 Cambridge Citywide Up-Zoning Simplified (Not Just for "Dummies!")
Proposed Citywide Up-zoning: This would allow multi-family housing citywide in every residential zoning district and uses one of our most dense zoning districts (C-1) citywide. This zoning is for market rate housing (or what the market will bear. This housing would be "as of right" without design review and oversight by one of our discretionary review and oversight boards. And would allow heights up to 6 stories in every residential district. Six stories here is defined as 75 feet in height (not 60 feet as is standard). Buildings are allowed to extend to the property line on the sides and rear, and a decreased front setback in some current districts. With properties of 10 units or more 20% inclusionary ("affordable") units are required. These would be without required parking. Glossary of Terms often used when discussing Housing policy TYPES OF HOUSING SFH Single Family Home TFH Two Family Home MFH Multi Family Housing ADU Accessory Dwelling Unit -- Usually a less than 1000 SF additional unit to permitted # of units. AHO Affordable Housing Overlay -- Occupancy is limited to those below a certain income threshold SRO Single Room Occupancy -- dorm room, hotel room, shelter room.. Triple–Decker 3 story building with stacked apartments TYPICAL ZONING REGULATIONS These are regulations, which along with use limitation, cities have employed to control the bulk and built character of areas of a city, so that for example, gas stations do not appear in the middle of a residential neighborhood, and factories emitting noxious fumes do not get built next to schools. Like building codes they are described as being designed for the health, safety and welfare of the community. They are laws, which are often not easy to change, and once enacted determine how much can be built, and where. If there are reductions in what was once permitted, then the city can be sued for “a taking”, or reducing the value of a property.
building design, often controlling building characteristics such as how long a façade can be without an change in plane, if upper floors need to be set back from lower floors, or if the first floor of a commercial building needs to be retail space, etc. Where certain sized buildings can be built is often laid out in very specific zoning maps to offer both clear opportunities and constraints on what kind of buildings can be built where. This can sometimes be welcomed by developers for its clarity, and also objected to by others for too much of an infringement on their free choice as land owners. (It is currently fully implemented in Somerville.) COMMON HOUSING RELATED ACRONYMS AND TERMS ADA Americans with Disabilities Act - sets dimensional and other requirement ADU Auxiliary Dwelling Unit - an additional unit of housing AHO Affordable Housing Overlay - the Cambridge Ordinance AMI Area Median Income AHU Affordable Housing Unit AHR Affordable Housing Restrictions As of Right A development may proceed legally without any discretionary review process, usually in accordance with pre-set regulation rather than with case-by-case basis. In short, the owner of property has the right to use or develop it, without recourse to a public hearing process and related neighbor input. Intended to speed up the development process and often this precludes legal action CDBG Community Development Block Grant Chapter 40B If a community has less than 10% affordable housing, Board of Appeals must approve the project CPA Community Preservation Act CRA Cambridge Redevelopment Authority Density Number of dwelling units allowed on a specific area of land. This varies with eachresidential zoning district. Discretionary Review Process of review and oversight by community review boards like the CHC, BZA, or Planning Board (see below) Down Sizing. When developers or owners seek to transform a two family into a one family property and/or another property from one with more units into one with fewer units in order to gain more space for each unit. Dwelling Unit Any unit or type of housing SFH, TFH etc (see above) DHCD Mass state authority promulgating regulations targeted at income eligible households FHA Fair Housing Authority - sets standards for dimensions within housing financed federally FMR Fair Market Rent FMA Fair Market Rate JAS Just A Start - one of the city's public housing developers HFA Housing Finance Agency HRI. Home Owners Rehab - one of the city's public housing developers Inclusionary Housing % of lower income housing units required for market rate housing of 10 units or more Market Rate Housing Development of housing to sell for whatever the market price will bear. Also sometimes referred to as luxury housing because in Cambridge this tends to be very expensive Ordinance a city law - zoning ordinances become law once they are voted on affirmatively by the Cambridge City Council PHA Public Housing Agency Setbacks SHI Subsidized Housing Inventory Story The height of a given level of housing, usually measured as 10 feet per story. TBRA Tenant Based Rental Assistance Residential Zoning District - the city of Cambridge is currently divided into three residential main zoning districts (A, B, C) reflecting various property restrictions on type of housing, setbacks, and density allowed. CAMBRIDGE DEPARTMENT ACRONYMS BZA Board of Zoning Appeal CAHT Cambridge Affordable Housing Trust CDD Cambridge Development Department - Planning Agency for Cambridge: CHA Cambridge Housing Authority CHC Cambridge Historical Commission CRA Cambridge Redevelopment Authority DPW Department of Public Works Plan E Our form of government with a City Council who elects the Mayor and a separate city governance system under a City Manager who controls the various departments. PB Planning Board
