SteveR: initial revision

2019-07-28T14:57:41Z

initial revision

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(Talk given at "The State of Zoning for Multifamily Housing in Greater
Boston with Amy Dain", July 25, 2019)

Hello, my name is Steve Revilak and I'm a resident of Arlington.

I first became interested in zoning for two reasons: I'm a town
meeting member, and occasionally we take up zoning articles at town
meeting. The second comes from being a homeowner who's had to
navigate the building permit process, and finding it much more
challenging than it needs to be. In 2016, I got myself on a working
group to recodify our zoning bylaw. This was mostly an editorial
cleanup -- our bylaw had been amended hundreds of times since it was
written in 1975, and it desperately needed some tidying up.

Along the way, I learned a little bit about the history of Arlington
zoning and how our paper wall got built. I'd like to share some of
those stories with you, because I think they're interesting and
important to understand.

Once upon a time, Arlington built a lot of multifamily housing in the
form of apartments, and we even have or own pejorative form of
inexpensive housing: the Arlington Pillbox. This was our version of
the "Weed of Dorchester", the triple-decker.

Our 1975 zoning rewrite was generally a revolt against apartment
buildings. It started in 1973 with a two-year moratorium on the
construction of new apartment buildings. Between 1975 and the early
1990's we put a lot of limits on new housing construction, multifamily
in particular. I think the time period is somewhat consistent with
Ms. Dain's research findings.

The number of apartment buildings constructed is one of the best
illustrations of what our zoning bylaw did. In the past 44 years --
since 1976-- we've built five apartment buildings with 9+ units. In
the 44 years before the bylaw was passed, we built 53 of them.

Our last 4--8 unit apartment was built in 1976 (it was a six-plex).
In the 44 years prior, we built 22 of them.

For three families: We've built three of these since 1976; in the 44
years preceding, we built 15.

That's a stark difference.

Our 1975 recodification also involved a certain amount of dimensional
and density shenanigans. There's one is particular that was a real
zinger. It's just plain bad.

Okay -- Arlington allows townhouses in a number of residential
districts, and they generally require a 20,000 square foot lot. But
there's an exception -- a district that requires 30,000 square feet
for a townhouse. We call this district R4: The Townhouse district.
The largest lot in this district is about 26,000 square feet, which
means we have a townhouse district where you can't actually build a
townhouse.

So, how did this come to be? Back in the 1970's we had one resident
that was strongly opposed to having townhouses on a particular street
that happened to be R4. He lobbied hard for a 40,000 square foot lot
requirement, because it would have been next to impossible to assemble
a lot of that size, even by combining pairs of adjacent properties.
The redevelopment board compromised and gave him 30,000.

When you look at zoning laws, this is the kind of thing you have to
pay attention for. The innocent looking number isn't always so
innocent.

So what are some of the effects we see today? The metro-Boston area
has produced a lot more jobs than housing. People are moving into the
area. That's created a housing shortage, which is driving prices up.

Over 50% of Arlington's land is zoned for single family homes, and our
housing prices are predominantly land driven. A buildable single-,
two-, or three-family lot costs about $450,000 -- that's just for the
lot. These lots are worth more than the single-, two-, and
three-family homes built upon them.

Multi-family housing (or anything to ameliorate the cost of land)
could really help here. A $450k lot with a single-family home means
that one household has to pay $450k for land. With a two-family, each
household pays $225k for land. With a three-family, you're down to
$150k/household. That's real money. And it would increase supply
too.

In terms of moving forward, I think Arlington and Medford are in very
different situations. From what I understand, Medford has residents
that recognize the problems caused by our housing shortage and you're
trying to convince City leaders to take up the cause.

Arlington has a town manager and a department of planning and
community development the are keenly aware of the problems. Our
challenge is to convince residents and town meeting.

The town tried to make progress in this area at our last town meeting
with articles to further mixed use and multifamily residential. They
were substantially oriented towards taking properties that were made
non-conforming by 1970's-era down-zoning, and making them conforming
again. It generated a really polarized debate, and the ARB wound up
withdrawing the articles.

But that's not the end of it. Last Monday our town manager made a
presentation to the select board on our regional housing shortage, and
his involvement with the MMC's housing task force. The select board
also recognizes this is a problem, and they're planning to work with
the ARB during coming months to see how we might address it.

I think we have a good opportunity, but we also have a lot of work to
do.

Thank you.

Arlington's Paper Wall - Revision history

SteveR: initial revision