Historical review and implications for housing in Waltham

Like many other communities, Waltham’s zoning code has become so restrictive, such that we now have a housing cost crisis. This is both unfair to decent people trying to make a living in our city, and just holds back progress for silly reasons.

One of the rules in our zoning code seeks to preserve local character by subjecting old structures to historical review whenever demolition is proposed. Once a structure has reached 75 years in age, it has to go through a Historical Commission, who will apply a combination of objective and subjective criteria to determine whether or not said structure should be preserved. As we continue to not build enough, existing housing of course ages. We’re paying more for outdated housing, which will only become more and more expensive to maintain.

I’ve found in this analysis that during this year (2026) almost half of our resdential structures have already met this threshold. Most structures are already not tracked as a historic structure, nor had a noteworthy former resident, but it’s possible that an especially NIMBY committee could put up real barriers if they wanted to on other more subjective criteria. It’s better not to let housing age that much in my opinion, and I expect we’ll typically know much earlier if a home is a treasure worth preserving, before it gets to that point.

My analysis of this can be found at in a notebook here.