In recent discussions, a Town Official touted the success of Lexington and Concord in reaching the Chapter 40B goal of 10% affordable housing.
But have they actually achieved that level?
The truth is that Lexington and Concord are nowhere near that goal in reality. About half of the units on their official 'affordable' list are not affordable at all, but actually full market rate apartments. .
But the strange rules of the State’s Subsidized Housing Inventory (SHI) allow, and even encourage this bizarre form of accounting. The secret is that for apartment buildings constructed under 40B, all of the units are counted on the SHI, even those that are rented out at full market rates. Typically, a 40B project has only one affordable unit for every four built. This accounting results in the number of units that are counted on the SHI being inflated by a factor of four.
Lexington gets to claim 11.18% affordable housing by including 1335 units. In reality, 657 of that total are full market rentals, and only 678 are actually under HUD income and rent restrictions.
In Concord it is even more extreme. They claim 10.54% affordability from their 722 supposedly affordable units. But more than half, 409 are full market rate, and only 313 are deed restricted affordable.
In Arlington, we are currently credited with 1252 units. Up until this past December, every single Arlington SHI listing was a genuine affordable unit. But with the recent approval of the Mirak project, we get to add 124 units to the SHI tally even though 93 will be full market rate units and only 31 actually affordable.
If we were to include only the real affordable units on the SHI, Arlington would be the leader.
Arlington - 5.83% real affordability
Lexington - 5.68% real affordability
Concord - 4.57% real affordability
A better way to measure how well our three communities are doing in achieving affordability is to consider land area. Lexington has more than 3X the land area of Arlington. Concord is almost 5X as large. Measuring by density:
Arlington - 225 affordable units per square mile
Lexington - 41 affordable units per square mile
Concord - 13 affordable units per square mile
If Lexington and Concord were to build affordable housing at the same density as Arlington, they would have 9 times more affordable housing, 9228 units rather than just 991.
Our Town Official got it wrong. The proper question is Why can’t Lexington and Concord be more like Arlington?
Arlington needn’t be shamed nor bullied into accepting 40B projects that result in three pseudo SHI housing units for every real affordable unit. Our efforts are better directed toward encouraging and funding both the Arlington Housing Authority and the Housing Corporation of Arlington for the creation of 100% affordable housing.
*DHCD rules for SHI accounting
https://www.mass.gov/files/
Don Seltzer
