How might we make zoning sexy and easy to understand? with Ellie Gilmore
This week’s guest on Public Hearing, Ellie Gilmore, and Josh ask the question, “How might we make zoning sexy and easy to understand?”, and talk about the negative impact that development projects can have on cities when the local community is not involved in important conversations about the decision making process. The local community is a crucial resource that must be utilized in every step of the process to create equitable and valuable change for all residents.
Listen to Public Hearing wherever you get your podcasts and on WICN 90.5FM, Worcester’s NPR affiliate station. And, while we celebrate women all year round, our guests for the month of March are all women who live, influence, and/or impact the City of Worcester, MA. Learn more about our show at PublicHearing.co
Transcript for this episode
Joshua Croke (00:02):
Hello Worcester and the world. This is your host, Joshua Croke. And this is the Public Hearing podcast and radio show. A show about cities, communities and designing equitable and just futures. We're talking with members of the Worcester community, residents, artists, public servants, small business owners, local activists, and politicians about inclusive, sustainable, and prosperous growth. Today, we're talking with Ellie Gilmore, an enthusiastic urbanist who believes in equitable, inclusive and accessible city planning policies. She's the community organizer at Worcester Common Ground, a community development corporation in the Piedmont neighborhood of Worcester. Her work with Worcester Common Ground focuses on resident engagement, youth programming and greenspace development. Ellie was appointed to the planning board here in Worcester in April of 2019 and holds a bachelor's in political science and will be pursuing a master in public administration. This coming fall. This is the Public Hearing podcast and radio show. Public Hearing is available wherever you listen to podcasts and on WICN 90.5 FM on Wednesdays at 6:00 PM. Worcester’s only NPR affiliate station. Ellie, thank you so much for coming on the show. We always start the show, asking our guests to share some background about themselves, including parts of their social location or social characteristics of one's identity that have been deemed important by society to bring additional context to our conversation today. Some of those things may include social class, gender, race, and ethnicity, educational achievement, and more, but please share whatever you'd like to bring into this space. And thank you so much for joining me on Public Hearing today.
Ellie Gilmore (01:40):
Josh. Thank you. I am so excited to be here and to be talking with you. I, when I think about my sort of social location I think what comes to mind in particular is I am a proud Jewish woman. I use she/her pronouns. I grew up in Pennsylvania and I'm a Worcester transplant. I am a part of the LGBTQ community. And I think family is probably the biggest part of my identity, the importance that being raised in a family and surrounding myself with family and the importance that that plays in what I do.
Joshua Croke (02:39):
Great. Well, thank you so much for being here. I always love nerding out with you about all things, cities and Worcester and am really looking forward to our conversation today. And we're asking some questions about zoning and about development and equitable development. But before we dive into that for our listeners who might not be as familiar with
Joshua Croke (03:00):
some of the jargon or the terminology that we might use, I thought we could start with talking through some definitions. One of the things that you and I have talked about in the past is making city development, urban planning, and zoning, more accessible to the general population of people who are residents in the city and are often and continue to be, I think by design, not included in some of these conversations because of how dense and jargon heavy people can make things so that they don't feel very inclusive or like one can come forward with ideas or participate in the conversation in ways that, you know, really would benefit the city as well as the community and the neighborhoods that folx are living in. So I thought we could talk a little bit about how do you define development and talk to people about development and some of the work that you're involved with?
Ellie Gilmore (03:58):
Yeah, so at a very basic level and I should say, of course my definitions are by no means exhaustive. And I'm certainly not an expert. But I look at development in terms of the growth and the change of the built environment. And that environment could include actual buildings or structures. It could include open space, it could include streets. But I think development is really about how our environments are changing. And then some of the forces behind what leads to that development
Joshua Croke (04:44):
And then frame zoning for us as well. Cause I think that was a great frame for that. And zoning is something that I'm still, you know, I would say relatively familiar with, but also not an expert by any stretch. So when we talk about zoning for folx listening, what are we talking about?
