Kairos Shen Meeting Follow-Up Letter
Dear Chief Shen and Planning Department team,
Thank you for taking the time to meet with 40 members of Allston-Brighton Housing Action (ABHA) on Oct 29th. We appreciate you listening to the many stories about housing we had to share and conveying your thoughts on planning and the future of our city.
As you saw, we are a diverse group of Allston-Brighton residents: renters and home-owners of all ages, work-life experiences, and political opinions, united around a shared dedication to our community and a common goal of addressing our housing shortage that has led to rising rents and home prices through competition over scarce housing. As individuals, we’ve been active in
Allston-Brighton civic organizations, Impact Advisory Groups, and IMP Task Forces. As an organization we’ve hosted educational sessions about zoning, Article 80 reform, and the City’s Anti-Displacement Plan, and tabled at community events to spread the word about the AB Community Plan and its possibilities.
We care deeply about our community, and want ourselves, our neighbors, and our friends to be able to stay here and build a life here. The scarcity of housing and its rising cost, however, makes that difficult. Every year people we care about search for housing that fits their needs only to be unable to find it, forcing them to stay in less-than-ideal housing or leave the neighborhood, and often our city, altogether.
Often we hear new housing discussed as if it were a burden on our neighborhood, but we wholeheartedly disagree. New homes and new people are a benefit for our city, and are how we preserve and enrich our community. People who want to stay here or come here are a benefit to Boston, not a burden. We need them here – in fact we are those people, whether we were born here, came here 50 years ago or last month.
Members of the Allston-Brighton community were last afforded the chance to articulate their vision for the neighborhood in 1990. The 1990 plan tried to address housing affordability by blocking the building of more housing. While it successfully kept our physical structures looking the same, 35 years later, those policies have led to profound changes. Absentee landlords have thrived amidst the resulting housing shortage with its skyrocketing rents and home prices, while
residents are priced out. In focusing on preserving what we had, we preserved buildings, but lost many of the people who make our community what it is.
We want to revive our neighborhood and once again make it a place where all are welcome to come and contribute to building community. For that to happen we believe the following six principles are critical for the city to prioritize in the Allston-Brighton Community Plan:
- Legalize all existing homes - AB is full of multifamily housing that was built long before our current zoning laws were written. Virtually all the homes in AB, from triple deckers to the tall apartment buildings along Comm Ave, are nonconforming for one reason or another, yet they define the look and feel of our neighborhood. And just as importantly, that housing stock is our community's largest source of naturally occurring affordable
housing. By making the existing residential fabric legal, we reinforce the affordability and character of our neighborhood, and we simplify the process for owners to get permits to repair, maintain, or replace their homes. Right now, the non-conforming status of so many homes creates needless red tape and expense for homeowners, discouraging the very upkeep these buildings need. - Legalize more housing everywhere - To meaningfully address our housing shortage now and account for future population growth, we must allow for gentle density increases. We'd like to see at least two more stories allowed everywhere throughout the neighborhood. Considering that triple deckers and small apartment buildings are common in most of our residential areas, and taking into account financial feasibility, we believe a minimum of six stories, allowed by-right, is a reasonable next step. Unlocking the ability to create significant new housing stock by-right is essential for easing price
pressure on everyone. - Legalize even more housing in squares, corridors and near frequent transit - The central nodes of our neighborhood, with their transit access, proximity to resources, and existing vibrancy and density, are the perfect locations to allow for much taller buildings, allowing residents to take advantage of living in or near these destinations
- Do the above in a way that legalizes housing not only on paper, but in the real
world, by leaving as much flexibility as possible to account for the challenges of existing lots, building codes, construction methods, and financial feasibility. We often see new housing squeeze itself to conform with one regulation, such as setbacks, only to then fall afoul of another, say, height limits. It is vital that it actually be possible to build new housing in a financially viable manner under the new zoning - End costly parking mandates that drive up the cost of housing and small businesses, reduce housing production, negatively impact the public realm, and contradict climate mitigation goals.
- Plan for a warming world - ensure that zoning and the plan encourages our streets to have trees, greenery, and shade, including legalizing passive shade measures that are currently challenging to build such as building awnings, exterior arcades, loggia, etc., and transform the current expanses of asphalt to housing, green space, solar energy production, or parks.
We are fortunate to live in a city, and a neighborhood, that people want to live in. We have a choice before us: we can either continue to make it hard to build housing, driving up costs while displacing more people as they compete over an insufficient number of homes, or we can make it easier to build housing providing our neighbors places to live that meet their needs and preference while welcoming new neighbors from across the globe. We believe that the ABCP rezoning is a generational opportunity to choose the second option.
The Mayor has spoken definitively about making Boston a family-friendly city, and we couldn’t agree more. Many of us voted for this administration because they ran on tackling the reforms necessary to address the housing shortage. If we don’t allow for the creation of significant amounts of housing of all types, where will those families live?
We hope that you’ve heard the robust support for more housing and for zoning and permitting reform. If the City moves ahead with substantial proposals, we will be out there in support. We want to see our neighborhood grow so there is room for all of us here and for new neighbors in the future.
Sincerely,
Allston-Brighton Housing Action