One of the most promising answers to address the North Shore’s housing crisis is Inclusionary Zoning, a policy tool which requires larger developers to include affordable housing in new projects or to make payments to the city for development of affordable housing elsewhere.
The idea has the potential to spark the creation of integrated, mixed-income housing, but some question if the policy would put a damper on future development.
The policy, which has been proposed in the draft of Lynn’s housing production plan, “Housing Lynn: A Plan for Inclusive Growth,” has been adopted by many communities on the North Shore but has not yet come to Lynn.
Inclusionary Zoning Regionally
Peabody was among the first cities in the Commonwealth to adopt an inclusionary zoning bylaw, requiring in 2004 that 15 percent of new apartments be affordable in any development eight units or above.
“We haven’t had a shortage of development in Peabody,” said Peabody Councilor-At-Large Anne Manning-Martin, who has served on the council since 2008. “Many people would say on the contrary, that we’ve had overdevelopment. So it hasn’t put a damper on development but it has brought us affordable housing.”
Director of Community Planning Curt Bellevance reported that approximately 65 new units of affordable housing had been created in the past 10 years in nine different developments as a result of the bylaw.
“The most important part is that those projects are approved at 15 percent so we would be meeting our statutory requirement by an additional 5 percent,” said Bellevance referencing the 10 percent threshold of affordable housing recommended by the state. “And that those projects would have no affordable units if we didn’t require it as part of our zoning.”
The plan originally had an option that allowed developers to pay into an Affordable Housing Trust fund instead of building the units. The option has since been removed.
“We saw the downside to that was that we could never catch up to our 10 percent,” said Manning-Martin. “It put you in the position where the city was being a developer. And it didn’t work.”
Swampscott, which lags behind Lynn in terms of affordable housing (with only 3.7 percent of the 5,795 year-round units considered affordable by state standards according to the 2016 Swampscott Housing Production Plan) adopted an Inclusionary Zoning bylaw in 2018 as a means of addressing this problem.
“Swampscott should be rising to the occasion,” said Kimberly Martin-Epstein, the chair of the Swampscott Affordable Housing Trust. “We often see people from Lynn trying to move to Swampscott. I believe that we should be open to that and we should facilitate that. We should create housing so people could come here.”
Their bylaw requires developers to either build 15 percent of new units to be affordable at 80 percent AMI (area median income), or to pay an in-lieu fee. The fee is paid into the Affordable Housing Trust, which can use this money to subsidize production of other affordable housing.
Saugus with 6.9 percent affordable housing, according to its 2016 housing production plan, has adopted an inclusionary zoning bylaw. It requires in large developments that 10 percent of units built must be affordable, with the option of paying toward the housing trust fund.
Planning Board Chair Peter Rossetti sees development of affordable housing not as a detriment to revitalization, but as a key component of it.
“If you have affordable housing, it tends to bring people into the area and they tend to be local people,” said Rossetti. “They do their shopping locally, and that’s a key component you need to keep commercial areas vitalized.”
Pros and cons of inclusionary zoning in Lynn
Lynn landlord Gordon R. Hall (who is a director of Essex Media Group which publishes The Item) bought his first building in the mid-1980s and can remember a time when Lynn was a far cry from the target for developers that it is today.
“No one would invest in Lynn. It was terrible,” said Hall. “Most banks would not lend here.”
Over the past decades he has watched Lynn gain interest from developers and tenants alike.
Several market-rate and luxury developments are now springing up throughout the city.
With a recent boom of new investment in the city, Hall believes that the city has gained some leverage, which could be used to adopt policies like inclusionary zoning.
“It’s taken me some time to come around to this,” he said. “But I believe that the time has come for inclusionary zoning in Lynn.”
Proponents of these new developments cite their positive benefits — growing the tax base, improving home values for homeowners, and making better use of underused land.
“I’ve always said that we have to build a foundation first,” said Lynn City Council President Darren Cyr. “The way you build that foundation is to build market-rate units to start bringing in people with disposable incomes that are frequenting businesses in the city to start paying taxes.”
According to the Healthy Neighborhoods Study, which was performed in partnership with the Conservation Law Foundation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 59 percent of people in Lynn are observing changes in housing in Lynn, but believe that housing is not for their benefit.
“Developments are good if you are including the people in the city,” said Celinet Sanchez, a Lynn resident involved in the Healthy Neighborhoods Study, who advocated for inclusionary zoning as a means to addressing this problem. “Let’s grow, but let’s grow together.”
Market-rate developer Michael Procopio is worried that an inclusionary zoning bylaw would suppress new development, and that Lynn is not ready for it.
“It’s a tricky issue. Certainly it has good intentions,” said Procopio. “But it puts you into this bind where it’s one layer of costs that we need to deal with. I don’t think you can say that developers will walk away, but it would certainly suppress development.”
He said that in cities that have become more economically developed, inclusionary zoning is more realistic.
“We work in a lot of places where they have this. It’s just about whether that project is feasible. And Lynn has not established the rents that support some of these bigger developments right now,” said Procopio.
Future of inclusionary zoning in Lynn
Lynn’s housing plan will soon go before the City Council and Planning Board for approval.
Some councilors are concerned about the effect policies like inclusionary zoning could have on development.
“Before we implement it, there are a lot of people I want to see involved in the process,” said Cyr (who is also a mayoral candidate). He worries about the strain that additional affordable housing could put on city infrastructure.
He said that Lynn, with a comparably high level of affordable housing (around 12.5 percent), has done its part and that it was time for “other communities to step up.”
But data from the housing plan states that, for every unit of affordable housing in the city, there are four families who need it.
Even with the plan’s passage, it represents a set of goals, not a binding policy.
“There is absolutely a need for affordability in Lynn and everywhere in Massachusetts,” Cyr maintained. “We need to do something to figure that out.”
Guthrie Scrimgeour can be reached at [email protected].
