Housing Headlines

WORCESTER --- The employment rate in Worcester’s two largest public housing projects has jumped by 24 percent in the past five years, indicating that its self-sufficiency work and job training programs - Step-Up, Family Self-Sufficiency and A Better Life - are working, according to officials at the Worcester Housing Authority.

SALEM --- For the second time in two weeks, the Salem City Council failed to deliver a two-thirds majority vote necessary to pass a bylaw that would promote the reuse of city and religious buildings for housing. The second defeat means this bylaw can't be reconsidered again until 2020.

LANCASTER --- Crescent Builders continues to wrestle with the town's zoning board of appeals over the size and configuration of buildings for the proposed Goodridge Brook Estates but the number of units developer Iqbal Ali hopes to build with a Ch. 40B comprehensive permit is the same - 96 apartments and 56 single-family homes.

QUINCY --- To eliminate red tape and cut the workload for a city planning department that has vetted plans for over 5,300 new homes since 2013, City Councilor Brian Palmucci has proposed to increase the threshold that triggers site plan review from three or more units to 10 or more units.

DORCHESTER --- Center Court Partners, which owns several key Morrissey Boulevard sites near the JFK-UMass Red Line stop, has proposed to build two 20-plus story towers on the former Channel 56 television property just north of the former Boston Globe plant. Developer and architect David Raftery revealed plans for 750 apartments at a Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association meeting, stating that the developers are "trying to stay within the spirit" of the 2011 city master plan.

CHELSEA --- The bid by The Neighborhood Developers and Traggorth Development to build housing at 1005 Broadway will be coming back for local review as the Suffolk County Land Court remanded the case back to the zoning board of appeals with a revised plan. Last year, the ZBA denied the project saying it was more interested in homeownership but it will now review a revised plan that does not include a commercial component and a reduction in rental apartments from 42 to 38, all of which will be affordable.