Housing Headlines

BOSTON --- The city's planning agency has put out for bid a city-owned parking lot at 290 Tremont Street and hopes it will attract a developer who will build an apartment building in which 50 percent of the units will be affordable to lower-income families.

LITTLETON --- Voters at a special town meeting this fall passed three articles designed to increase affordable housing, approving the creation of an affordable housing trust, inclusionary zoning and a unique senior residential development bylaw that does not age-restrict units but requires the design of accessible, smaller independent living apartments that are conducive to aging in place.

The Cape Community Housing Partnership - a cross-Cape effort to build support for affordable housing among community leaders and residents - has landed a $20,000 grant from the Worthington Campbell Jr. Fund to support efforts to build a better understanding and wider community awareness about the need for housing.

AMHERST --- The ongoing saga of when six affordable apartments are supposed to be available is continuing, with the developer of Presidential Apartments asking that he have until Feb. 18, 2018 to make the six apartments available for income-qualified households. The town maintains that the apartments should have been ready by Sept. 1, 2017 and held a lottery for the apartments, only to discover the units had been rented by the developer's management company. The developer is appealing the town's notice of violation, which calls for a fine of $600 a day starting Oct. 18 for every day the units aren't available.

HAVERHILL --- State and local leaders gathered recently to celebrate the completion of Harbor Place, a gleaming two-building mixed-use development that replaces the long dormant Woolworths business block on Main St. and provides views and access to a new boardwalk and the Merrimack River for the first time in 80 years. Developed by the Planning Office for Urban Affairs in partnership with the Greater Haverhill Foundation, the commercial building features a bank and a UMass Lowell satellite campus while across the courtyard is an apartment building with 80 units of mixed-income housing that are already occupied.

SANDWICH --- The Zoning Board of Appeals has delayed a decision on whether to give the green light to a 30-unit affordable rental housing proposal while it explores the legalities of dividing an existing housing authority comprehensive permit into two parts so that the nonprofit Women's Institute can develop the 30 units on a partial parcel next to the housing authority's existing affordable housing development.