Housing Headlines

AMHERST --- The town and the developer of the additional homes at Presidential Apartments have reached an agreement in which the six new affordable apartments will be made available to qualified households on a scheduled basis beginning in December, ending an impasse in which the developer was insisting the apartments would not be available until next year because they had already been rented on the open market.

HAMILTON --- Following a town meeting in which voters shot down a cottage housing bylaw and updates to a bylaw governing how to subdivide 19 historical manors, selectmen and planning board members met to regroup about affordable housing strategies and how to better inform the public in the future.

BEVERLY --- Many residents showed up at a City Council meeting recently to voice their support for special zoning that would allow for the city and Harborlight Community Partners to move forward with plans to build 75 mixed-income family apartments, 65 of which would be affordable to households at or below 60 percent of area median income.

BARNSTABLE --- A new report by the UMass Donahue Institute for the Cape Cod Commission has found that the percentage of housing stock being used as second homes is increasing, increasing the need for the production of year-round housing.

SHERBORN --- At its special fall town meeting on Dec. 6, residents will be asked to vote on language that will clarify zoning rules for senior and affordable housing, as well as a second article that will ask voters to vote on an elderly affordable housing proposal called Meadowbrook Commons.

WESTON --- Following communications with residents who live around its 133 Boston Post Road office park, Boston Properties has apparently shifted its thinking from proposing 345 mixed-income apartments and is instead exploring the town's desire to build a lesser amount of senior housing units. Planning Board Chairman Alfred Ayedelott said senior housing has been identified as a need in the town's housing plan and senior housing "also mitigates a number of project impacts of the original proposal.” The office park currently houses two big national companies - Biogen and Monster.com.