An over-restrictive zoning plan

It may come as a surprise to some that one of the most prolific housing forms in Massachusetts is largely not allowed to be built today.  Cities and towns across the Commonwealth often require zoning variances for construction of new three-decker housing.  By-right zoning for three-decker homes—meaning inclusion within a city’s zoning plan—is a simple way to help alleviate the housing crisis.  This form of housing alone won’t bring us into the future but will allow us to catch up to the past in a way that seamlessly fits in with the character of neighborhoods.  Massachusetts can lead on innovative solutions for the future that lower costs and increase affordability by working with a form that we know so well.  In the meantime, expansion of three-decker housing can help remove barriers to homeownership and grow a middle class for families to thrive.

How We Got Here

Three-deckers are considered “democratic architecture” due to their affordability to construct and history of serving as gateway housing for new residents.[1]  In an 1869 report on the annexation of Dorchester, Commissioners noted that “[t]he importance of retaining the industrial classes of our community within the city limits cannot be overestimated.  An industrious, intelligent mechanic, who has a family and is laboring to place his children in a better position than he has been able to attain, is a most valuable man in any community.  To retain such men we must be able to give them land at moderate prices.”[2]  This sentiment has not been lost over time.  150 years later, a governance reform plan for the Boston Planning and Development Agency proposed by then-City Councilor Michelle Wu argued that “[a]s families are forced to relocate outside the city, Boston has seen a downward trend in its population of children and families, which are key demographics for city growth and success.”[3]  Within that 150-year span, the humble three-decker has been the workhorse that brought regional growth and success, but not without protest.

Lawmakers on Beacon Hill passed the Tenement House Act for Towns in 1912 as a local option rule to ban the construction of new three-deckers across the state.[4]  These bans on three-deckers took root in the 1920’s as a backlash to new immigrant populations moving into city neighborhoods.[5]  Fires among densely settled three-deckers in Chelsea and Salem sparked heightened criticism from urban reformers calling for an end to the “Menace of the Three-Decker.”[6]  Despite this push back, city planners saw the value in preserving housing and explaining how its design was informed by the communities that built it.

Gables in Roxbury, Queen Anne-style porches in Savin Hill,
and flat roof three-deckers on smaller lots in South Boston. 
The beauty of the three-decker is in its simple replicability to
construct as affordable housing while being adorned by details
specific to their builders.  Most early three-deckers were
constructed directly by landowners without blueprints.  Instead,
“the three-deckers were built by a repetition of successful
methods and forms, following examples in the local
neighborhoods, so that very distinctive three-decker types
developed in various parts of Dorchester.”[7]  These distinctive
details give neighborhoods the character that residents still
work so hard to defend. 

Where We’re Going

Cities across Massachusetts have recognized the good that three-deckers can do for their communities and are already including their development by-right within zoning codes.  New Bedford has reformed its zoning code to come into compliance with the MBTA Communities Act and in support of the city’s Building New Bedford Plan.[8]  The newly proposed ordinance will shift the planning review threshold up to allow development of three-family homes by right throughout New Bedford.[9]  Similarly, Somerville learned that unleashing the three-decker is the best way to achieve housing growth in their city.  Somerville enacted a re-zoning plan in 2019 dubbed a “compromise” which only allowed new three-deckers to be built adjacent to existing three-decker and required one affordability-restricted unit.[10]  This restrictive plan resulted in no new growth.[11]  The plan has since been revised to permit three-deckers by-right, “encouraging tailored density” in the city.[12]

Allowing three-deckers by right helps communities to solve problems and work toward goals that promote widespread wealth-creation.  Through re-zoning, cities and towns can:

• Allow a form of housing that already exists to seamlessly fit into neighborhoods.  The 1920’s shift towards bigger lot sizes and lower density has created “unsightly visual gaps in what could be thriving residential or mixed-use neighborhoods.”[13]  Cities and towns can create neighborhood-specific visual appeal by filling in the gaps with versatile, affordable housing.  It’s also possible to innovate on the internal structure of three-deckers to better match the needs of today’s housing market.  Today, too many family-sized homes like three-deckers are occupied by multi-adult roommate groups who “can pay, on average, $450 more in monthly rent than the average family.”[14]  This market mismatch was already recognized in 1975 when a Boston Redevelopment Authority study recommended one-bedroom conversions for three-deckers.[15]  Unlocking the form of the three-decker can be the solution to this issue.

• Make housing more affordable by speeding up the development process.  Each new unit of housing in the Boston metro area typically costs between $500,000-$600,000 to construct.[16]  Without by-right zoning, projects can be held up in the permitting and variance approval process for years before breaking ground, accruing interest on top of loans used to finance new housing.  This, in turn, increases rental costs for those who will inevitably live in these units.  Communities can better serve their current and future residents by removing this barrier to entry, zoning for three-deckers by right, and lowering development costs.  Somerville’s policy experiment has shown that fewer barriers to creating wanted housing results in more housing built faster.[17]  When that housing is in a form that already exists throughout a neighborhood, it just makes good sense to speed up the process.
  

