Let’s start with a question: Which of these do you think built more new Affordable Housing in Somerville in the last 10 years?
All our non-profits combined
US2, the for-profit developers of Union Square
Before we answer, let’s take a look at how much we Affordable Housing we have and how we actually get it built. There two main ways to make housing into capital-letters Affordable Housing in Somerville: subsidized homes and vouchers.
The Somerville Housing Authority (SHA) is the city’s largest provider of both, totaling 1,817 homes. 584 of those are what people typically think of as “public housing:” subsidized housing operated by SHA. The other 1,233 are vouchers issued by SHA to let families rent on the public market, although some of the vouchers are tied to specific locations in Somerville. Unfortunately, due to federal rules of the Faircloth Limit, we cannot build any more this kind of public housing, and with constrained federal funding, we cannot create many more of these vouchers.
There are a few smaller voucher systems as well. Massachusetts provides about 10,000 vouchers, although as of 2024 only 17 of them were in Somerville. Somerville has its own municipal system, serving only around 30 households. Additionally, some non-profits run their own small voucher systems.
Some Affordable Housing is run and operated by non-profits, often with state and federal funding. In Somerville, we have about 450 of those homes. The Faircloth Amendment destroyed investment into publically owned housing, so funding shifted to private and non-profit systems to create more Subsidized Housing. Non-profits either build new buildings like Just a Start’s 24 Webster Ave or buy up existing ones like Somerville Community Land Trust’s 12 Pleasant Avenue.
The final way to create subsidized Affordable Housing is through Inclusionary Zoning. This program requires to home builders to include Affordable homes when constructing new dense housing like the towering 50 Prospect by US2 or smaller-scale projects like 115 Thurston. Over the last few decades it has been in place, Inclusionary Zoning rules in have created about 750 Affordable homes.
Using the figures from the Affordable Housing Trust year end report, there are about 4,500 Affordable homes in Somerville. That represents almost 13% out of the approximately 35,000 homes total homes in the city.
Building housing is expensive. Nowadays it can cost anywhere from $500,000 to $1,000,000 to build a new home in Somerville. Affordable housing in particular is on the higher side. As an example, Just a Start’s 24 Webster Ave project comes in at $837,000 per home. That makes it tough to build Affordable housing as the revenue from lower rents may not be able to cover the cost of loans to build them. Thus the need to subsidize Affordable housing directly by our governments or have home builders subsidize via profits from other homes in the building.
With that economic context, how have we built new Affordable Housing? That Affordable Housing Trust year end review tells us that from 2016 through 2025 we built 118 new Subsidized homes and bought another 117 homes through the 100 Homes program. That is a total of 235 new non-profit Affordable Homes. That report also tells us that we have built 570 new Affordable homes through our Inclusionary Zoning over that same period.
So to answer the question from the top: from the AHT report we know we built 118 new Affordable Homes from 2016 to 2025. 50 Prospect St in Union Square contributed 90 newly built Affordable homes which is slightly less. It’s disappointing that a decade’s worth of government funding for Affordable Housing in Somerville is nearly matched by a single privately built building.
It is hard to raise the money to build purely Affordable Housing, especially when we are capped in how much our city can raise taxes by state law. It’ll be harder with a potential budget shortfall this year that will impact future years. Thus our need to rely on Inclusionary Zoning to carry the load. However, our IZ only applies to 13.5% of lots that could have homes. It could work even better if we let it happen more with density that makes it viable.
Our 2019 zoning reform mostly rezoned the city as it was and our Somervision designates only select areas for change. Much of that intent is for commercial development instead of home building which has only exacerbated our housing shortage. However, if we open up more of the city to even slightly denser development, we can use IZ to build a lot more Affordable Housing that doesn’t cost the city a dime.