Housing Headlines

HAMILTON --- Motivated by a 2016 town meeting discussion over affordable housing, local resident Anna Siedzik has started a group called Hamilton Affordable Housing Advocates and reports that the group now has around 150 members.

CHELSEA --- Developer Greg Antonelli is proposing to build 66 mixed-income apartments on what is now an abandoned, trash-strewn lot at 170 Cottage St. near the new Silver Line transportation route. The development would be the first built under the city's new inclusionary zoning bylaw, with 20 percent of the apartments affordable.

BOSTON --- After reports that a resident at South Boston's Mary Ellen McCormack housing development was renting out a bedroom in a unit for $36 per night on Airbnb, the Boston Housing Authority immediately started the process of evicting the tenant.

WORCESTER --- Due in part to a 2014 zoning amendment that allows the conversion of old school buildings into residential in all zoning districts, local developers Timothy Adler and Daniel Stroe are moving forward with plans to turn the 93-year-old Indian Hill Elementary School into 29 market-rate apartments. MassDevelopment is supporting the effort, partnering with Marlboro-based Main Street Bank on a $2.79 million loan. The Indian School reuse is the first to be built under the new special permit bylaw, which applies only to schools built before 1950.

HINGHAM --- Conscious of the town's aging population and that 20 percent of its citizens earn less than $40,000 per year, Hingham Town Meeting easily passed by the necessary two-thirds majority a bylaw that will allow by special permit the creation of in-law apartments in homes.

SUDBURY --- Selectman have voted to give its planning chief Meagen Donoghue the green light to submit an application for Gov. Charlie Baker's Housing Choice Initiative, a new program that offers a system of incentives to cities and towns that build housing.