• Help grow the middle class.  Homeownership is the key driver of wealth accumulation for most U.S. households.[18]  But the promise of owning a home can come at a significant risk for certain low-income families.[19]  Still, homeownership can help with climbing the socioeconomic ladder under appropriate conditions.  Owner-occupied three-deckers provide an opportunity to mitigate the risks associated with low-income homeownership by diversifying their asset portfolio and increasing the owner’s liquidity through rental income.[20]  This type of program would also benefit tenants by preserving existing affordable housing and creating new affordable units.[21]

Looking Forward

Three-deckers represent a portrait of Massachusetts’ past and potential for the future.  With identical units stacked on top of each other, modular development and construction is a necessary innovation for expanding the housing stock “40 percent faster, for substantially less cost.”[22]  What we learn from building more three-deckers in new ways can help Massachusetts as we build larger forms of housing, too.  Additional solutions to lowering development costs like single-stair reforms–relaxing the building code to allow single-stair egress from larger multi-family developments–will propel Massachusetts forward in solving the housing crisis.  As a first step, we must learn from what we know and zone for three-deckers by-right.

Housing Forward-MA is a nonprofit research and education organization focused on developing and disseminating accurate data related to housing creation in Massachusetts and the broader economic impacts of housing supply and demand.  By providing training, education, and model policy proposals our organization will support organizing and advocacy efforts for affordable, workforce housing across the state.

For more information, please visit our website: www.housingforwardma.org

[1] See Arthur J. Krim, Three-Deckers of Dorchester:  An Architectural Historical Survey, iii (1977). 

[2] See Report of the Commissioners on the Annexation of Dorchester, 8 (1969).

[3] See Michelle Wu, Fixing Boston’s Broken Development Process:  Why and How to Abolish the BPDA, 19 (2019).

[4] See A Short History of Boston’s Triple Deckers, Boston Preservation Alliance (Aug. 16, 2023), https://perma.cc/4TDL-UBJW.   The law banned any “wooden tenement” in which “cooking [shall] be done above the second floor,” effectively banning the functionality of three-family housing.  See H. No. 2166, 1912 Leg., c. 2 § 55 (Mass. 1912), https://archives.lib.state.ma.us/server/api/core/bitstreams/2e4909f0-ce59-4306-aa18-ca86c73462fe/content.

[5] See Anthony Flint, Boston’s Beloved Triple-Deckers are Next-Level Affordable Housing, Bloomberg Citylab (May 17, 2023), https://perma.cc/PW8X-NYCS.

[6] See Krim, supra n.1 at 68. 

[7] See Krim, supra n.1 at xiv.

[8] See Grace Ferguson, Laws to Trigger New Housing Before Council, The New Bedford Light (Oct. 8, 2024), https://perma.cc/A5JA-X3DV; Building New Bedford, Strategies to Promote Attainable Housing for All in a Thriving New Bedford, at 24, https://perma.cc/MW7B-E996.

[9] See An Ordinance Amending Chapter 9, Comprehensive Zoning, at 2, https://perma.cc/N4FP-4KNQ.

[10] See Meredith Gabrilska, Somerville Legalizes Iconic Triple-Decker Structures, Mass. Mun. Ass’n, https://perma.cc/G947-PSBG.

[11] See Jennifer Smith, ‘What is can be’--A second life for the Somerville triple-decker, Commonwealth Beacon (Jan. 2, 2024), https://perma.cc/QUR9-XCWC.

[12] Id.

[13] See Building New Bedford, supra n.7 at 24.

[14] See Tim Reardon, et al., Crowded In and Priced Out—Why It’s so Hard to Find a Family-Sized Unit in Greater Boston, Metro. Area Planning Council (Jan. 31, 2020), https://perma.cc/N9P9-8PN4.  “[T]he lack of affordable smaller options has pushed more younger householders into roommate households since 2000, increasing competition for the limited supply of large units.”  Id.

[15] See Working Class Housing:  A Study of Triple Deckers in Boston, Boston Redevelopment Auth. (1975), https://perma.cc/HW4U-AVY6.

[16] See Catherine Carlock & Tim Logan, Many forces drive the housing crisis here, and the sky-high cost of construction is one of the most powerful, Boston Globe (Dec. 22, 2023), https://perma.cc/8F5D-RMN8.

[17] See Gabrilska, supra n.10 (the 2019 reform “‘was too stringent of a restriction for anyone to do’” and “failed to result in new housing.”).

[18] See Daniel R. Carroll & Ross Cohen-Kristiansen, Evaluating Homeownership as the Solution to Wealth Inequality, Fed. Reserve Bank of Cleveland (Dec. 21, 2021), https://perma.cc/YNN2-PD54.

[19] See Carroll & Cohen-Kristiansen, supra n.17 (“Policies that incentivize purchasing homes instead of renting for the purposes of reducing wealth inequality or closing racial wealth gaps should be adopted only after great care has been taken to protect against location, timing, and liquidity risks.  Failure to do this could have the unintended effect of increasing the wealth gap over time.”); Peter Ciurczak, Breaking Down Asset Types by Race, Racial Wealth Equity Resource Center (Apr. 11, 2024), https://perma.cc/E256-XJMB (exhibiting concentration of wealth in primary residence without portfolio diversification).

[20] See Ciurczak, supra n.18; Jacob Wegmann, What Happened to the Three-Decker?, Mass. Inst. of Tech., 14-15 (Sept. 2006), https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/37424/123191174-MIT.pdf.

[21] See Wegmann, supra n.20 at 15.

[22] See Carlock & Logan, supra n.15.