Why we shouldn’t support the East Cambridge Neighborhood Conservation District
As soon as the December 19th meeting of the Cambridge City Council, the long, ugly saga of the East Cambridge Neighborhood Conservation District (ECNCD) could come to a close with a simple majority vote in favor or opposed to the Historical Commission’s proposal to preserve the neighborhood in amber and allow its character to be controlled by a small cadre of older white homeowners.
We urge all residents of East Cambridge and the city at large to email the full council and clerk in opposition to the proposal, which has never earned support in the neighborhood.
You can also provide public comment by registering here for the December 19th meeting at 5:30 pm. Registration should go live on the morning of Thursday the 15th.
If you’re just catching up on the issue or wondering what the problem is with the proposal, please read on for more.
There is no consensus for imposing a Neighborhood Conservation District (NCD) on East Cambridge: Since this process began three years ago, there has been tepid support for and strident neighborhood opposition against the ECNCD. The Cambridge Historical Commission (CHC) conducted a postcard poll once the ECNCD proposal was finalized that showed that the neighborhood was at best polarized, evenly divided for and against the proposal.
CHC promised residents and the City Council that the ECNCD proposal would not advance without neighborhood consensus: On September 29th, 2021, CHC Director Charles Sullivan told the Council:
“We’ve had as many [NCD] studies rejected or terminated by the Historical Commission over the 38 years of this ordinance as districts that have been established. The Commission has shown no hesitation in shutting down a study if there has not been demonstrable community support. We have never sent a study to [the City Council] that you have not approved and accepted because we want to make sure there is a consensus in the neighborhood in favor of the proposed district before we send it to [the City Council] … We don’t have a final proposal for consideration yet by either the neighborhood or the city council. But when you do, I think you can be assured that the historical commission, as they have in the past, will be recommending something that we sincerely believe has earned public support. And if it doesn’t have that, it won’t be recommended to you.”
CHC Director Charles Sullivan promised the neighborhood that the ECNCD would not be recommended if there wasn’t consensus at the end of the process. It’s now the end, and there is no consensus.
CHC has been unfaithful to its word throughout this process: At a December 1st, 2022 hearing, CHC Director Sullivan denied ever having promised the council that CHC would not recommend a proposal to the Council without neighborhood consensus, and CHC voted unanimously to do exactly what he said it would not do. Mr. Sullivan has been caught lying to the public several times during study committee hearings, gaslighting residents, and always downplaying the potential drawbacks of imposing an NCD on East Cambridge
The ECNCD “study” was an exclusionary, nearly all-white process: The ECNCD was proposed by the ECPT, a nearly all older white homeowner group that’s notorious in the neighborhood for its intolerance of diverse residents. Almost all of the supporters during the study have come from this small clique of older white homeowners.
The ECNCD was motivated by greed and proposed to raise home prices during a housing crisis: When pitching their idea to other homeowners int he neighborhood, the ECPT members who originally proposed the ECNCD cited a well-regarded academic study that showed that NCDs raise home prices and touted that fact as a benefit of establishing an ECNCD. Later, when the ECPT realized that raising home prices during a housing and displacement crisis was politically problematic, they denied that they’d ever said what they said multiple times and in writing.
CHC Director Sullivan witnessed the ECPT make their claims about home prices, and yet supported the ECNCD study: Mr. Sullivan attended a ECPT meeting in June of 2019 where the original ECNCD petitioners presented their promise that NCDs would raise home prices to a group of homeowners. He also witnessed a spirited debate where some attendees decried private economic benefit being a primary goal of public policy. He would later deny that the conversation ever happened and he refused to allow the academic research to be discussed openly as part of the ECNCD study process, even the paper that the original petitioners cited.
The ECNCD will raise home prices: The overwhelming consensus of academic research shows that all types of Historical Preservation Districting, an umbrella term that included Neighborhood Conservation Districts and Historic Districts, increase home prices, housing costs, and rents. An architect who worked on a project in the study area during the binding review period stated in the public record that the CHC review drove up project costs and provided no benefit.
The ECNCD marginalized minority voices and allowed white residents to speak for a diverse neighborhood: Over 40% of East Cambridge residents are people of color. However, when it came time to select resident members of the ECNCD study committee, Mr. Sullivan selected an all-white resident panel. Mr. Sullivan defended his decision saying that no residents of color applied to serve. Instead of seeing that as red flag signaling that the Historical Commission’s application and outreach processes were flawed, noninclusive, and would lead to an unrepresentative outcome, he proceeded with an all-white board.