Ellie Gilmore (05:03):
Yeah. So zoning is probably the most jargon heavy concept. But I see zoning as a set of rules that determines how we operationalize development. So there are, when I say set of rules, it is a set of laws, essentially. It could be defined in a single ordinance at the local level or a set of ordinances. But these laws are responsible for how our environment grows and changes. So the components of that are often there are dimensional requirements. So how tall can a building be, or how far from the sidewalk should it be? There are also components of what type of use is allowed in this particular area? Is that use quote unquote compatible with the other uses in the area? So zoning is fairly broad in that it encompasses a lot of components of development but it really is the foundation that we work off of which is why it's so important to understand because without understanding zoning, we may just be looking at kind of changing surface level things. So yeah, that's zoning.
Joshua Croke (06:43):
Great. And so one of the questions that we're going to be exploring today is like, how might we make zoning easy to understand, and like sexy and like attractive to people to be more informed about, or to advocate more strongly for like changes in zoning based on the desired uses of the population that live in those areas, for example. And as kind of a frame for that work, continuing to talk about kind of definitions. I want to talk a little bit about accessibility and also housing equity, and then the very popularized term of gentrification and what that really means. And what components of gentrification in either perception or actual definition are things that when we talk about equitable and just futures for our cities and our communities in our spaces, what we need to look at combating and then like what elements, if they exist within kind of the definition of gentrification might be beneficial to cities or communities.
Joshua Croke (07:48):
And it's something that I've had lots of various conversations with people about. And I think one of the things is really looking at how do we focus and center the priorities of the community and the residents that live within spaces while also continuing to like grow, flourish and address the challenges that the community is actually facing and not take an approach to development, which we're talking about, as a mechanism to just remove what some define as like the quote unquote problem, or wanting to bring new or more money into spaces. And so they, you know, disrupt the community that has been longstanding in these spaces. And so because of displacement, new money comes in, new people move in and the city might look more, I'll say homogenous or look more like the you know, people in positions of power might want it to look because it's easier than addressing the root cause of systemic injustices in our society. So that's a lot, I'm going to just drop there, hand it over to you and ask, you know, when we talk about accessibility and equity in development, in housing, what are the things that people should be thinking about?
Ellie Gilmore (09:08):
Yeah. So first I'll say, you know, the question or questions that you pose I think are so critical to not just decisions that we make about development, but really thinking about the types of community that we want to be. And recognizing that the outcome of these communities, it doesn't just have to be aspirational that there are very real solutions that we can work toward on the ground. But there are a lot of barriers and I think relative to accessibility are relative to housing equity, or just equity and development in general, I think those two concepts really focused on barriers. So when we're creating something, who are we creating it for? And how do we expect that, that population is going to use what we're building or how they're going to interact with it? And are we making those assumptions based on what's comfortable to us, what we know, or are we letting the folx who ultimately will have control of this space who's for whose space it's supposed to be?
Ellie Gilmore (10:38):
Are we letting them be a part of creating it? And I think we're getting better at doing that slowly. I gave a presentation a couple of weeks ago on the role of community engagement in planning processes. And my whole focus was on looking at how community engagement is often seen as an accessory. It's something that we tac on to a process at the end, or we do it because the sense is we're supposed to, and this happens in the public sphere and the private sphere in the nonprofit sphere right now, no one is I shouldn't say no one, but we all are accountable to people. And so development decisions in particular, are so wrapped up in power dynamics, in money, which is a function of power in... no, I’m just going to stick with just money and power.
