Resources: Cambridge GIS. MEDIUM-HIGH (Time, resources): Study Impacts on citywide planning goals (Envision Cambridge); Resources: Evaluation of livability, diversity & equity, economic opportunity, sustainability & resilience, community health & wellbeing, learning. MEDIUM HIGH (time, resources) Study Economic effects of zoning changes; Resources: Market data, Development Economics, Consultant HIGH (Time, Resources): Study Alternative zoning approaches (e.g. affordability, form-based standards. Resources: Consultant support, legal review, extensive discussion. The map of city zoning districts provided in the CDD report, also makes it very clear by its selection of colors for each district that C-1 and C were the positive choices (they are indicated by BRIGHT BLUE, AQUA BLUE, and GREEN), while B and A-1 are presented negatively (shown here as ORANGE and RED). Nothing in their assessment is indicated as to other criteria worth considering like the soundness and historic importance of the architecture in each area or the size, number and importance of associated mature trees and green spaces, or the availability and proximity of near by parks. In short, the only issue that seems to have been in play was housing unit numbers and ease of the process to get to that end. If we look at the above chart, we see a similar code in place with the color GREEN being used to highlight the "Low Degree of Difficulty" text "Rezone all of A-1, A-2, B to another existing district (e.g., C, C-1), whereas ORANGE is used to address the "Medium Degree of Difficulty texts to "Study conditions, adjust district designations and development standards" as well as to do a "Complete overhaul of current development standards (Citywide). The color RED in turn was used to designate the item of "High Degree of Difficulty" namely to "Redraw zoning map and overhaul development standards." The color choices suggest a decided bias at the outset on the part of CDD staff with certain neighborhoods of the city (largely West Cambridge) and the need to do tasks considered higher difficulty of work (in terms of time and expense). However it seems as if the City is well on its way to advancing the work on Form-Based zoning, as can be seen in their 2023 guide to Cambridge neighborhoods discussed in a follow up blog post. RECOGNIZING BIAS IN THE TYPES OF HOUSING SHOWNThis perception of bias on the part of CDD and the City to certain neighborhoods and certain groups of residents continues in the types of homes selected to showcase in the CDD report in their included examples of residences and lots for most of the districts, but for some reason chose to leave out A-1 (the larger property zoning of West Cambridge from this analytic).  Whereas ALL districts of the city from East Cambridge to West Cambridge and from Riverside to North Cambridge with Mid-Cambridge in between, have examples of stunning historic single family homes or duplexes that are important to the identity, legacy and vitality of these neighborhoods, CDD staff chose to include only what appear to be multi-family properties. They also chose to leave out examples of the many multi-family homes that exist in A and A-1 districts already. One has to wonder why.  The parts of the city facing gentrification forces most severely, through the demolishment or renovations plus frequent additions to buildings and sales to wealthier owners most frequently is happening today in our once poorer neighborhoods - North Cambridge, Strawberry Hill, Riverside, Cambridgeport, Inman Square, and East Cambridge. Discussions Around Form-Based Zoning in CambridgeIn the entire 35 page report of the CDD to the Planning Board on January 4, 2022 the term "Form-Based" appears only twice, namely in the two graphics (red and white) white below. With so many other cities, including Somerville and Portland, Maine undertaking this critical work to rethink zoning using the best option used today, why has Cambridge CDD not gone forward to under take this process here.  Why did CDD not allow the excellent design firm UTILE and Tim Love complete the work of our Envision Plan by putting into place the necessary zoning code changes, mapping and form-based standards that a plan like Envision would need in place going forward. The Envision Report includes 6 different categories of factors important to our planning: Climate and Environment, Community Well Being, Economy, Housing, Mobility, Urban Form. Color coding here too seems to be important. Mobility (specifically and almost exclusively bicycle lanes) was given top RED alert priority. Housing - specifically and almost exclusively meaning facilitating developers to build new housing, rather than buy properties to keep them affordable, or building city-owned apartments, or building out on city-owned or other vacant lots - is given an ORANGE energy priority. Urban Form and Community Well-being are given the calm and advancing Green color (implying everything is fine). Climate received the color Purple (creativity, independence, wisdom, pride), and the Economy receives a Grey color (age, neutrality, depression). Again one must be careful NOT to overdo color symbolism. More to the point, the current city upzoning proposal will have proven harmful impacts on several of the other elements of our Envision plan: the environment (through the removal of mature trees & green spaces and the demolishment of existing homes); mobility (by increasing the number of people and cars on the streets), community well being (by lack of care for the preservation of existing homes and neighborhoods, and the lack of addressing needed amenities and infrastructure, as well as likely decreases in minority residents), and economy (because the increasing property values will mean that many people now living here will no longer be able to afford to because their home taxes and rents will increase.  