The ECNCD study marginalized renters: Almost 70% of East Cambridge households rent. And yet 75% of the residents who Mr. Sullivan selected to serve on the study committee were homeowners. Renter interests were consistently maligned during the process, with one study committee member and many ECPT members saying that renters shouldn’t have a voice at all.
Most of the East Cambridge community was prevented from providing meaningful input in the ECNCD process: Skeptics of the ECNCD proposal were promised seats at the table at the outset of the process, but sidelined when it became clear that opponents outnumbered supporters at meetings. Mr. Sullivan stacked the Study Committee with supporters and dissenting opinion from marginalized residents was limited to one or two minute public comments tacked onto the end of long evening meetings. Community members submitted proposals for ECNCD rules, goals, and guidelines, and all were ignored by CHC’s handpicked study committee.
The ECNCD will have an in terrorem effect on home renovations by less wealthy homeowners: The NCD application suggests bringing a coterie of expensive professionals to an NCD hearing — lawyers, architects, engineers, contractors, etc. Requiring residents to jump through a bunch of hoops to change their windows or siding — whether binding or not — will drive up costs and make renovations less likely and instead result in further deterioration of properties in the district and less livable homes for neighborhood residents.
The claimed concerns about East Cambridge apply to every neighborhood in the City: East Cambridge is not the only neighborhood built in its era with discernible history, nor the only neighborhood undergoing change. East Cambridge is special, but no more so” than The Port, Wellington-Harrington, Riverside, or North Cambridge.
The ECNCD is a solution in search of a problem: According to CHC, at most one historic building that it wanted preserved was demolished before the ECNCD was proposed. The claim of development pressures within the proposed district is demonstrably false — we’re not losing buildings in East Cambridge to redevelopment. Development outside the district in Kendall Square and Cambridge Crossing has resulted in no demolitions in the district. The city has plenty of tools to prevent worthy structures from being destroyed without needing to preserve entire neighborhoods in amber.
What’s wrong with NCDs generally?
NCDs in Cambridge are structurally racist: NCDs in Cambridge have historically been advanced by groups of older white homeowners fearful of the encroachment of multi-family housing into their majority white neighborhoods.
NCD Commissions in Cambridge are dominated by older white homeowners: NCD Commissions are structured around multi-year volunteer commitments for unpaid work requiring professional credentials, and that structure has historically guaranteed that their membership has been and will continue to be composed almost entirely of older white homeowners.
NCDs empower the aesthetic opinions of a few white people with the force of law: There are no clear design principles that a homeowner can follow to guarantee compliance with an NCD Commission dictates. Instead, NCD rules are a tangle of contradictory guidance that a tiny handful of commission members get to interpret however they want to. Homeowners must comply or face costly fines and legal processes. This bad, arbitrary governance is cited as a benefit by CHC Director Sullivan.
NCDs let subsets of neighborhoods opt out of our common housing crisis: We know that our housing crisis is a regional struggle that requires regional solutions. On the other hand, NCDs are obstacles to regional or even city-wide solutions, creating hyper-local legal units designed to exempt traditionally privileged residents from our shared struggle to create new housing opportunities in every neighborhood.
NCDs are patchwork zoning: Zoning is complicated work that must balance the needs of the city holistically. NCDs give a small group of residents the ability to restrict homeowner’s rights far below zoning limits based solely on their aesthetic opinions.
Minor alterations during redevelopment of one building that was quickly landmarked cannot justify the imposition of landmarking over the entire neighborhood of hundreds of buildings and thousands of people. In the three years since the ECNCD study started, every individual historic building in East Cambridge could have been studied and landmarked. CHC believes every building in Cambridge is a unique snowflake worthy of preservation, so they are unwilling to cede control of any buildings in the neighborhood. Instead, CHC has repeatedly allowed and even encouraged NIMBYism under the guise of historic preservation. After the ECNCD hearing, the next case, which had been to CHC five times, contained zoning concerns masquerading as preservation, and one member inappropriately threatened to vote against it based in part on considerations not within CHC’s jurisdiction, including trees and density.