Ellie Gilmore (11:56):
I mean, those are such huge forces in our lives at the local, state, federal level, but even like the interpersonal level. And so it is tough sometimes to think about what we're missing in those development projects or in development goals because we have systematically excluded people from participating in the system. And so of course their voices aren't incorporated, and if their voices aren't incorporated, then we're not making decisions with them in mind. And this is true of most everything. And it's the type of feedback loop that the wealthy white men created and was, has been, continues to be upheld by the white women. And so we make it really easy for ourselves not to have to include people that don't look like us in these decisions. And that's probably where, like I spent a lot of time thinking about our existing structures especially with my interest in local government. And where are these avenues to participate exists or where they don't, what they look like? I mean, I confront this also in my own job because I do a lot of outreach. I do facilitate a lot of meetings. So I also have to confront, like, what are these barriers to including people in the process
Joshua Croke (13:40):
I'm totally like tracking and agreeing with everything that you're saying, and especially positioning, you know, power and money. And I think the other component of power is politics, which is, you know, all intertwined there and how the rate of change desired by certain folx in the community of like, you know, moving forward specific development projects or like making these decisions and wanting to move quote unquote rapidly in the decision-making process and devaluing community engagement to the point of your definition of like an accessory to this is like, of all the things that need to happen to make these decisions on what we're going to build, what we're going to enhance or take down or transform the community engagement piece of this just makes that process longer. And it's the easiest thing for us to kind of cut out throughout the various stages of development decisions. Is that, does that resonate with you?
Ellie Gilmore (14:42):
Exactly. It really does. I think we have seen this time and time again with projects where the project is essentially completed. By the time we offer folx an opportunity to give their opinion and a lot of development decisions are happening behind closed doors at a public and private level. I, for a lot of reasons, I think one of the things that I always struggle with or that I find to be a particular barrier to equitable development in Worcester is that we don't really have a foundation or a plan for our overall development. We do things very piecemeal. Where we often focus on a particular piece of land or in some cases a neighborhood or a district that we, and I, when I say we, I mean, the folx in power want to develop and our policies are very outdated.
Ellie Gilmore (16:09):
Our zoning code is incredibly outdated. And a lot of other components of our regulatory framework are outdated. And because of that, we, you know, we can't just stall all development until we update those frameworks because that's a very big undertaking. But the consequence is we continue to approve or facilitate projects across the city that really have nothing to do with one another, at least on paper. We're not thinking about the connection between what happens over in Burncoat and something that happens in Main South. And, you know, physically there may not be a connection. They're not particularly approximate, but cities are, yeah, they're microcosms, they're literally they're little ecosystems. So what we do in one part of the city absolutely has an impact on another part of the city and without something to guide us and especially something that is informed by residents of the city and not just the residents who have easy access to participation then for lack of a better word, it feels like our development is fairly willy-nilly
Joshua Croke (17:34):
Right. Well, and it's funny that we're having this conversation today because a day or so ago, I saw an RFP go out from the city. They're looking for a company to actually develop a master plan for the city, which has been something that's I think then being discussed. Definitely since I've been more involved in what's been going on in the city for the past six plus years, but there have been various like iterations of a master plan and different definitions for what that actually is. And there was one that was done and it was like, well, this was like an internal master plan for the city, but not like a development master plan. And so I'm interested to see what that process looks like. You know, right now it is an open RFP, a request for proposals, out to folx within that specialty space.
Joshua Croke (18:31):
But I'm very specifically interested in what community engagement is really gonna look like for that. Cause when we talk about development and we talk about zoning, you know, there are, I think a lot of things that we need to consider relative to what you're talking about of like communities and neighborhoods. These are ecosystems and ecosystems influence the ecosystems that they sit alongside. And when we talk about community, you know, I always talk about community, is people connected by common purpose, passion, place, or experience. And we're all part of many different communities, like as a member of the LGBT community in Worcester, I go to other parts of the city for that part of my community, but then I also live, you know like near City View school in like that area of Worcester, of the city. And so that is also kind of a part of my community and what I'm familiar with.
Joshua Croke (19:27):
And so there are these like transient experiences that we have, like moving in and out of various ecosystems and communities within the city. And for, I would say based on what I know and what you and I have talked about in the past, a large majority of the people that live in all of these areas are not driving the decisions about what is being done in those areas. And I think of, we spoke with Joyce Mendell not long ago about Jane Week and Jane Jacobs, and we explored like what Jane would say about various development projects here in the city. And we talked about Hillside Beach and some of the challenges that residents are, you know, bringing forward as the city's talking about changing the Hillside Beach into a wetland. And there's like the challenge of communicating the possible need to do that transformation, the community's involvement or lack of involvement or lack of invitation to be involved. I think words matter when we talk about this stuff, absolutely. And so, you know, what are some of the most, the easiest ways that you feel we can start really putting like a resident focused process in place for development in our community?
