As anyone who attends our Civic Association meetings is well aware, we are presented with a constant stream of proposals from developers wanting to change a single family to a 2-family, a 2-family to a 3-family or a 3-family to a 4-family. While the requests viewed individually may not seem like a big deal and are often approved, what is often missed is the context of being in the midst of a rapid development boom, where it's one additional unit here, two additional units there, nine additional units over there, and on and on.

The net effect is that our already-dense neighborhood (Eagle Hill is the THIRD DENSEST neighborhood in the entire city of Boston), is becoming more and more crowded every day. That's more people, more cars, more traffic, less available parking, less green space, less permeable land to absorb stormwater, etc.

Consider this:

In the past 24 months, there have been 19 single family homes sold in Eagle Hill, 24 2-families sold, and 53 3-families sold. Many of these properties were bought by developers who either have or will come before the EHCA seeking our support for adding an additional unit to their property. If they have their way, that means we could go from the 226 existing housing units to 322 total units -- an increase of 42% or 96 new units.

If a developer presented a proposal to erect a 96-unit condo building in the middle of Eagle Hill, we would surely vote it down. But are we really not effectively getting the same result?