Housing Headlines

QUINCY --- Residents in a small residential neighborhood northeast of Quincy Center are expressing their displeasure with two housing proposals - a 51-unit plan by developer Stephen Niosi and a 46-unit condominium proposal by George Lane on Spear St. near the McGrath Highway. “If someone wanted to build a 12-unit townhouse complex, that would be out of character,” resident Darren Murphy said. “This is from outer space.”

BREWSTER --- Looking to put more teeth in an accessory dwellings bylaw that has generated just six units in 11 years, the Brewster Planning Board is seeking input from the public on draft amendments that would make the law easier to use and produce more units.

WORCESTER --- By a 2-1 vote, a committee studying the impact of assessing multifamily properties as commercial properties has ordered the city manager to initiate a process that would begin transfer residential properties with five units or more of housing, or nine or more units, to the commercial tax rate. The committee's recommendation must still be approved by the entire city council.

In a study of three years of meeting minutes from 97 Massachusetts communities, Boston University researchers found that nearly two-thirds of residents who spoke up at public meetings did so to oppose housing developments and that the typical speaker is eight years older than the average local resident, has lived in a home more than five years longer than average, and is more than twice as likely to vote as the typical resident. “The people who show up to these meetings are overwhelmingly opposed to construction of new housing, in ways that are way out of whack with public opinion,” said Katherine Levine Einstein, a BU political science professor and one of the study’s authors. “And, socioeconomically, they are not representative of their communities.”

The recent groundbreaking of the 675-unit Harborwalk at Plymouth Station is just the latest example of developers transforming abandoned properties of the once-thriving maritime industry into waterfront mixed-use communities with market-rate housing, restaurants and retail. The list includes Marina Bay in Squantum, The Launch at Hingham Shipyard, condos at the old Welch Co. building in Scituate Harbor and Seascape at Weymouth.

HAVERHILL --- Scrapping the plan for a city-owned parking deck that would've required city council's OK of a $1.12 million bond, Mayor James Fiorentini came back two weeks later with a downsized parking plan that would cost less and have the same number of spaces, convincing the council to OK a transfer of $500,000 from the stabilization fund to support the idea. The parking is part of developer Sal Lupoli's plan to continue the city's development of land along the Merrimack River with a 10-story mixed-use building with three floors of apartments.