Ellie Gilmore (20:56):
Yeah, that's tough. Cause I don't know if I could identify necessarily easy ways. I'm glad that you brought up the master plan because it's the first time Worchester is embarking on a master plan since it previously did a citywide long range master plan in the late 1980s and a lot has changed in Worcester. And I think that this master plan has a lot of potential to really set the tone for what development is going to look like in the next 10, 20, 30 years in Worcester. And that it's really meant to serve as a guide and taking a look at how do we presently define ourselves as a city, as a set of communities? I loved your definition of community. I think it's so important to remember that there are, you know, the personal identities that we have in relation to each other.
Ellie Gilmore (22:02):
And then there are those, the groups that those identities create. And they're not specific to geography. And so I think the idea is for the master plan to kind of create that foundation and in doing so, it allows us to look at our existing policies and who they serve and who they don't and why, and start to unpack those challenges, those very real challenges and start to make amends and really rethink the process. Probably the biggest challenge I think in development and in a policy sphere, is how do we translate these community identities, these maybe less quantifiable experiences and aspirations, how do we translate that into policy? Because policy is what we so heavily rely on to get things done. And I don't have an answer for that except to say
Ellie Gilmore (23:27):
one of the things I love about Worcester is because of the size of our community. I think people are involved in a lot of different experiences and groups. And I think that helps us drive change on issues that are very intersectional and planning certainly an intersectional topic. So I think it starts with the master plan, and I don't want to throw all my eggs in the basket of the master plan because it is only one avenue. But I think giving people an opportunity to understand what their environment is to understand what their community is. You know, Joyce's Jane Jacobs in the Woo initiative is so fantastic. And I do know that there's already so many plugs for it, but one of the things I really like about the upcoming 2021 Jane League is so many of the activities with their DIY nature really allows people to start exploring those things individually or as families making it more accessible to youth which is a whole thing in and of itself.
Ellie Gilmore (24:57):
How youth, at all ages, are never part of these conversations. And they're just as much a part of the community as anybody else. And arguably the planning decisions that we make impact them the most, and they have the least voice in all of this. So I really do think it starts with opportunities for people to understand their environment, understand how it relates to some of these concepts around zoning or planning, and then building on that as we start to deconstruct our planning policies through this master plan, or generally through the public process, we're having a lot of conversations already in the city about development. And so making sure we have this other angle as a part of it, I think is really critical.
Joshua Croke (25:57):
Yeah. And when we talk about policies, procedures, practices that could be either added, enhanced or taken away, that would really focus on creating more equitable, just, sustainable communities. You know, I think of some of the projects that are going up like the stadium, right? Massive project, millions and millions and millions of dollars. There are so many people in the community who celebrate this as like what a win for Worcester, look at this flashy thing that they've put in their community. Right. But I also think, and listeners know that I'm a challenger of the project. It's built, I hope it's successful. It was very expensive. But looking at the landscape of the city and like that question of like, who do we want to be? I hope, and I encourage listeners to think about how you can make your voice known along this process, because my fear is that community engagement, when there is a existing power imbalance will allow the dominant voice within that power imbalance to be the decision maker, regardless of what, there may be a majority of the community saying they want considered in as part of this master plan, it may, or very well may not end up in that master plan because of who gets to finalize the writing of it.
Joshua Croke (27:26):
Right. Who's funding the master plan who holds the money currently, who holds political power in the community in the city. And so how do we really think about combating that? And I guess I'll ask it in the question of like, what are, and maybe this is, you know, a zoning and planning type of a question, but I think like I'm a renter in Worcester, right? Like I've been renting for most of my years here. I've been in Worcester over 10 years now. And there is an issue in the community with absentee landlords, like people not taking care of property, people, you know, continuing to raise an inflate rent prices while the care of those homes goes down. So like, what are, and are there opportunities for people to advocate for like design standards or some type of like housing requirement for how we build, construct, take care of homes that would, that would like dis-incentivize people who are like, Oh, I just want to buy a property, flip it, make money off of like the renters that are there and really not do much outside of that.