In the proposed changed by CDD in the January 4, 2022 report we see factors such as: 1) allowing multifamily dwellings citywide, removing minimum parking numbers. But they also have questions about allowing greater density (more people) within a property, the subdividing of larger lots. There is also divergent views on allowing multiple primary buildings on each lot (as opposed to a main building and an auxiliary unit). They bring into play whether they should maintain current height, open space and set back requirements, as well as the what should be done with non-conforming buildings and if they should be different from new building requirements.  To conclude: in the January 4, 2022 report, there are indications that CDD seems amenable to maintaining current heights and open space in these districts. although if the plan was to go to C-1 districts citywide that certainly would decrease setbacks and open spaces. This is also true if they were to, as proposed here, "Allow subdivision and more compact development." Another key point in the chart below is allowing greater flexibility for older non-conforming buildings. Most likely this means in proposed modifications to existing plans in terms of the need to bring projects before the BZA or other judiciary body. It is not clear if CDD is planning to to move forward with a form-based zoning model but we hope to learn more in the months ahead. In the meantime we see evidence that they are seeking neighborhood specific input on possible zoning changes that indicate some level of planning. 
 Three local Urban Planners were invited to address the proposed Cambridge City Council Up-zoning at the Neighborhood and Long-Term Planning Committee meeting organized and chaired by Councillor Cathie Zusy on January 8, 2025. This very insightful meeting featured three local urban planners. The power points of each are shown below along with a brief overview of the points raised by each of these professionals. After the presentations of our city councillors, which included all City Councillors with the exception of Marc McGovern, were invited to ask questions of the experts. This was an extraordinary forum and one that should have taken place in May or June of 2024 when the current up-zoning petition was being drafted, largely with the input of local developers. Residents, Councillors, and city staff alike should have been hearing from the experts far earlier, not just now, a few weeks before the end of this process. We owe Councillor Zusy a huge debt for organizing and hosting this event. The powerpoint images of each of the speakers are provided beneath each. Update1: View the complete video of the 1:00 PM Committee meeting with the Urban Planners: HERE Update 2: see comments at the end. The conclusions of the experts are that: 1. Cambridge Envision Plan is a very good one, and was created with a lot of citizen buy-in. They should follow this model and also provide visualizations of what things will look like in different areas and work to get citizen buy in. 2. Cambridge should move to form-based zoning - like Somerville, Portland ME, Miami, Denver, and other areas, however this takes time. 3. Resident engagement and buy-in are important. The first speaker was Prof. Chris Zegras of MIT. He spoke of the need for a rational plan - framed as a wheel with different needs all in play. He noted that the current proposal will not lead to meeting Envision planning goals.He noted that form-based zoning aims for diversity within a zoning context. He asks:
 The next speaker was Prof. Jeff Levine, who is also on the urban planning faculty at MIT and has been involved in municipal planning as part of his career - Portland Maine, Somerville, Brookline. He observed that
The final speaker was urban planning professor Maurice Cox of Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He had previously been both a councillor and a mayor and had also developed zoning in different contexts. He supports:
QUESTION AND ANSWER WITH THE COUNCILLORS PRESENTCouncillor Burham Azeem spoke to political constraints. Implied by this for him is a political move not a planning decision, since nearly everyone in Cambridge supports allowing multi-family housing citywide, but simply would like a viable plan rather than leaving it to market forces.
Councillor Wilson: Do we slow down or just do it and how do we evaluate.
