To combat the housing crisis, Cambridge allows apartment buildings up to six stories everywhere in the city

Boston Globe

11-02-2025

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'I think that this will be a landmark moment, where the zoning map of Cambridge doesn't exactly look like a copy... of a redlining map, where the [most] affordable housing is not only in areas which also have more people of color and more multi-family housing in general, but our whole city is growing together as one with a unified residential district,' said Councilor Burhan Azeem, who authored the proposal with Councilor Sumbul Siddiqui.
The proposal comes as cities and towns across Eastern Massachusetts are
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With Monday's vote, Cambridge went the opposite direction. While the zoning plan is controversial, particularly among residents of some of the city's less dense neighborhoods, it represents the most sweeping attempt by a city in this state to find a solution to the housing problem.
And it also puts Cambridge on the forefront of the national YIMBY — or Yes in My Back Yard — movement, which supports looser zoning rules to boost the production of housing. The six-story policy is perhaps the broadest YIMBY policy passed in a US city to date.
The nine-member council passed the plan 8-1
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Still, it was not without controversy. Over two hours of public comment
Monday night, some residents worried that the proposal was too much, too fast — that it would lead to overcrowding in lower-slung neighborhoods, and promote the development of expensive luxury housing instead of homes that are affordable to residents with lower- and middle-class incomes. Some also complained that the proposal was too simplistic, and that it had come together too quickly.
'I believe this proposal will produce mostly luxury units, raise real estate values, taxes, and rents, displace residents and raise both physical and psychological havoc in our neighborhoods,' said Catherine Zusy, the lone councilor who voted against the plan. 'It is not a recipe for urban planning. It is a recipe for random development at the whim of developers.'
Cambridge City Councilors Burhan Azeem, left, and Sumbul Siddiqui led the push for new zoning that will allow six-story buildings by right citywide.
Erin Clark/Globe Staff
The proposal that passed Monday was a slightly reduced compromise of the original plan, which simply would have allowed six-stories, by-right,
everywhere in Cambridge, meaning projects could be permitted without the special approval of a city board if they meet the city's zoning parameters, citywide.
But after persistent pushback, including from within the council, Azeem and other supporters negotiated a compromise. Instead, the proposal allows for four stories by-right citywide, and developers can add two additional stories, getting up to six,
if they set aside 20 percent of the units in a project as affordable.
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That means that if the proposal yields significant market-rate housing, it will also bring an influx of new affordable homes.
In the end, almost every councilor agreed that it was time to get rid of single-family zoning, sometimes referred to as exclusionary zoning, which rose to prominence in the early 20th century as a policy tool for keeping some neighborhoods exclusive along racial boundaries by preventing the construction of apartments.
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Six stories is the necessary scale for a city like Cambridge, said Azeem, because is little open land on which to build new housing. The city is so dense already, he said, that if they want to build more, the only way to do so is to build higher.
By some measures, Cambridge has the worst localized housing crisis in Massachusetts and some of the highest housing costs in the United States. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,612 a month, according to
Cambridge has become something of a laboratory for housing reform in recent years. First it passed
The council also passed a policy that
Each of those policies was controversial in their own right, but as the council has continued to push on housing policy, old political lines have begun to fade away. That six-story zoning passed with only one opposing vote would have been unthinkable even a couple of years ago. In fact, a much lesser multifamily housing plan that was proposed a few years ago never even made it to a vote.
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'For too long, exclusionary zoning has put up barriers, barriers that have kept people out, that have restricted growth, that have made it harder for families to put down roots,' Mayor Denise Simmons said ahead of the vote Monday. 'And so tonight, we have the chance to take down some of those barriers and make good on the commitment of being a welcoming and accessible city.'
Andrew Brinker can be reached at