Joshua Croke (28:43):
You know, like how do we combat that issue? Cause I think we're starting to see more and more of that in Worcester, as it becomes a quote unquote, more attractive place to buy real estate is, Oh, I'm gonna, you know, I have some money I'm gonna buy a three-decker. I'm gonna rent it to a bunch of people in the city. I barely have to go there, you know, once or twice a year.
Ellie Gilmore (29:02):
Yeah, yeah. This is a huge problem. And it, this particular topic really speaks to the work that my organization does. So as a CDC, (Community Development Corporation) we specifically are focusing on creating neighborhoods stability through the acquisition and eventual rehabilitation of blighted and vacant properties into housing. But we do a combination of rental and home ownership properties but absentee ownership and blight and all of the social and economic challenges that are associated with that. Are big problems, but I am encouraged by policies that other cities or towns have taken up. And I think there are a couple of ways that I've seen it be successful or I've read about it being successful. So I think one of them is okay, they're like you can incentivize owner occupancy in housing. And sometimes the way you do that is through, is this particularly relative to like rental properties.
Ellie Gilmore (30:32):
But we don't have a rental registry in Worcester. So one good example to look at is Boston. I'll mention that obviously the economic circumstances of Boston are far different than they are in Worcester. And the necessity for Boston to create something like this rental registry was a little bit different. Our circumstances are not nearly as dire, but what their rental registry has been able to do, a couple of things is one, it creates great data collection on housing stock. And so the city is able to know the state of the housing stock in terms of units available, in terms of code, which is a really big part of making sure that housing is sustainable. And if we were to go back to the beginning and think about like accessibility and housing equity, the quality of life in housing is a huge part of that.
Ellie Gilmore (31:35):
Is it safe? Is it clean? Is it well lit? Is it deleaded? Is it, you know, does it make you feel good? Like these are all components of, you know, these are part of social determinants of health that we look at when we think about housing. So I think rental registries are part of that. You know, the argument against them is that it puts pressure on landlords and we could have a whole conversation about whether landlords should even exist. And I think that's a great conversation to have. But I think in terms of Worcester, we need to recognize that we have a lot of issues with quality of life in our housing. I have a lot of respect for our Department of Inspectional Services, but I also know that staff wise, they're certainly not equipped to be addressing this all the time and they have limitations. Our legal system,
Ellie Gilmore (32:37):
so a lot of nuisance complaints get processed typically through housing court or they get processed through fines. And fining and court are also, those are two, not particularly equitable systems either. So each of these layers of the process are really bogged down with layers of inequity. But I think looking at those systems is a really great place to start because it can be hyper-local and we change these issues through ordinances, city ordinances, which can be suggested or petitioned by members of city council. Some of the bigger ones may require more effort, but these are the avenues to start really looking at this, I think are partly through city council. I'm trying to think of other opportunities.
Joshua Croke (33:39):
So one of the things that, and again, this is probably on the independent developer who chose to purchase property and develop the space he and his company bought in this specific way. But I was sharing with Joyce a few weeks back when she was on the show about this model that I had seen down in Atlanta, Georgia, where a local developer started purchasing properties. There was a combination of like single family homes, multi-family homes, et cetera, that he would build rent to own or it was like a rent to own model for families coming in. So it was helping establish like economic stability and build wealth for local Atlanta families, by being able to attribute their rent payments to an actual, like essentially transferring those into mortgage payments once they had paid down rent for X amount of time.
