By David Gibbs

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

Back when SomerVision planners asked Villens what they loved most about their city, the two biggest responses were “community” and “diversity.” Skyrocketing housing costs are reducing our economic diversity, and the displacement of long-term residents is unraveling our community.

I’ve been thinking lately about how our inclusionary zoning policy, as presently structured, may be undermining community as well, both morally and economically. Morally, it divides us into “us” and “them”—the “poor” who need “subsidized” housing, and the “rest of us” who presumably can afford “market rate” housing. And it may actually be reducing housing affordability.

Affordability demographics

Economic inequality data tell us that, while the ranks of America’s poorest households are increasing, its middle class is shrinking. And Boston Magazine reports that, “Boston’s cost of living is 39.7 percent above the U.S. average…while our median household income remains stubbornly on par with the rest of the country.”

According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a family of four in Middlesex County, composed of two adults working 40 hours/week, 52 weeks/year, and two school-aged children, needs $71,233 before taxes to make ends meet. The Crittenton Women’s Union Economic Independence Calculator gives a comparable figure of $74,664.

Both these calculations are bare-bones. They do not include savings, whether for emergencies, college, a family vacation, or retirement. And they assume constant employment.

In 2013 about 53.7% of Somerville’s 32,500 households had incomes of $75,000 or less. So more than half of the city’s residents did not have income to support even a bare-bones budget, and they might qualify for rental subsidies.

Those qualifications are largely drawn from Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines. Policies based on those guidelines reserve a certain amount of housing for extremely-low-income households—those making 30% or less of Area Median Income (AMI).

In Somerville this translates to a family of four making $29,450 a year or less. Additional subsidies are reserved for very-low-income households, earning up to 50% of AMI, or $49,050. A few more go to low-income-households, earning up to 80% of AMI, or $73,050.

With the Federal poverty limit at $24,300, we’re not used to thinking of households earning up to $73,050 as “Low Income.” Our perceptions haven’t caught up to four decades of wage stagnation. These “low income” households are doing better than their many poorer neighbors, but they’re still struggling in this housing market.

The Sustainable Neighborhoods Working Group Report , issued this past fall, recognized this reality. It said that, “While there is an extraordinary demand among the lowest income households, there is also a real need for housing accessible to middle income households—those between 80% and 110% AMI.”

Affordability economics

By focusing inclusionary zoning only on extremely-low- and very-low-income households, we incentivize developers to build the least possible number of “affordable” units they can get away with. It is so expensive for a developer to build a unit for a household at 30% AMI or lower that many will not even consider it.

About $290,000 of a unit that costs $300,000 to develop must be subsidized. So under current inclusionary zoning policies, we’re asking the developer to essentially build the “affordable” unit for free. This necessitates the developer’s significantly boosting the price of the “market rate” units.

But the subsidy needed to pay for a unit affordable at 100% of AMI is only about 22% of total development costs. In other words, roughly 5 units affordable at 100% of AMI can be built for the cost of a single unit affordable at 30% of AMI.

Affordability policy

So if we want to enable the people, across all income groups, who have built the community that we love to continue doing so, what should we do? We could begin by thinking of housing as something that we all need and deserve rather than as widely divergent “affordable” and “market rate” species.

We could expand the range of incomes that qualify households for subsidies. We could increase it even beyond that suggested in the Sustainable Neighborhoods Working Group Report, say to 170% of AMI when it comes to subsidized home ownership programs.

We could require a balanced mix of affordability across the full spectrum of need, from extremely-low- to medium-income levels. This would produce a more realistic mix of affordable units. It might even encourage developers to build projects that include this range, rather than incentivizing them to build projects so small as to be exempt from inclusionary zoning requirements.

Rather than asking whether someone is “poor enough” to “deserve” a subsidy, we could recognize that there is not a single person in the world, no matter how rich, self-sufficient, or talented, who can get along without the help of others. In the long run, a system that regards housing, like food, childcare and healthcare, as fundamental rights will come up with methods for delivering them according to need, without arbitrary cutoffs.

Tools such as community land trusts can be effective forms of ownership and management for such housing, and there is an active effort underway to create such an entity here. Imagine a city where large segments of its housing stock were owned and managed by a community-controlled land trust, as opposed to being distributed only by a greed-driven, gentrifying “market.”

Before you say, “Oh no, that would never work,” take a look at Vienna, a city where fully 50% of the housing, at all income levels, is publicly owned and managed, and 60% is subsidized. It could happen here. And if we’re serious about the “community” that Villens say they love, it must.

David Gibbs is Executive Director of the Community Action Agency of Somerville.