Note 1: the three urban planning experts all suggested that whatever would be done would see relatively slow results. This is not what we learned from a Cambridge real estate agent and developer who told us that:
1. Zoning enables developers to maximize within the zoning. 2.. "If this plan passes, we will see almost instantaneous tear-downs because of how the numbers work. 3. His key worries included heat island impacts, green space, and trees. See his recent blogpost HERE Update 1: Despite a housing shortage, Denver, Colorado has now put the breaks on dense development housing reform because of its negative impacts in minority neighborhoods. Read more: HERE. The areas most likely impacted in our city, if the up-zoning plans go forward, are our once lower-income and minority neighborhoods. Update 2: Individuals who watched the partial video of the Neighborhood and Long-Term Planning Committee meeting missed the first 75 minutes of the presentations and discussion of the three experts because of audio problems in the city system. During the presentations all three panelist experts wanted a more deliberate plan. In the Q&A a lengthy statement was presented by Councillor Azeem that the city had worked for years to get something passed and this was the first chance to do it. This was also missing from the partial video that many people saw. Following that comment, Prof. Cox altered the approach he had urged the city to take during his prepared delivery, suggesting instead that the city go ahead with the plan and then modify it later. The other experts did not support this idea, one noting that if this plan passes it would be too late to make modifications. Councillor Zusy observed the same thing, drawing on the perspective of the city solicitor. During the Q&A there also was discussion of how long a Form-Based plan would take to create and implement, implying that this would slow things down too much. However, it is clear that Cambridge has already started the work on a Form-Based zoning, and it appears that they began this work soon after CCC submitted the Donovan petition to end exclusionary zoning in Cambridge in September 2021. CDD reported on the proposal at a Planning Board meeting in early October 2021. The results of this City initiative include the citywide GIS work, completed in 2022, a CDD report on Cambridge neighborhoods published in 2023, and the undertaking of several detailed studies of local neighborhoods in 2024 and 2025. Clearly the City is on track to complete this important planning work by 2026 or 2027. See our more recent blog post on this topic: HERE  The Cambridge Community Development Department (CDD) recently initiated the Cambridge Neighborhood Planning Initiative (NPI). The city’s first neighborhood “Action Plan” work is beginning now in Mid-Cambridge, Neighborhood Nine, and Wellington-Harrington. The aim of this ultimately citywide effort is one that “gives everyone in Cambridge access to local planning! Together, we will work to improve the places and activities that are central to your daily life.The NPI offers ways to share your ideas, join with your neighbors, and connect with City staff. NPI activities focus on four community objectives.” The current citywide up-zoning petition being rushed by our city councillors toward ordination, significantly undermines this effort by removing future design oversight and both present and future planning goals from consideration in our neighborhoods, leaving critical elements of change up to investors and developers. Planning Board Chair, Mary Flynn, noted that the Planning Board have never received so many letters on an issue before the Planning Board as they had received on this up-zoning petition. Read below what several of our residents have had to say about the up-zoning plan (just a few of the many extraordinary ones that have been written: “A Letter to City Council” (January 7, 2025) authored by systems engineer Young Kim, a resident of North Cambridge, who has also encouraged the city to establish an office of compliance.He writes: “I was concerned to hear the discussion at Monday’s City Council meeting regarding the MFH Zoning Petition. I have raised several times with the City that the discussions around the MFH zoning amendments lacked clear goals and measurable metrics for success. Without these, it is difficult to assess if the petitions will effectively address housing needs. I urge you to consider recommending that the City Council refiles the MFH petitions with clearly defined goals, measurable metrics, and supporting analysis and impact studies. Additionally, I want to highlight the fundamental issue with the data presented by the CDD staff.The Planning Board meeting was rushed before Housing Projections could be included, yet they were available for the Ordinance Committee the following week. Basing their analysis on 2023 housing data when other documents showed 2024 data was available; and excluding "Affordable housing developed under the Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO) and/or funded by the Affordable Housing Trust", the CDD projected only 70 new units by 2030 under current zoning, far below the Envision Housing goal of 12,500 new units. However, new data released in December 2024 shows that affordable housing stock has already increased by 340 units-almost five times CDD’s 2030 projection.” Moreover, as of June 2024, there were 58,170 housing units under construction or completed, a net increase of 637 units since 2023 —far surpassing aforementioned 70 new units under current zoning. Not only that, the City had released Housing Data & Facts in April 2024 that with over 750 units currently under construction and nearly 4,000 units permitted, the city’s housing pipeline appears to be on track to meet future demand." Local Landscape Architect, Carolyn Shipley, posted the following text “City Council Promotes Global Warming and