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 The Cambridge Open Data Portal provides us with ample information to understand core information on housing availability, housing costs, and the impacts of related market forces. The greatest factor for housing cost in Cambridge is the very steep costs of the land itself, in short, the price of the properties on which our homes are built. Market rate factors are important too. Another factor taken up below is that around 30% of residential properties in Cambridge, MA are likely owned by people or companies located outside the city, based on the fact that a significant portion of the city's housing stock is owned by investors and companies, many of which are not based within Cambridge itself. Much the same thing is now happening in Austin, Texas where 28% of the housing is owned by outside investors. Currently we have 119,008 city residents (based on May 2024 census). There are 66,700 Cambridge residents aged 16 and over who were employed in the year ending December 2023. Many of our current residents are students at our various universities. We also have a number of retired individuals in this 16 y.o. plus group who are not currently employed. This helps to explain the c.51,308 residents of the city who are not listed as being currently employed. The American Community Survey for 2022 reports that 138,658 persons worked that year in Cambridge. Some are current residents but many are not. White-collar workers make up 95.33% of the working population in Cambridge, while blue-collar employees account for 4.67%. There are 38,000 workers employed in private companies (53.59%) as well as 6,506 people working in governmental institutions (9.18%). and 4,569 individuals who list themselves instead as entrepreneurs (6.44% of the workforce). What this suggests is that if we were going to try to house all those who currently live in cambridge plus all those who currently work here or go to school here (the latter not now living on campus) we would need a massive increase in the number and type of housing available - likely more than double the current city size of 119,008 residents - all this on our tiny 6.8 square mile land mass, nearly all of which is now built up except our cemeteries, university campuses, and drinking water supply area (Fresh Pond). If we add together the number of Cambridge employees at our various larger and smaller companies + students (not now in campus housing) the numbers are revealing. Listing only our top 20 city employers we have the following: Universities: 25, 125 individuals (see below) Local biotech companies: 72,960 individuals (see below) Other top 20 employers in the city 20,117 employees. This number includes the city itself with 3,594 employees TOTAL 118,202 Cambridge employees plus students/post docs who need off-campus housing NOTE: this total (118,202) is roughly equal in size to the size of our current population (119,008), and would double the city population size, all on only 6.8 square miles of land mass. This in turn would likely need to double the size of our fire department (people, engines, stations), police department (officers, cars, buildings), schools (staff, buildings), hospital staff and social workers, as well as increasing the capacity of our water, sewage and electric systems. We can see some of these variables across the different zip codes in the city, where we see notable differences in the population numbers, numbers of households and income variations across our five zip codes. Area 2 (MIT) has the highest average incomes ($195, 846) and by far the lowest number of residents and households (4,474 people in 2,140 households). Mid-Cambridge, Cambridgeport, Riverside, and The Port comprise the zip code (02139) and have the highest number of residents, households with 38,856 people in 15,995 households and roughly "average" Cambridge incomes ($160,365). North Cambridge (02141) where many of the historically segregated publicly-financed housing is located has the largest number of people for household (21,553 in 9,949 households) and the lowest average income $119,320. Neighborhoods in the 02138 zip code comprising West Cambridge, Baldwin, part of Mid-Cambridge, Riverside, Strawberry Hill and parts of Cambridge Highlands has roughly the same number of people and households as 02139 with 38,006 people and 14,480 households, and incomes averaging $182,108. East Cambridge (02141) historically one of the city's important immigrant community centers has 14,402 people in 7,069 households with an average income (of $142,367) which lies rought midway between residents of 02139 and 02140. What our zip code (and census) data reveals is in some ways more revealing than the historic city neighborhood breakdowns of this same data. Among other differences we see is that the residents of 02140 have far larger families (fewer households per people) than other city neighborhoods, where the average is closer to 2+ people per household unit.  Housing Stock and Neighborhoods: Here we see the different types of housing (single family, two family, three family and more) as well as the total number of housing units. Our city, as of July 1, 2023, has 57,894 housing units. This figure includes development completed since 2020 and units currently under construction. We also know the numbers of Single-Family, Two-Family and Multi-Family homes in each neighborhood in the accompanying chart (and at the city’s Open data link found HERE One can see in the chart below a breakdown of total housing units per neighborhood. The largest number of housing units are found in East Cambridge which has 8,690 units as well as North Cambridge with 8,032 units. The largest per capita type of residential unit in Cambridge is single-family dwellings (SFH), which accounts for 35% of the city's total residential land. Two-family dwellings account for 21%; 13% of Boston's residential land is devoted to three- family dwellings, commonly known as triple-deckers. However these numbers can be deceiving, since SFH account for only 6.5% of our total housing stock, far fewer that many other cities What is also clear is that our 6.5% Single-Family Homes to total housing units is a stunningly low percentage (and number) in comparison with other major cities:
