Town of Arlington, Fair Housing Action Plan (July 2021)

Citation: Town of Arlington, Fair Housing Action Plan (July 2021)
Jurisdiction: Arlington (municipal)
Source: Official source
Original Source: https://www.arlingtonma.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/57214/637641171662530000 ↗

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Chapter II:
Community Profile
Can members of protected classes access housing in Arlington? This is the first and most fundamental question in
assessing fair housing choice. This section uses quantitative demographic data to discuss representation of nine
protected classes, and, in some cases, characteristics of these groups in Arlington. For each protected class with
available demographic data, this chapter assesses how many members live in Arlington, how this figure
compares proportionally to other municipalities, and how it compares to the comparison region as a whole
(through what is called the “aggregate statistic”).
As part of this analysis, this plan considers the financial characteristics of these protected classes. While low-
income households are not themselves a protected class, many protected classes experience substantially lower
average income levels and higher poverty rates than the general population—an implicit barrier to accessing
housing options in an expensive region such as greater Boston. For this reason, this plan evaluates financial
characteristics of classes to understand where housing affordability might disproportionately impact members of
protected classes.
Unfortunately, due to data limitations, not all protected classes could be analyzed as part of this plan. No robust
data exists on color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or genetic information.3 While this part of the
plan cannot analyze protected classes related to those characteristics, they are nonetheless protected under fair
housing law and other parts of the plan address fair housing choice for those groups.