Housing Headlines

MILFORD --- The Planning Board is going to ask selectmen to formally support a developer Kevin Lobisser's bid for a Ch. 40B comprehensive land use permit for a coveted 45-acre parcel off Birch Street because the plan is for less units (166) and is seen to have a better traffic plan than a 266-unit condo plan the town rejected back in 2004.

HYANNIS - The graying of the homeless population is a concern all over Massachusetts, but especially on the Cape where at one shelter, 89 people over age 55 have been housed in an eight-month period, accounting for 34 percent of the shelter's population. Another survey found that 42 percent of the unsheltered in Barnstable County were between 50 and 64, with five percent over the age of 65.

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.