Housing Update | Affordable Housing Overlay Districts: A Zoning Tool
May 20th, 2021
The Pattern for Progress Center for Housing Solutions convenes industry leaders for a virtual panel discussion about the City of Cambridge’s 100%- Affordable Housing Overlay. Affordable housing developers often cannot compete with market-rate developers who can afford to pay more for land and buildings.
Adopted by the City Council in October 2020, the 100%-Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO) is a city-wide overlay district designed to help affordable housing developers create new, permanently affordable homes quickly and cost-effectively by creating an as-of-right approval process for developments that meet the AHO zoning standards. The AHO incentivizes affordable housing development by permitting modest increases in height and density over comparable market-rate developments.
Join Joe Czajka and our guests Cassie Arnaud, Jeff Roberts, and Daniel Messplay, from the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts to discuss the background and benefits of this community housing program. This is an incredibly useful tool to help meet the growing need for a range of housing options in the Hudson Valley.
Joe Czajka, Pattern for Progress
Panel:
Cassie Arnaud
Senior Housing Planner at City of Cambridge
Jeff Roberts
Director of Zoning & Development at City of Cambridge
Daniel Messplay, AICP
Senior Zoning + Development Manager at City of Cambridge
Cassie Arnaud
Cassie Arnaud is a Senior Housing Planner for the City of Cambridge with more than 25 years’ experience in affordable housing policy and finance. She has a Master’s in City Planning from MIT and a BA from McGill University.
Jeff Roberts
Jeff Roberts is the Director of Zoning & Development in the City of Cambridge, MA. Jeff has served in several roles in the City of Cambridge Community Development Department since 2003, with specialized experience in zoning and urban development, neighborhood planning, and open space planning. Jeff has a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Urban Studies & Planning from MIT.
Daniel Messplay, AICP
Daniel Messplay is the Senior Manager for Zoning & Development in the City of Cambridge, MA Community Development Department. Prior to that, Daniel worked in various planning and urban development roles for municipalities in New York, Arkansas and Virginia; including most recently as the Senior Real Estate Development Manager for the City of New Rochelle, NY and the Assistant Director of Planning & Economic Development for the Village of Port Chester, NY.
Daniel has a Bachelor of Arts in Historic Preservation from the University of Mary Washington, a Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning from Virginia Tech with a Graduate Certificate in Geospatial Information Science, and a Master’s in Real Estate from Georgetown University.