Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Need Zoning Law Expertise

[Philip Dowds (rphilipdowds]

Cambridge, like San Francisco, Manhattan, and some other US sub-markets, is 
hyper-wacky on both housing pricing and annual real estate appreciation.  Quite 
a few of us now living in Cambridge can afford it, not because we’re star 
financial portfolio managers, but because we bought in the 70s, just prior to 
real estate wackiness.

Our City Council and body politic kvetches a lot about the “housing problem”, 
but does not always see itself as having many levers to pull.  We do have 
“inclusionary zoning”, and indeed, Cornerstone Cohousing itself has four 
below-market limited equity ownership units.  Across the City, our municipal 
government supports and participates in a variety of State and federal “public 
housing programs”, to the tune of about 4,000 units.  We do have an expectation 
for high density housing development, and we get a lot of it.  Rules about who 
can live with whom come and go, but currently have little consequence in 
Cambridge.  Disparate families and friends are known to do a lot of doubling up 
in two- to four-bedroom units formerly considered as single family only. 
Cambridge has an active Air BnB market, and has recently gone to a rule that 
Air BnB must be operated by resident owners, not absentee landlords.  There is 
talk at the State level for re-establishing local option rent control enabling 
legislation, but I will personally be surprised if anything comes of this.

To get to the real point:  What’s often described as the “housing problem” is 
really the “income inequality problem”, which has grown ever worse and worse 
since the federal government dismantled progressive taxation starting in the 
’80’s.  But that’s a debate for another day.  Meanwhile, I remain pretty 
pessimistic about solving the “housing problem” by seeking out work-arounds for 
building housing “cheap”.

Thanks,
Philip Dowds
Cornerstone Village Cohousing
Cambridge, MA

mobile: 617.460.4549
email:   rpdowds [at] comcast.net

> On Mar 30, 2019, at 12:36 PM, Brian Bartholomew via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l 
> [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
>> Budget-smart households will buy as much housing as they can afford --
>> and their upper limit on housing expense is the point at which
>> housing costs make it impossible to meet the other needs of food,
>> clothing, transportation, education and healthcare.
> 
> I looked on Zillow within the last twelve months and no housing was
> for sale in Cambridge for under $425K.  Using the older sustainable
> formulas for max percentage of income to mortgage, that probably means
> four professionally employed adults plus a homemaker.  For those of us
> ordinary people who aren't financial portfolio managers, the only
> workable arrangement is denser than the nuclear family.
> 
> Is the Cambridge city council generally allowing this, or banning it?
> 
> Brian
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