AHO Amendment 2023 May CTA

City Council is considering a small but important amendment to the Somerville Affordable Housing Overlay rules, and we need your help encouraging them to adopt it.

You can find the

exact language of the amendment and a recording of the Council discussion of it on the city website

. The key changes are:

• Reducing the minimum distance from the lot line to the building ("setbacks") for narrower lots.

• Requiring smaller floors ("step-backs") only on the top floor, instead of on the 5th floor and up.

Those sound like pretty dry, technical details, but they have a major impact: they make more of the lot area available to be used for homes, and they make the construction simpler and less expensive. In today's financial environment, that doesn't just mean more apartments in a building — it can make or break the entire project.

In fact, those rules are part of the reason that our Affordable Housing Overlay hasn't actually led to any new affordable homes since it was adopted in 2020. The affordable housing homebuilder Just-A-Start is supporting these changes with their

24 Webster Avenue project in mind

.

Please write to

[email protected] and [email protected]

to support this amendment before 5 pm on Friday the 26th.

Here's what Steering Committee member Aaron Weber wrote:

"I'm writing to support changes outlined in AHO Amendment 2023 which reduce setback and step-back requirements for affordable housing. These small technical details have a huge impact on the way that housing is financed and built in our community, and I would very much like the city to adopt them. I look forward to your ongoing work to improve our regulations and streamline production of badly needed affordable housing. Thank you for your time and consideration."