Most of Somerville Is Illegal: Report

SOMERVILLE, MA - Only 22 structures in Somerville meet current zoning codes, according to a new web report. That estimate may be, according to another report by Daniel Hertz at City Observatory, “this calculation actually doesn’t include parking requirements, which might very well do away with those last 22 conforming buildings.”

"The fact that there’s evidently nothing wrong with these illegal neighborhoods and illegal houses should give us some pause as to whether all these anti-building rules are necessary. There’s no need for every American town to be built up to Somerville levels of density (indeed, you could fit 200 million people into Massachusetts at Somerville’s population density), but what’s so wrong with some new neighborhoods growing as dense as historic ones?" asked Matthew Yglesias in his Vox.com report.

READ THE ORIGINAL REPORT BY VOX AND MATTHEW YGLESIAS HERE