Housing affordability group organizes residents to provide input on rezoning

As officials prepare to examine and revamp the city’s zoning laws, housing advocacy group Waltham Inclusive Neighborhoods is educating residents on zoning’s significant impact on shaping the city and sharing how WIN’s vision could help spur more affordable housing.

WIN held an information session last Thursday to get those messages to residents in advance of a citizen input hearing on the city’s comprehensive zoning review scheduled for this upcoming Thursday, June 5.

At last week’s session, WIN organizer Tom Benavides presented the audience with WIN’s housing priorities for the city’s zoning review. He also encouraged residents to let the zoning consultants know what they want to see for Waltham’s future.

Benavides broke down the policy changes WIN is championing for the new zoning code, many of which he said would allow developers to build denser and smaller units as well as multifamily apartments. He said these housing options would be similar to existing buildings in Waltham that current zoning codes would not allow to be built today. 

In fact, he said “72% of Waltham homes are noncompliant with existing zoning, which is to say, it would be illegal to build those homes today.”

That figure comes from an analysis done by fellow WIN member Timothy Riley, who compared public data about existing residential lots and building sizes in Waltham with the city’s current zoning regulations. 

Riley said he did not take into account more permissive zoning for specially-zoned buildings including assisted living facilities, so he acknowledged that that percentage may overcount noncompliance in such cases. But he also said it doesn’t take into account violations for policies such as setbacks between houses, which could drive the figure even higher.

Benavides said WIN is also advocating for less stringent parking requirements and lower parking minimums for residential lots, noting that these proposals are informed by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s Perfect Fit Parking 2019 study of parking supply and demand in Greater Boston.

Furthermore, he said WIN is pushing the city to rethink its affordable housing requirements, which Benavides said make building affordable housing here prohibitive.

Although Benavides focused on residential reforms, he said residents also should pay attention to how zoning codes affect other types of development, such as commercial buildings.

After Benavides’s presentation, Heather May, a senior lecturer in public speaking at Emerson College, advised residents on how to effectively present their concerns. She encouraged would-be speakers to focus on a couple of their top issues and to present specific policy proposals. She suggested looking at nearby communities’ zoning policies for inspiration.

Residents at the WIN session also shared their own priorities. Some said they wanted the city to require more trees around Waltham, and some said they wanted more opportunities to share input during the rezoning process. A few expressed long-standing frustrations with actions by the city that they said deprioritized the creation of homes affordable to families and young people.

For example, Matthew Frederick, architect and owner of local urban design firm Radical Urbanism, said commercial zoning rules unfairly affect people’s ability to work at home if they’re not white-collar office workers. He said that further keeps necessary services such as repair businesses and haircutting further away from residential areas — making them harder to reach by walking.

“I think you have to ask the question that’s not about the physical buildings: …What kind of society are we trying to build here?” he added.

Residents will have a chance to answer that question at this Thursday’s hearing, which will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Clark Government Center Building, 119 School St. 
The meeting is the next step in an ongoing review of Waltham’s zoning code. The city last fall commissioned CommunityScale LLC to review Waltham’s zoning laws and maps. CommunityScale expects to deliver its final report, including a proposal for an updated zoning code, in October.