Flooding” on the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Listserve, January 7, 2025.She writes: The Cambridge City Council has proposed several housing plans that will cause environmental damage and add significantly to air pollution, hotter temperatures, and flooding, and other problems associated with global warming. An article in the Boston Globe Monday reported that the earth's thermometer has already passed the tipping point of an increase of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit of warming over preindustrial times. Perhaps none of the city councillors have much horticultural knowledge and don't understand that their plans to allow very tall and extremely tall buildings with very little green space, or open space, except a meager 10 feet* in front for some, will seriously reduce the city’s tree canopy. It is likely that many trees will be chopped down in order to erect these 6-story and 9-story buildings. *Note: that 10 ft. does not have to be green space. Besides, no tree that could help our environment could grow in such a narrow space. Mature trees clean the air we breathe. Mature trees contribute to lower temperatures because they provide shade that keeps the sun out of our houses and cools sidewalks and streets. Only mature trees that are about 20 years old provide the benefits necessary to combat global warming in Cambridge. The tall buildings being proposed in recent plans of the city council range from 6 stories tall to 9 stories tall or greater. The council's plans would allow contractors to build, build, build everywhere. (However, it has been mentioned that it probably won't happen in the more affluent sections of Cambridge.) Another environmental problem related to the reduction of the city's tree canopy is FLOODING. Tree roots and other vegetation absorb and hold rain water. Thus, trees prevent soil from eroding. In some sections of Cambridge soil erosion will increase the probability of flooding. Check the FEMA flood map for Cambridge. Is your neighborhood safe from flooding according to FEMA? Wind damage. Tall buildings not only create deep shade, but also create strong and dangerous winds. Trees cannot thrive in shade and strong winds. Any street trees planted by the city will suffer if tall buildings nearby create day-long deep shade and wind. Newly planted young trees will struggle and perhaps die.(Trees do not benefit the environment unless they are about 15 or 20 feet tall and wide.) What do the city councillors hope to gain by opening the door to developers? WE do, however, stand to GAIN a lot: GLOBAL WARMING – FLOODING. Shipley also notes that Cambridge is famous for its beautiful historical architecture. This poorly conceived proposal will probably cause the destruction of some attractive historical architecture and turn neighborhoods into a lot of 6-story vertical rectangles. (Many tourists come to Cambridge to see our historical architecture.) Another Cambridgeport resident, a transportation expert, posted this on his neighborhood Listserve in October 2024He writes: I took my…property, which is part of a three-lot subdivision that is 100 feet by 100 feet or 10,000 square feet. I used both front and rear setbacks of 15 feet to create an allowed building footprint of 7,000 square feet with 30% open space on the whole parcel. Six stories allowed means about 42,000 gross square feet. My three-decker is a 1,200 sq. ft footprint or 3,600 sq. ft for three floors. My ownership parcel is only about 2,400 s.f. The other two buildings on the site have about five units of about 5,000 s.f. altogether. Including my building, existing construction is about 8,500 s.f. So the new allowed building would be five times as dense (large) as exists on the site. I do not know how front setbacks are legally defined. Could front porches be cantilevered above the ground level 15-foot setback? How are basement apartments handled under the proposed zoning? If developers now have the potential for seven stories, that means a factor of six increase over existing density. Cambridge is often described as a very dense city. Why are we discussing new zoning that would increase densities by at least a factor of five? The eight units on site today have about five cars -- four parked on-street and one off-street. If new development generates proportionally the same number of cars, the allowance for no-minimum-parking means twenty-five to thirty new cars, which is close to six times more cars parked on-street compared to today, simply as the additional cars from just my 10,000 s.f. subdivision. On Sundays when everyone is at home, the street is parked full. Where do all the extra cars go? We appear to have a zoning proposal with the potential for quintupling the densities on individual residential lots, with six times the number of parked cars added to on-street parking. The proposed increases in site densities and on-street parking seem highly excessive. *Important editorial note: in the current ordinance text under consideration, the setback numbers are different, potentially making the differences even larger. These are now set at only 5’ at the sides and rear and 10’ at the front. Neighborhood Nine Resident, Mary Jane Kornacki, addressed City Council on January 6 with this text that speaks to issues around amendments.She writes: A policy order on the agenda asks the city manager to ask city departments for language for further amendments to the upzoning petition. Language for amendments was the topic of a request by the city council on December 23rd. Now another request. I suggest that all this amending in the time remaining before mid-February deadline to approve a zoning change does not allow sufficient time for two important actions:
