Commentary: My house, and zoning
My View | Jack Clarke
Feb 26, 2025
My first memory of home was 30 miles south of here in the Chelsea housing projects.
Driving down the line to Boston, these are the big brick buildings lining either side of the curve of Route 1 as you head on to the Tobin Bridge entryway.
I liked where I lived. I had my parents. I was an only child — until siblings and cousins came along in quick succession to our devout Irish Catholic family.
I can recall the strong smells of the stairway leading up to our apartment.
On the gravel and tar roof, my mother would hang out the laundry as I watched the planes take off and land at nearby Logan Airport.
Going down to the basement to empty the trash into the flames of the roaring incinerator was always a thrill, and kind of scary.
Eventually, we moved, I’m not sure why, two blocks over to my grandmother’s where she took us all into her cozy brown little bungalow.
My mother was back in her childhood home, only now with a husband, her first son, and a younger brother who still lived at home while putting himself through law school.
My other uncle, who also lived in the projects with his wife and son, got sick and was hospitalized, so my aunt and my cousin moved in with us.
It wasn’t long before I had two brothers and a sister.
Three other cousins, soon to be six, my aunt, and uncle who now was a lawyer, moved in two doors down.
Our world was a dead-end street in the most densely populated immigrant city in the state.
Come to think of it, our home was densely populated as well.
In my day, Chelsea was mostly made up of post-World War II Irish, Italian, Polish and Jewish families.
As kids, we played on the street and came in when the streetlights went on.
After a busy day, tucked safely in bed, the reassuring sounds of nearby MTA diesel buses lulled us to sleep.
What made it heaven for my growing tribe was that we were family. It didn’t matter that some of us shared a single bed, and an adult slept on the couch; we were close, we were loved, and we had a home.
Not everyone can be so lucky.
While there is certainly no intention of introducing housing projects to Gloucester, we can make comfortable and attractive homes available for families.
In the seaport, where the median sale price of a single-family house last fall was almost $800,000, the salary necessary to make that purchase was $200,000 and it’s only getting worse.
So, if you can’t afford to buy a house right now, how about living with your parents, siblings or friends, only in your own unit? For many, that would mean making room by adding a third floor to your home.
That, however, is not so easy in a place that says if you want to add that third floor you must first hire an expensive lawyer and jump through bureaucratic hoops at City Hall to get a Zoning Board of Appeals special permit.
Why not just make it OK to do a simple addition, restore some long-lost property rights to city families, and just let them add a third floor — by right?
Sounds like a good idea to me, as it did to our City Council. Last fall, it approved a practical multifamily zoning ordinance for certain areas of the city that would provide equity and fairness to Gloucester families that want to stay together in their own neighborhoods. For homeowners in the newly zoned overlay districts, they could simply add a third unit to their existing two story, absent the red tape.
Now, a citizen petition to overturn the well thought out ordinance is forcing us into a special election.
That election will be April 24, and I am voting “Yes” for Gloucester and its families.
A “yes” vote would guarantee that family-friendly zoning will prevail despite those who would have us vote otherwise and close the doors to families, friends, and others who want to call Gloucester home.
Jack Clarke is a Gloucester resident, frequent contributor to the Gloucester Daily Times, and chairman of the Yes for Gloucester Committee (yesforgloucester.com.)