Housing Data Matters: Housing Permits, Starts, Sites, Units

Cambridge's housing data related to factors such as  housing starts, housing permits, neighborhood locations, differentials in the number of units, demolitions, costs and dates tell us a lot about what is happening in Cambridge, and what the near future might look like with or without changes in our zoning. This overview of Cambridge city housing trends analyzes this data and what they reveal about housing changes in the city.

The first of these graphs addresses the neighborhood breakdown for both new housing starts for multi-family housing and the percentage breakdown between single family home starts (in orange) and multifamily housing starts (in purple).

• The left graph (in purple) shows relative parity between the various neighborhoods in terms of multifamily housing starts in the Cambridge City database to date. We see that Cambridgeport, MIT, and Riverside, along with North Cambridge, have the highest percent of  multi-family units (reaching 85%) and with Cambridge Highlands and Strawberry hill, followed by West Cambridge being the lowest. We see here that all 13 neighborhoods have a sizable percentage of multi-family housing starts, even though some of those are likely in areas currently zoned for single family housing. These are also the parts of the city with the lowest rental housing costs, and appear to suggest that proximity to Kendall Square, and relatively lower costs of property are core factors. 
• On the right (in purple and orange) we see  the percentage of multifamily building permits versus single family building permits in the city's housing start database. Here we not only see a sizable number of single family homes among the group of housing starts across the various neighborhoods, with the greatest numbers in areas to the west of Mass Avenue, alongside Baldwin/Agassiz and East Cambridge. The number of the single family housing starts across the city likely reflects prevailing market forces and the far higher demand and prices of single family homes here as in other area cities.

These trends are also evident in the number of units being built across various A, B, C residential districts each of which are zoned differently with A largely zoned for single and two family homes, B to include larger multifamily homes, and C including the latter at greater scale and density.
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Our city's poorer and denser neighborhoods are already getting hardest hit by gentrifying impacts of new development, forcing out residents, and disrupting life in these neighborhoods as wealthier individuals and investors buy up properties, replace existing homes and add larger structural additions. One can see the ready impacts of this in the number of building permits pulled within each neighborhood as well as the number of new housing starts.  Increasingly larger one family homes (SFH) are replacing multi-family housing as the number one target of these changes. These changes have  a major impact on both neighboring property values (adding to the increased taxes that have to be paid) and often at the cost of trees, green spaces, and the environment more generally.  The data for the charts below are taken from related city databases, and these trends are likely to continue throughout much of the city with the proposed upzoning.
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In the graphs below, we see how this plays out across the various neighborhoods  specifically with one and two unit projects and the number of units in each. West Cambridge has the most 1 unit residential projects (SFH) in the works; North Cambridge and Neighborhood Nine lead for two unit structure (TFH), followed up by Cambridgeport and Mid-Cambridge.  
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BELOW: Housing Start Data by Neighborhoods and the Number of Units 

Down Sizing Trends 

ACROSS THE CITY: One thing is very clear in the data: Owners and Investors are primarily interested in downsizing e.g. decreasing the number of units on a given property. 

THESE GRAPHS REVEAL HOW GENTRIFICATION (DOWNSIZING) IMPACTS OUR HISTORICALLY POORER AND DENSER NEIGHBORHOODS ​

Building Permits are pulled for any number of reasons - from building renovations to repairs to new constructions. What the above graphs indicate is how relatively even these permits are distributed across the city, but with Cambridgeport, Riverside and MIT having the most permits pulled in multifamily housing. There are sizable numbers of these in other neighborhoods too.

What is more worrying and more telling is the amount of down-sizing

WE ALSO SEE THIS IN THE NUMBER OF HOUSING STARTS ACROSS THE CITY BY UNIT NUMBERS AND NEIGHBORHOODS

• On the left are the locations of 3-4 unit projects throughout the city displayed by year.
• On the right we see the different types of work being done around the city; Renovations, New Additions, and New Buildings differentiated by size of the projects. 
• Below we have the number of housing starts by neighborhood and a chart identifying the top neighborhoods for different unit sizes in the city. 1 units (SFH) tend to be west; 2 units tend to be north and middle; 3-4 units tend to be the denser North and Riverside neighborhoods; 5-6 units follow the pattern of 3-4 and 5-6 units adding in East Cambridge. This seems to follow the pattern of property expense and SFH interest in West Cambridge, and lesser priced properties for multi-family housing in the denser less expensive properties.

BELOW: In the graph to the right we see that the vast number of building permits in the city do not include changes in the number of units, but when this factor is added in, the decided trend is to decrease the number of units (enlarging the space within a given property) and NOT a move to increase the number of units.  This reflects at once market forces (the greater value of single family homes (or those that can be down-adjusted for this) as well as factors of construction and other costs. ​