The On the Street series looks at the past, present, and future of neighborhoods in Greater Boston.
With its bustling office parks that line Route 128, Waltham has added a lot of jobs in recent years. But what it hasn’t added is anywhere near enough housing for all of those workers to live in.
Now — with its last-minute approval to advance a state-mandated housing plan — that may start to change, at least in some corners of town.
The Waltham City Council is poised to approve an MBTA Communities zoning plan that would enable thousands of new units of multifamily housing near two commuter rail stations on either side of the city. It’s just zoning allowing for potential construction, not actual projects, but if they’re in fact built, they’d represent the biggest expansion of housing this city of 65,000 has seen in decades.
Indeed, from 2018 through 2022, Waltham permitted just 192 new units, according to data tracked by the state, a number that amounts to less than 1 percent of its existing housing stock. Earlier in the 2010s, it didn’t build much faster.
The MBTA Communities law, passed in 2021, aims to require cities and towns served by the T to accelerate housing development. While more than 100 communities have passed plans over the last year, some have voted them down or stalled, setting up a showdown with state officials who’ve signaled they’ll enforce the law aggressively.
In Waltham, things went down to the wire, with the City Council taking a key vote on Monday — its last meeting of the year — to advance a plan making room for 4,002 units, just 20 more than the state law requires.
That vote followed a lengthy meeting earlier this month, where councilors debated the scale of new buildings — whether they could include eight apartments or just four — how they’d fit in with the surrounding neighborhoods, and how many of the units would be affordable. And they heard from roughly two dozen residents who came to speak on the personal toll of high housing costs in a once-affordable city where the median price of a single-family home now tops $800,000.
Debra Herman described her “cute little two-bedroom condo, one bedroom for the grandkids,” except despite having four children in their 20s and 30s, she doesn’t have any grandkids yet.
“They can either afford rent or children. Or if they can afford a mortgage, they can’t find a starter home,” she said. “People that age are moving out of this area in droves.”
Still, some city councilors were skeptical the plan would do much to alleviate the urgent crisis those residents described, or result in much housing any time soon. Much of the land in the zoning already holds other buildings — which owners would need to decide to replace with housing — and most of the units would be market rent.
“This might take 10 or 20 years to build,” said Councilor Sean Durkee. “If you have, say, an adult child living with you, this is not going to help.”
Still, the councilors ultimately voted to approve a plan, one that would zone for new housing in spots on either side of town: around the Brandeis/Riverside commuter rail station in the southwest corner of Waltham and near the Waverly stop on the Belmont town line.
That neither zone is in the core of Waltham, near the downtown commuter rail station, Moody Street, or Waltham Common, feels like something of a missed opportunity, said Tom Benavides of housing advocacy group Waltham Inclusive Neighborhoods. There’s still plenty of room in that part of town to build small multifamily buildings at a scale that has always been part of Waltham’s fabric, at least until zoning changes in the ‘50s made it illegal to build anymore.
“Waltham isn’t even ready to allow its existing neighborhoods to be built today,” he said. “I was hoping we’d at least meet the moment of legalizing the housing that already exists.”
Still, it’s progress, said Benavides, whose group organized most of the supporters who urged the council to pass the plan. And the two city councilors who represent Waltham’s south side note that most of the new housing that’s gone up over the last decade has been built downtown and nearby, in a zoning district the city created in the early ‘90s to redevelop old factories that hug the Charles. Several new apartment buildings have opened over the last decade.
“We were already doing transit-oriented development long before the state came in,” said City Councilor Robert Logan.
And today, much of the rest of the neighborhood consists of older small buildings with rents that are relatively affordable, notes Logan, housing immigrants and working-class residents who’d otherwise be priced out of Waltham.
“My big fear was that they’d rezone that and, basically in the name of affordable housing, tear down actually affordable housing and build condos that would sell for $1 million each,” he said. “I’m very glad we didn’t do that.”
That’s the goal housing advocates had, too, to maintain some level of affordability in a city that, while hardly inexpensive, has long been more accessible than many of its neighbors. They’re hopeful that this plan can, at last, create enough new housing to make that happen.
“I used to think of Waltham as the affordable place in Greater Boston and nothing’s affordable anymore,” Waltham resident Tad Blake-Weber told the City Council. “But for people who are just landing here, young people and immigrants, this is a great opportunity for us to evolve as a city.”
More from On the Street:
- With new zoning rules, Mattapan’s Blue Hill Avenue is poised for a rebirth
- In Worcester, a ballpark and a neighborhood rise together
- Framingham is reinventing itself. Again.
Tim Logan can be reached at timothy.logan@globe.com. Follow him @bytimlogan.