 SINGLE FAMILY HOMES (SFH): These are far more expensive than other units in Cambridge in part because we have so few of them (3,772 total) This represents 6.52% of our total housing stock of 57.894 units. West Cambridge and Neighborhood Nine have the most Single-Family Homes while MIT (which as zero SFH, along with Cambridge Highlands (with 84 SFH) and Strawberry Hill (with 110 SFH have the fewest number. The number of SFH around the city is rapidly changing however since increasingly developers and individuals are purchasing two-family homes and downsizing them to single family homes. TWO FAMILY HOMES: Our city stock of two-family homes, numbering 7002 in total represents 12.09% of our total housing stock. These are at greatest risk of down-sizing. The greatest numbers of these two-family homes are in North Cambridge (1240 units) and West Cambridge (1277 units), Neighborhood Nine (800 units) and Cambridgeport (748 units). THREE FAMILY HOMES: These number 6195 properties or 10.7% of our total housing stock. The largest number of our 6195 three-unit housing stock are in Cambridgeport (915 units), North Cambridge (912 units ) and Mid-Cambridge (816 units). Some of these are rental properties occupied by area graduate students and post-doctoral students/interns. However, an increasing number of these three-unit structures are also now being converted into condos. We have the fewest number of these three family structures in MIT (0) and Cambridge Highlands (9) - the latter neighborhood comprising one of the furthest from both our universities and Kendall Square. Four family (4 unit) properties in the city amount to 5138 examples or 8.87% of our housing stock. These are most abundant in our denser and once less expensive neighborhoods of Wellington-Harrington (858 units), Cambridgeport (691 units), Mid-Cambridge (673 units) and The Port (506 units). The fewest number of our 4-unit properties are in MIT (6 units), Cambridge Highlands (9 units), and Strawberry Hill (56 units). Housing Price Changes: A Year by Year Analysis The steep rise in housing costs accompanies the circa 2018 rise in the biotech industry in Cambridge - see below, and has only continued to rise as Cambridge has become a major target of biotech companies and others in this city. While all housing prices have rises, single family and three family homes (the latter as likely tear-downs for fewer and more expensive one or two-family units have risen the most significantly. What we also see in this graph is the little impact that the 2008 recession had little impact on Cambridge housing costs. The same is true for COVID. Indeed COVID appears to have further pushed up housing costs here as many local residents and outsiders chose this city as a positive place to work from home "wherever." We can see how these major housing cost increases having played out over over various time periods and different types of housing.   Rental prices also vary significantly across our neighborhoods. East Cambridge, MIT, and Wellington-Harrington which are located closest to Kendall Square have the highest rents. The MIT neighborhood, as we have seen, also has the city's highest salaries.  The chart above shows the average 2024 rent prices by neighborhood across the 13 neighborhoods, with East Cambridge being the most expensive and Cambridge Highlands, Strawberry Hill, and West Cambridge being the most affordable. Below we see the actual prices. In the data below we see the actual rental prices based on the average 2024 rent prices by neighborhood across the 13 neighborhoods. East Cambridge is the most expensive neighborhood for rents; Cambridge Highlands, Strawberry Hill, and West Cambridge being the most affordable.  These values show a variation in rent prices, with East Cambridge being the most expensive and Cambridge Highlands, Strawberry Hill and West Cambridge being the most affordable neighborhoods.
Sources: (Redfin)(RentCafe)(Zumber - Apartments for Rent & Houses)(RentHop)(Rent).  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).
  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. 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. 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. BELOW: Housing Start Data by Neighborhoods and the Number of Units   Down Sizing TrendsACROSS 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.  
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Author:Suzanne P. Blier is one of many active civic leaders in Cambridge. She serves as president of both the Harvard Square Neighborhood Association and the Cambridge Citizens Coalition. She is the author of the 2023 book, Streets of Newtowne: A Story of Cambridge, MA. She is a professor of art and architectural history at Harvard and teaches a course on the history of Cambridge and contemporary issues here. Archives
December 2024
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