Joshua Croke (34:43):
And so like really thinking about how do we encourage more responsible development, because sometimes it is not at the financial benefit of a developer or a municipality to say, Oh yeah, we're going to start purchasing these properties and create these like rent to own models for local residents. But, I would say that the long-term benefit is more like stable, supportive, like equitable communities, but what is the thing that we really need to do to push people into practices like this? And do we have to rely on you know, independent developers to be the responsible ones, and then how do we, as the city of Worcester say, all right, what do we, what could we do to get responsible developers in our community or
Speaker 4 (35:38):
like home grow responsible developers, you know, here in Worcester
Ellie Gilmore (35:44):
You know, I hate to be pessimistic, so, I will say this and then follow it up with something which I think is optimistic. I really don't believe that all developers are suddenly going to become altruistic, you know, synching equitably, designing equitably because that's not how our system is designed. It doesn't benefit them right now to do that. And where we see equity happening in terms of development is usually because it is being required of them. And I think there are challenges that come with that too, mostly because so many of our policies are not flexible. And so we're unable to also have flexible policy. Then we could wind up getting ourselves into a situation where the policy may no longer be effective. And it is actually harming people but we're unable to repeal it so that I think it's really more a critique of public policies, but I think there are quite a number of interventions and I know rent to own, like you had mentioned is an interesting one, you know, we don't have anything like that in Worcester.
Ellie Gilmore (37:18):
Financially it can be a little challenging and there's a high degree of risk associated with it which is not a reason not to do it, but I think we should remember that there, we should be enacting a lot of different policies. Right now at the state level, there's the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act or TOPA which is looking at giving tenants the opportunity if the owner of their building decides to sell, it gives them essentially the right of first refusal. And there are a lot of components to how that works. And I would encourage folx to research more on that act. But, you know, when we think about building equity into our housing, maybe buying a full building on its own is impossible for one person, but maybe if they had the opportunity to become a co-op or if there was one person in the building who felt really strongly that's one avenue I think it's also important to remember that the past we recognize that home ownership is at the moment, the best to build wealth which has been systematically denied for people of color, specifically from in the black community.
Ellie Gilmore (38:44):
But also in terms of neighborhood stability. And I struggled a little bit with the homeownership versus renter stability argument because I think it doesn't quite address the systemic issues that makes neighborhoods where there's a lot of rental housing challenging. I also think it's a little bit laced with some like racist undertones in that if you're a community of color, which it tends to have a higher rate of rental properties that somehow being a renter in that neighborhood you're part of making this neighborhood unstable. And that's simply not the case. It's not an individual failure. It's a systemic failure. People not having the resources, they need to thrive even in a rental setting. But I think as we're pursuing home ownership, it's also important to remember that people need resources to sustain their home. So simply purchasing a home isn't enough. How do we make sure that people have the ability to build wealth beyond home ownership? They don't lose their home once they actually get them.
Joshua Croke (40:04):
Right. Well, and this is, and this was one of the places that I always bring in the nonprofit industrial complex in any, you know, complex that I can into to these types of conversations as well, to look at, you know, if we are giving out, you know, grant dollars, I always talk about grant dollars. You know, as like a, when I was like a very young entrepreneur looking to start a business, you know, it's like, you can go down the path of business loans and X, Y, and Z, but if you have no wealth to get your idea off the ground, like moving from concept to implementation and like business ownership is so challenging and there have become more and more pathways for some like grant dollars that are considered like benefit to the community for locally grown entrepreneurship. But by and large, you know, grant dollars feed a cycle of, you know, nonprofits who are often kept starved in resources to do the good work, but not at, you know, a sustainable level outside of the leaning on and the support of the grantour, right?
Joshua Croke (41:15):
The funding entity, which is often run by a board of mostly white wealth in a large majority of communities. And so there's, you know, the, the strong argument for how the nonprofit industrial complex controls social movements and how we're allowed to, or able grow at a specific rate in a community around a specific issue. Something like, you know anti-racism work or, you know, equity centered work or LGBTQ support within a community based on what that foundation or what the community of philanthropy has decided they want to allow to be funded and support and sustaining grow. Right. So, I say that to ask the question of, like, I'm always trying to think intersectionality about how we can pull from other efforts or systems to address, you know, other challenges or problems within community. And I wonder, like, are there programs where people can, you know, apply for funding support that isn't as much like alone, but it's like you are a resident of this community.