It’s one thing to be “bold and innovative”. It is another to be smart, judicious, data driven and citizen responsive. Bold and innovated without data or broad public support sounds like a recipe for another disaster. I refer to Sunday’s Boston Globe headline regarding segregation in Cambridge schools. A bold idea, a failed policy. We have to do better on housing. There are thousands more statements like these that have been written in conjunction with this up-zoning proposal.  “You have created a situation where ordinary Americans aren’t bidding against other families, they’re bidding against the billionaires of America for these houses. And it’s driving up rents and it’s driving up home prices.” – U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (Oregon)* The 4-part image shown above features the covers of four remarkable recent studies on the hijacking of housing by greedy corporations and individuals seeking to profit from it. Canada, Australia, and the U.S. are all being hit hard. We posted earlier a blog on Crisis Capitalism and Housing. Read it HERE. Our new post looks at how this crisis was fostered and promoted in large partwith an aim to push local communities such as ours to remove core zoning and other guardrails that have helped to keep our historic more naturally affordable housing in place. We urge you to read all four of studies described here. The three books featured here are available at local Cambridge area bookstores - and we encourage people to shop locally! One can also find them at local libraries and at the links below from Amazon. Urban Planner, Patrick M. Condon's Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality and Urban Crisis is available HERE Economist Cameroon K. Murray's The Great Housing Hijack is available on Amazon: HERE Housing Expert, Carolyn Whitzman's Home Truths: Fixing Canada's Housing Crisis is available on Amazon HERE The important 2024 report: "Billionaire Blowback on Housing: How Concentrated Wealth Disrupts Housing Markets and Worsen the Housing Affordability Crisis" by Amee Chew, Chuck Collins, and Omar Ocampo is available for download as a PDF HERE The Executive Summary of "Billionaire Blowback on Housing" Report reads as follows :
This report also offers a list of things that local housing advocates should be doing instead:
A key system intervention is to expand the social housing sector: community-controlled or publicly owned housing that is outside the speculative market, such as quality public housing and other forms of nonprofit-owned housing. In our definition, social housing is:
Also see the CCC blog post with key sources “Housing Profits: Crisis Capitalism – the Cambridge Example” (12.9.2024) HERE This post addresses the risks of Disaster Capitalism in Housing (money made from misery) and provides insights from others working on this.
Other Sources to Explore on this Topic include the following: “Additional Building Won’t Make City Housing More Affordable Says Fed Study” Forbes (8.3.2018) HERE “Yimbys, Yombys, and California’s Housing Crisis” Fox and Hounds Daily (3.20.2019) HERE “Zoning Reform Isn’t a Silver Bullet for U.S. Housing" (Bloomberg News 1.31.2019) HERE *citation from "Billionaire Blowback"  Cambridge City Council: photograph by KyleKlein An overview of 2024, including City Council and School Committee decisions. 2024Here are some of the highlights: 2024 CAMBRIDGE AND ISSUES AROUND TRANSIT
2024 CAMBRIDGE AND THE ENVIRONMENT
2024 IN CAMBRIDGE FINANCIAL ISSUES
2024 IN CAMBRIDGE SCHOOLS
2024 IN CAMBRIDGE HOUSING (SEE ALSO Special Alert on Housing below)
SPECIAL ALERT ON HOUSING: The Citywide Upzoning (Redevelopment/ Urban Renewal) Plan: The City Council voted on December 23, 2024 City Council to move forward with the proposal for a citywide redevelopment plan in the form of radical upzoning to add more luxury (market rate) housing. The vote was 8-1 with Councillor Zusy the only vote not supporting this move. Neighborhood group leaders across the city have opposed this move that largely will benefit outside developers and investors. The plan itself was launched in June 2024 by Councillors Azeem, McGovern, Siddiqui, and Simmons.
IN CONCLUSION:
The Cambridge Citizens Coalition is proud to have been the first Cambridge civic group to submit a zoning petition to end single family exclusionary zoning in the city, the 2021 Advancing Housing Affordability Petition (also referred to as the Donovan Petition). Read the zoning petition language HERE. The removal of design oversight by the planning Board also led CCC to oppose the AHO (for partially public-funded housing) because the ordinance removed design oversight from our judiciary bodies along with legal rights from citizens. To this date no design guidelines have been submitted and approved by Council for the amended 2021 AHO. CCC remains opposed to the 2024-25 citywide luxury housing up-zoning not only because it lacks design guidelines and oversight, but also because removes legal rights from residents. This citywide redevelopment plan encourages demolitions, evictions, and lease terminations; it is harmful to the environment; it runs counter to our Envision plan, and; it will primarily benefit outside investors and developers. The local (area, and national) housing crisis around which this proposal has been framed, carries striking commonalities with situations of disaster capitalism, in which large investment groups have bought up large amounts of local housing, thereby increasing housing costs for renters and owners alike. This "crisis" has then been used to pressure local governments to remove long standing zoning guardrails and the legal rights of residents. Read more HERE. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In Memoriam: In 2024 CCC lost two brilliant allies and leaders: City Councillor Joan Pickett and CCC advisory group member, Lisa Dreier. Both women were models of strength, intelligence and humanity and both died way too young. They and their civic contributions will be greatly missed.  Lisa Dreier Joan Pickett
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