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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Assessment: With regards to production of affordable housing, Arlington benefits from a relatively robust
nonprofit field for a town of its size. Many smaller towns further from Boston’s inner core have no active CDC or
nonprofit housing developer. That is not the case in Arlington, which has two active nonprofits providing housing.
The issue is not a lack of capacity, but a lack of resources to acquire and develop affordable housing.
By contrast, the ecosystem of nonprofits providing housing-related services is not very robust. Legal services
nonprofit staff cited the benefits of a centralized referring agency in neighboring Somerville and Cambridge,
which accept direct referrals from residents and receive direct funding from city agencies, allowing them to be
proactive at the local level. Arlington does not have this capacity. Furthermore, Arlington has no dedicated
nonprofit addressing fair housing specifically. This glaring deficit is discussed more on Fair Housing Education and
Enforcement on page 98.

Housing Stock
To achieve fair housing goals, Arlington must have a housing stock that meets the needs of protected classes; that
housing must be affordable to protected classes for it to be truly available. A thorough analysis of Arlington’s
existing housing stock can be found in Appendix B: Housing Characteristics and Costs on page 109, parts of
which are summarized here. Because housing is expensive to build and can be maintained for a very long time,
the composition of a community’s housing can be difficult to change. Older communities can face added barriers

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Arlington Fair Housing Action Plan