Joshua Croke (42:26):
You have been historically disenfranchised by, you know, structural racism and forms of systemic oppression and let's you know, help people purchase property. And to your point, like have access to the resources that they need to upkeep, maintain, grow, and develop and build wealth around that space. Cause I heard someone say at a conference a few years ago, like the one thing that we'll never lose value is land. And I don't know what level you agree with that, but the one thing that we'll never lose value is land. And if you have land, you are able to hold wealth, no matter how the economy shifts and moves, you have like some level of stability through land ownership. So I know I just rambled a lot of different things off there, but I'm thinking like, are there programs, or are there concepts for implementing programs that can connect people to resources within communities to move toward a path to home ownership or land ownership?
Ellie Gilmore (43:32):
Yeah. There are a couple that existed. It depends on the community that you go to. There is always some type of, you know, down payment assistance. There are often homeownership certifications or courses that you can take to learn. It's more so about the home buyer process. The work that we do at Worcester Common Ground, so we're also a community land trust and specific to our home ownership opportunities. We sell these homes at a reduced price. So their income qualifications and our model is a ground lease model. So we own the land that the house is on. And then the home buyer owns the property and there's a number of restrictions that they have to adhere to in terms of owner occupancy. And then eventually when they're ready to sell their property, if they're ready to sell there are restrictions on the amount on the resale price and the amount of equity that they can accrue.
Ellie Gilmore (44:51):
And so that I would say is one opportunity for getting the physical buildings into folx lives and they're some like really great conversations around the role of community, land, trust, and housing and what works and what doesn't. It's not a one size fits all. And what I'll say, and this goes back to zoning, which is that one of the ways that we significantly restrict someone's ability to not just own land, but have a house or a type of house is we keep lots sizes large. We have a lot of requirements. they're kind of antiquated dimensional requirements for housing. So one example is the RS 10 zoning districts in Worcester. So the minimum lot size there is 10,000 square feet which is very large and only single family homes are allowed to be built there.
Ellie Gilmore (46:05):
And if folx have been following some of the more recent single family housing movements in the past couple of years, there are a lot of places that are looking to do away with single family zoning. It has an entirely racist history under a lot of literature and a lot of case studies and a lot of lived experience around that. But I wanted to mention the range of housing opportunities, because I think that's really important to access. So when we restrict lot sizes, to something of too large, then we're making even the purchase of land cost prohibitive, we're making the cost of development cost prohibitive. So I think one way of making this opportunity more accessible is reducing lot sizes allowing different types of homes to be built by, right. So if they meet all of the dimension requirements for that particular area, then they can just build it.
Ellie Gilmore (47:18):
I mean they have to go through the appropriate permits and all that kind of stuff, but there's a lot of talk about how we have this missing middle housing, which is between single family homes and then high rises. And the missing middle typically is, you know, duplexes or in Worcester, triple deckers are really great example of the missing middle housing, but we also have missing small housing. I saw a great graphic about this the other day. And it looks at like tiny homes or accessory dwelling units or trailers or RVs. And what does it mean to have a home? What is the definition of a home? And we are far too restrictive, I think in how we define what a home is for our building standards for our development standards. And if we could make those, that regulatory framework much more diverse, I think it would allow people to gain access to development in a way where they've previously been denied. And I think that that's a conversation that I think would be really interesting for folx to have, especially around their own neighborhoods.
Joshua Croke (48:45):
Absolutely. Well, and this is something that I want to talk so much more about. We only have a couple of minutes left today, but you know, I've been talking to my partner about this as well as other friends and folx in community about like what our vision of, you know, living looks like, right. And I'm someone who likes to live in a relatively dense urban area with access to things that are walkable or bikeable. You know, we talked about it. I talked to Dr. Mattie Castiel recently on the show, we talked about food deserts and accessibility and like access issues to food and other resources in communities. But I also like the idea of, you know, I don't mind co owning or the concept of co owning and sharing some living space with friends, chosen family, et cetera, et cetera. Thinking about the ways in which community can really be built around shared resources again, and I've talked to multiple people on the show about the individualist mindset that I think so many folx who I'll definitely speak for my own experience, like grew up in a very like white part of central Massachusetts, single family homes everywhere.
