Housing Headlines

BOURNE --- Out of a dozen funding requests for Community Preservation Act funds, the town's finance committee spent the most time questioning a request by the housing authority for $200,000 to install new roofs and siding on four of public housing apartments at 89 Waterhouse Road. According to a state Dept. of Housing and Community Development notice issued in 2013, CPA funds can be used for work that protects the housing structure, like building envelopes. It cannot be used for things like kitchen upgrades, energy efficient windows and driveways.

MILFORD --- Developer Kevin Lobissier has filed an application to the town for a Ch. 40B comprehensive land use permit so he can move forward with plans to build 162 mixed-income apartments on part of a 45-acre site on Birch Street. Lobisser plans to build on half of the site, leaving the other part open for other development, a plan that won him support from selectmen.

If waiting lists for affordable housing are any barometer, the need for rental properties in the Leominster area is as acute as ever. The North Central Mass. Housing Authority reports1,300 families on the wait list for 80 units in Leominster and 1,500 families on the list for 200 units in Fitchburg. That's why local officials are looking forward to the completion of two Leominster developments in the pipeline - NewVue Communities remake of the Carter School into 40 apartments and the opening of the 41-unit Ivory Keys Apartments on Adams Street.

In the Jan. 30 annual "point in time" count of homeless people done for the federal government, the Cape and Islands showed 358 people living in shelters or other accommodations like motels, a 10 percent jump from 2017.

A Salem Superior Court judge has given a New Hampshire man and Lawrence landlord a $6,000 fine and three years probation for forging occupancy permits and de-leading certificates to obtain federal Section 8 money. Edward Bonaccorsi II pleaded guilty to six counts of forgery, six counts of uttering a forged record and five counts of procurement fraud. He owns 16 apartments in Lawrence.

BOSTON --- The city is looking at its polices for selling small "unbuildable" lots due to a loophole in the deed that allows owners who have abutting properties to use the open space to build a connected addition. According to the Dorchester Reporter, the city is now looking at how it monitors and sells off such parcels after a Fields Corner resident questioned how a modest 2,700 square foot three-family could build a 3,000 square foot addition on land previously believed to be open space. Over 400 of these small open space parcels were sold by the city from the early 1990s until 2002.