I chair the Newton Fair Housing Committee, and April is Fair Housing month. This past week, I participated in a seminar sponsored by the Center for Civic Engagement & Next Gen Voices at NNHS this past week, which focused on the history of zoning and the creation of affordable housing in Newton. Alice Ingerson, PhD, put together a PPT that followed the development of Zoning from 1922 to the present, from which I am borrowing certain key excerpts. Then as now, the issues that were and are so polarizing were strikingly similar: whether to preserve Newton and keep it the “Garden City” existing residents knew and loved, or adopt multi-family zoning that would create housing opportunities which were affordable for lower income families as well as recent immigrants from Europe who settled primarily in Nonantum and Upper Falls, near the mills where they found work.

In 1922, when Newton adopted its first Zoning Code, the debate over exclusionary zoning bore a striking resemblance to the current discourse concerning the conversion of restrictive single-family zoning to allow multi-family dwellings by right in at least part of the City. Indeed, the arguments on the extreme fringe over zoning today echo and sometimes mirror those made in 1922.  At that time, letters to the editor of the Newton Graphic concerning Newton’s first proposed Zoning Code included the following:

“[T]o preserve its institutions [the nation] must keep out those who would enter simply for their own selfish interests…. The leech fattens and lives by killing.

“[On] the zoning system … those who have built and settled have the right to rule….”

John Cutler, Newton Graphic, April 14, 1922, pp 1-2.

“The man who owns his own home … is the man who has made Newton the Garden City….

“Behind these people is … a wave of ‘flat dwellers.’ They own nothing….

“This is the logical time for the migration of the Flat Dwellers. Newton will either be a garden or a garbage city in twenty years, according as we act now.”

Ernest Cobb, Newton Graphic, November 24, 1922, p. 8.

Taking the opposing side is the author of this letter:

“Your correspondent’s special resentment against the ‘Flat-dweller’ … seems to be a little out of keeping with the spirit of Democracy…. [T]he greatest danger to America … grows out of this very tendency toward segregation and isolation, which makes one half both unmindful and unconcerned as to how the other half lives.”

Frederick Palladino, Newton Graphic, December 8, 1922, p. 8.

Newton Mayor Edwin Childs vetoed the Board of Aldermen’s single-resident district zoning twice, before reaching a compromise which created a “private residence” zone that allowed 1 and 2 family dwellings by right in areas that were already densely settled. In his inaugural address in 1923, Childs agreed with critics who viewed single-family zoning as “undemocratic, class legislation”:

“The first and second [zoning] ordinance passed I vetoed, and I have no apologies to make…. Both were founded on selfishness.

“After all it isn’t so much the sort of house as the people in it which makes or breaks a city. All of the good people are not found in single dwelling.

“[I]t is the character of the citizen that counts, and the Zoning Ordinance as adopted in my judgment will be of great benefit to Newton of the present and the future because it will make it possible for character to have an equal chance with money as our city grows.”

Mark Twain is supposed to have said “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” The competing arguments over zoning set forth above are, regrettably, also at the center of today’s debate over Zoning Redesign. Opponents on the extremist side of the issue often cite the rights of existing residents to dictate what can be built, and recite their nostalgic memories of how Newton “used to be” a Garden City. They want to choose their new neighbors, preferably families with children in housing that will settle here permanently and not “change the character of the neighborhood.” They go so far as to predict that if multi-family housing with affordable units is allowed in their neighborhoods that the new tenants will be putting refrigerators or mattresses on their balconies, or overpopulating the public schools, thereby destroying the social fabric of the community.

Those of us who support fair housing in Newton take a stance that “rhymes” with the words of Mayor Childs and Frederick Palladino:  we see exclusionary zoning as an impediment to equal housing opportunity, economic progress, and promoting diversity. Viewed in the context of 100 years of Newton’s history, we see restrictive zoning—limiting residential development to single-family homes and requiring large lot sizes—as particularly “undemocratic” and “exclusionary” by design. Thankfully, after four years of an utter lack of leadership on “affirmatively furthering fair housing” from the White House and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, President Joe Biden has committed to expanding equal housing opportunities to all. He has signed an executive order that extends protections against housing discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity, and allocates $65 billion in new incentives to construct or rehabilitate low-cost, efficient, resilient, and accessible housing for communities—like Newton—that are suffering from an affordability crisis, which are willing to implement new zoning laws that encourage more affordable housing.

Like Mayor Childs, those of us who are committed to affirmatively furthering fair housing in Newton firmly believe that it is not buildings that make a community, but the character of the people who live in them.  Similarly, we also believe that the adoption of the proposed Zoning Redesign “will be of great benefit to Newton of the present and the future because it will make it possible for character to have an equal chance with money as our city grows.”

To be sure, then, as now, the vast majority of Newton residents did not and do not fall into either camp. In my experience, most of the people who are afraid of, or at least skeptical about, Zoning Redesign do not harbor any animus toward any minority group, people with disabilities, low to moderate income households, or any of the other people who  benefit from affirmatively furthering fair housing. Although governmental policies that promoted exclusionary zoning, redlining, and maintaining racial segregation in residential development are elements of the systemic racism that has created and maintained patterns of racial segregation in housing, opposing density or multi-family housing does not make you a bigot; being a racist does. Nor are supporters of affirmatively furthering fair housing seeking to destroy neighborhood traditions or the social fabric of our community, or take away Santa Claus Park in Nonantum. What we do want to do is win all of you in the middle or “undecided” column over to the side of supporting equal housing opportunity for all, and embracing our commitment to begin right here, in Newton. Which is why I am urging you to join us.

To learn more about Fair Housing, I invite you to download Newton’s Fair Housing Month Flyer at https://www.newtonma.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=67878, where you can find links to sign up for a free, virtual Fair Housing Workshop sponsored by the MetroWest HOME Consortium on Sunday, April 11, and Thursday, April 19, 2021, as well as other informative fair housing resources.  Thank you!