One of the most pressing ways that our region’s housing shortage affects Watertown is through an acute lack of deed-restricted affordable housing. It’s quite simple: more of these units would help to keep Watertown’s working people in our city. Yet while Watertown’s inclusionary zoning policy ensures that a proportion of each market rate development’s units are set aside as affordable housing, this only chips away at the shortage. What if, instead, there was a way to build more developments that were composed of just workforce and lower income housing?
As an effort to explore more expansive solutions to the affordable housing shortage, Housing for All Watertown hosted a forum on February 23rd to share more about what it will take to build these 100% affordable housing developments (click here for highlights of event). A particular focus of the forum was onAffordable Housing Overlays (AHOs), a zoning tool designed to strengthen the position of non-profit builders who build 100% affordable developments when they’re competing with market rate developers for the same plots of land.
We were honored to be joined by three established local developers of 100% affordable housing: Madeline Lee of Just A Start, Caitlin Madden of Metro West Collaborative Development, and Sara Barcan of Homeowner’s Rehab Inc. All three discussed their experiences building affordable housing, including in communities such as Cambridge and Somerville that have AHOs, and described the ways in which AHOs give them a leg up over market rate developers. And they left us with important lessons about the role that city funding plays in helping affordable developments win state and federal funding, and the important role that community input has on the 100% affordable housing they have built.
As Watertown prepares to launch a study of how best to incentivize developers to build more affordable housing across the city, we think it’s important to keep in mind the lessons that our experts emphasized that enable successful 100% affordable projects:
“Zoning opens the door…”
All three experts made clear that affordable housing will only reliably come to Watertown with zoning changes that give affordable housing developers a consistent, predictable advantage over large market rate developers. The panelists cited many examples of zoning changes enabled by AHOs that are essential to their successful 100% affordable projects, including additional height and density allowances specific to affordable developments, expedited permitting that provides affordable housing developers consistency in an otherwise uncertain process, and predictable and timely community input sessions. AHOs help to give these non-profit developers timeline certainty, a well-defined permitting process, less financial risk, and more favorable conditions to win state and federal funding.
The developers also discussed how AHOs can be flexible and responsive to a community’s changing needs: Cambridge, for example, has built in processes to revisit the AHO policy and has already changed their overlay twice since first adopting it in October 2020, leading to more and better 100% affordable projects.
“…and financing allows us in”
Given how competitive it is to secure state and federal affordable housing funds, all three panelists made clear that 100% affordable developments will only be possible in Watertown when backed by strong local financial support. While Watertown’s linkage fee on some new commercial developments supports our Affordable Housing Trust, the funds that currently come in through linkage pale in comparison to the millions of dollars that the Community Preservation Act (CPA) brings in each year.
The developers pointed to the importance of Cambridge’s policy of directing 80% of its CPA funds to their Affordable Housing Trust each year – key funding that the Trust can leverage to proactively support promising affordable housing projects. (Currently, no Watertown CPA funds are earmarked for our Affordable Housing Trust.) The developers explained that significant local matching funds are a key way that projects can distinguish themselves when applying for state and federal funding.
“We are forever neighbors”
All three panelists represented mission-driven developers that place serving their residents and the broader community at the center of their work. Each has made long-term investments in the communities where they work, and they all made clear the paramount importance of community input for improving the quality of their projects.
While Cambridge’s AHO policy requires a fixed number of community meetings, Sara Barcan of HRI said they always exceed that number. The developers each recounted stories of the community feedback that helped them iterate on and improve their projects. They also discussed several developments that were ultimately built under the maximum height afforded by the AHO to better match the context of the site.
And the commitment doesn’t end when the development is finished. All three developers spoke about the resident services offices and staff people on site to help residents maintain financial stability once a building is occupied.
These developers seek to build strong relationships with their residents and the community, for the long-term, and being responsive to feedback throughout the lifecycle of a project helps to achieve that.
Conclusion
There is a real and significant housing affordability crisis in Watertown. One in three households pays more than 30% of their income towards housing; many pay more than half. Out of the more than 17,000 housing units in Watertown, under 8% of units are income-restricted, and only one in four households eligible for rental benefits receive them.
We know that building more 100% affordable developments has to be one of the tools in the toolkit to address this problem. We are excited by the vision for more affordable housing that was painted at the forum, and we look forward to advocating for the zoning and financing support needed to make it a reality in the years to come. The next major opportunity will come with the city’s study of affordability incentives later this year. Join Housing for All Watertown’s efforts to learn more about how you can support this work in the months and years ahead.
Housing for All Watertown Steering Committee
Rita Colafella, Sam Ghilardi, Dan Pritchard, Josh Rosmarin, Jacky van Leeuwen
CPA tax dollars for “Affordable Housing”. Translation: income redistribution. No, thanks.
Chelsea, Everett, Lawrence, Haverhill. More affordable than Watertown. Move.
If one supports “affordable housing” (all houses that that sell are, by definition, affordable), then I suppose more affordable housing is better than less. But what is the benefit of 100% affordable developments? Over, say, two developments with half the units priced below market rates? Especially when we have to rig the market in favor of the all-or-nothing affordable housing developers? Are we letting the “perfect” (100%) be the enemy of the “good” (2 x 50% or 4 x 25%)? And are there amenities not financially viable in 100% developments that are available to everyone in mixed developments? Wasn’t the idea to integrate affordable housing into the community, not to segregate it from the community? Our elected officials and at least a fair number of residents here support the goal of keeping at least some housing stock within reach of those with moderate means. Why take more than what’s been freely offered?