On June 26, the Newton City Council’s Zoning & Planning Committee will hold a public hearing public hearing on proposed new village-center zoning. In anticipation, some residents have expressed the fear that by allowing multifamily housing to be built by right in and near village centers, the new zoning will encourage gentrification and make Newton as a community less diverse.
The attached graphs show that our current zoning is already doing exactly this. These graphs compare the distribution of household incomes in Newton, and for context in Massachusetts as a whole, in 1990 vs. 2021. Over the past three decades, while Newton’s zoning has not changed significantly, Newton as a community has changed radically — in the very ways that worry many people who are skeptical about the proposed new zoning.
It is appealing to think that the best way to keep our community from changing is by not changing our current policies. However, these graphs strongly suggest that leaving our current zoning in place will make Newton even less diverse economically than it already is — though the 2021 graph makes it a little hard to imagine what “even less diverse” would look like!
We cannot make Newton more diverse by doing nothing — we must push back actively against the kinds of change we do not want. Although zoning is certainly not the only factor currently making Newton less diverse, it is at least under our own control. I believe revising our zoning has an important role to play in that push.