[deleted]

What does the word "upzone" mean?

Allow taller buildings to be made

OK, thanks.

Gross

This just seems like virtue signaling at this point. No one needs 25 storey towers, all it’s going to do is making living here more obnoxious. The Starbucks in Central recently closed because people kept ODing in the bathroom, and I'm sure adding more density of low income housing would do the same. These tall tower blocks just have the effect of making the city less personal and less livable...

Realistically they should just relax the zoning for all smaller buildings so things like triple-deckers could become 4-plexes, single family homes could add 1 or 2 units or storeys so that density is more evenly spread throughout the city. The zoning requirements on these smaller buildings are much more strict and it's ridiculous that they're giving big developers the ability to circumvent the zoning restrictions while anyone else who owns smaller property is still restricted.

Cambridge and Boston in general need to remain somewhere people want to live. Tower blocks don't create neighborhoods or neighbors, and they'll just concentrate poverty and problems. They'll continue to make the area more expensive, and the city will just end up with big, expensive eyesores that no one will maintain for 50 years so that in that at that time another developer can claim to solve these problems with an even bigger building...

This is similar to the idea that the best level of government is the one larger than the last one unable to solve your problems. Bigger just hides the problem for a little longer.

Housing? For poor people? 🤮

They should just die already! Preferably far away from me, so my shoes dont get dirty by accidentally stepping on their corpses

From an email about Affordable Housing Overlay improvements:

>We’re happy that the AHO’s first two years have seen six sites applying for AHO permits, with four completing their review requirements, for a potential total of over 400 new affordable homes.

>The City Council is now weighing revisions to the zoning code to strengthen and expand the 2020 AHO. Councilors Azeem, McGovern, Simmons and Zondervan have proposed changes that would allow:

> more height along “AHO corridors” – specifically, up to 13 stories of affordable housing by-right along listed streets, including Mass Ave, Mem Drive, Cambridge St, Mt. Auburn St, and others. This would allow proposals like 2072 Mass Ave to succeed, and would ensure that every neighborhood of the city has sites where affordable housing can be built at sufficient scale to be financially viable.

> significantly more height in “AHO squares” – specifically, up to 25 stories of affordable housing by-right in Central, Harvard, Porter, and the “Webster Square” auto-shop area north of Cambridge St near the Union Square T. This would allow significantly more transit-oriented affordable housing like the Manning Apartments.

> greater flexibility to encourage more open space. AHO developments that provide more-than-required open space would be allowed to take their sacrificed building bulk and put it into increased height. This would have allowed more housing for the formerly homeless to be built at 116 Norfolk St, and would have improved the site plan of Jefferson Park.

What exactly is Cambridge's median income? I expected, after the AHO passed, for Cambridge to maintain that as a readily accessible number, so that it's possible to validate that a developer is in compliance. However, I can't find such a number published officially with Google searches.

It seems this specifically applies to anything that the AHO would already apply to - aka where 100% of the units are rented at 1/3 of 85% of median income. As long as that's true, I'm for it.

I do, though, wish the Council was doing more to ensure housing for those below that line. 85% of median income seems to exclude such a huge number of residents of our city, so it seems concerning that this is held up as the cheapest Cambridge can make housing. The city should be pushing for (a) city-run housing, (b) radically cheaper housing solutions, especially for minority communities who've lived in our city for centuries, and (c) pressure on landlords to create processes to rent-to-own.

How do we ensure that the high-rises that are developed don't produce dead-zone neighborhoods like University Park? We really need neighborhoods that can support healthy levels of foot traffic for ground floor restaurants, grocery, retail, and other local services. Having useful commercial services right on the block is key to making a neighborhood feel organic and limiting unnecessary burden on our overstressed transport infrastructure. Will the tall buildings they build include ground floor mixed-use?

Edit: And adding supply of retail space would help ease the burden on local shops and restaurants struggling to keep up with their commercial rents.

If it turns into a hellscape…

>as evidenced by Starbucks closing

University park is entirely commercial space, no residential, so after 5 it’s a ghost town. These will be entirely residential with potential retail at the bottom floor. These projects will only increase pedestrian activity and will bring new customers to support local businesses.

The city does develop and maintain a large portfolio of housing and that is usually for significantly lower incomes. In addition they subsidize private projects that commit to lower incomes. Recently linkage fees on non residential projects were increased to help fund more of these projects.

I meant eww at massive build up approvals. Keep Cambridge charming and sunny. As it is Kendell is so dreary compared to other parts of town

Does the proposal require storefronts at ground level?

13 stories is higher than all but a few buildings in Central Sq. and several in Kendall, excepting several Harvard Univ. buildings.

I don’t believe so.

More city run housing is a bad idea. It’s a inefficient waste of resources. The current AHO plan basically has developers paying for everything, and can create large amounts of affordable housing with mixes of different incomes.

I can't imagine what you mean by waste of resources - the developers are "paying for everything" because they can make money off of the housing they build. And not just a small amount - they're jumping through hoops here to get approved under the AHO because this is a lucrative gig, presumably. Why would the city not be able to run housing at least not taking a loss?

>Why would the city not be able to run housing at least not taking a loss?

Because it's basically impossible to run truly low income housing at a profit in a city. It also geographically concentrates low incomes in a way that's suboptimal (something the AHO plan tries to avoid). But just so we are clear, when you say "city run", you mean owned/subsidized and operated, right?

>Because it's basically impossible to run truly low income housing at a profit in a city.

I didn't say it needed to be low income housing. For-profit companies are coming into this city and jumping through the AHO hoops in order to provide affordable housing, so it's quite evidently profitable.

As for low-income housing, if developers are unable to provide true low-income housing in the city, then of course city-run housing at a loss is not a waste of resources. It gives people homes, which, as you said, were "impossible" for a for-profit to run.

>when you say "city run", you mean owned/subsidized and operated, right?

To be honest, I don't care. Leaving it to for-profit developers seems like a recipe for housing to disappear as soon as it ceases to be profitable, but whether the solution is a public/private partnership, or a city-owned/contractor-managed situation, or a fully city-owned-and-run project, it would ameliorate the situation.

Just look at this current proposal: we passed AHO years ago, but companies decided it wasn't affordable, so we needed active legislation to appease them. So, it's clearly not obvious what policies we need to appease developers, so who says the policies we put in place today will lead to affordable housing for more than a couple years? City-run initiatives ensure longevity, even if it stops being profitable for a time.

Why not just put the developers on the city council directly?

Storefronts for what? More ATMs?

Virtue signaling is pretty much the job of the city council.

Increased population without automobiles.

Well, that's not strictly the case. There are large dorms and high rise apartment buildings on the abutting blocks, and that -- as you say -- is still a ghost town.

The only plausible way to bring down rents for small local business is more space.

Ahh, you're right, I just never noticed the residential nearby. But still, adding more residential will only increase the activity level wherever it is built.

I think it really depends on how it's done. Most residential neighborhoods don't have much of any foot traffic unless they have retail/restaurant/services there. And if you look at the places with luxury buildings they've recently built (e.g. over in the Kendall area), those places are dead zones except where there's ground level retail space.

The city could probably get much more housing by allowing 4-6 family development by right instead of allowing the rich of Brattle to cut off their neighborhood with exclusionary zoning. North Cam is almost exclusively zoned for only 2 family despite being right next to alewife and Davis and porter

In general I support any free market solution to housing, but sky scraper housing adds a lot of people without many businesses

It’s dreary because they are all office buildings. These are residential towers