Affordable Housing, Zoning, and the Bottom Line: What Can Other Cities Learn from the 100 Percent Affordable Housing Overlay in Cambridge?

Location: Zoom

Speaker(s): Iram Farooq, Marc McGovern, Noah Sawyer, David Luberoff

The new 100 Percent Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which encourages the production of permanently-affordable housing through density bonuses and a streamlined design review process, could be a model for other cities and towns with high housing costs. In this event, Iram Farooq, Assistant City Manager for Community Development, City Councilor Marc McGovern, and Noah Sawyer, Director of Real Estate for Just-A-Start, a Cambridge-based community development corporation, will discuss what the AHO does, how it was passed, how it is being used, and what leaders across the country might learn from one city’s efforts to produce permanently-affordable housing more quickly, more cost-effectively, and in neighborhoods that currently have little affordable housing.

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Co-Sponsor(s): Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at the Harvard Kennedy School

Apartment building in Cambridge, MA.