Joshua Croke (50:03):
And that's like your vision of success for so long, right? It's like, this is what you want to aspire to. And that's not what I want. You know, I love the concept of like dense urban living with some green space, maybe a shared community garden. So we only have about three minutes left. So what didn't we talk about today that you really want to get out and what are some of the things that you really want folx to kind of take away from this conversation?
Ellie Gilmore (50:34):
Oh, so many great things in such a short amount of time. The first thing I want to say is that I came to this topic, this world, largely through curiosity. And one of the things that has benefited me the most is reading. And so I want to suggest a couple of publications that I have found to be fairly accessible. So Next City, Strong Towns, Shelter Force is probably my favorite. So I really liked those three news outlets because they cover a range of topics. It gives you a lot to think about and just having a diversity of information on these topics makes you think a little bit more critically about your own environment. I would say I hope that folx, well, we talked about a lot of like really high level things and even very jargony things.
Ellie Gilmore (51:50):
And I recognize that these topics can feel very intimidating because they're designed to be, I mean, Josh, you said this in the beginning, these topics are designed to be inaccessible. But they don't have to be and I would really love to keep having conversations with folx in Worcester about their own environment and about their, what they define as a community and defined as a neighborhood and how it makes them feel. Because I think these small elements have a really big impact on who we are as a city. And that these are also conversations that you can have with your friends by just recognizing like, Oh, I'm a person who lives somewhere. And so, I have expertise in my lived experiences in my environment. And I just wonder what that has to do with the street layout in front of me. It's a lot about asking questions.
Joshua Croke (52:54):
Well, and I just want to say briefly, cause I so value sometimes seeing like on Facebook or whatever, while you're take a picture of a street in Worcester and then like use a program to redesign what that street could look like. And I thought like that is so powerful.
Ellie Gilmore (53:10):
Yes and I had the opportunity to do that in Jane Week. If Joyce didn't already talk about this, I would plug and maybe shamelessly because I designed the tutorial, but if you participate in Jane Week, there is a street mic tutorial, and that's the website that I use and it's, I find it to be probably the most user-friendly. But just experimenting with the places that you go and your experiences and giving yourself an opportunity to think beyond just like accepting that the built environment is never going to change. Because I think these topics are actually a lot more in reach than we think they are. And I just want to get people talking about it. I want to get used to talking about it. Like, I want this to be a conversation that everybody has. I want to make zoning more accessible to people. It doesn't have to be that complicated. It can be sexy. We're going to make zoning sexy.
Joshua Croke (54:21):
So I am so here for it. And Ellie, thank you so much for coming on the show. Always loved talking with you and would welcome more of these conversations and thank you.
Ellie Gilmore (54:33):
It's been my absolute pleasure. Thank you.
Joshua Croke (54:37):
Thank you for listening to Public Hearing our podcast and radio show that airs Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 FM. Worcester's only NPR affiliate station. If you're not in central mass, you can tune in live via their website at wicn.org. And remember, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you so much to Ellie Gilmore for joining us today. My name is Joshua Croke, and this has been the Public Hearing podcast, which is created and produced by Action! by Design. We help organizations develop equity centered community engagement strategies, facilitate community workshops, tackling social issues and help build coalitions and design brands that better the world learn more at actionbydesign.co. Our audio producer is Giuliano D'Orazio. Thank you to Eric Gratton and Molly Gammon and Shaun Chung who also support the production of Public Hearing. We would love to hear from you about what you might want to hear on the show, or what resonated with you from a past episode, let us know, get in touch on our website at publichearing.co and as always sharing the show with your friends really helps us keep going. So thank you so much for listening.
