Housing Headlines

NORTHAMPTON --- Substantial changes to residential zoning for the first time in three decades will give property owners more flexibility to add to their units and could lead to smaller, more affordable single-family homes, especially near downtown. The City Council adopted most of the changes before it - including a measure that will allow large lots to be split into smaller lots - but hedged on a proposal that would set new rules for develoopments of seven units or more, instead adopting a nine-month moratorium on such projects so they can consider the measure more.

NEW BEDFORD --- At a public hearing on the housing authority's five-year plan, Executive Director Steven Beauregard outlined priorities that included making more units handicapped accessible, converting 104 state public housing units into better-funded federal units, and turning the vacant Westwood public housing development into eight to 12 units for the handicapped.

BROOKLINE --- After years of trying to work out a satisfactory development plan with the town, Chestnut Hill Realty has decided to pursue a Ch. 40B comprenhensive permit that would allow it to build 271 rental homes in the southern part of town. Known as Hancock Village, the developers propose to build 11 three-story buildings and one five-story building that would total 124 one-bedroom apartments, 125 two-bedroom apartments, and 22 three-bedroom apartments. Town officials have worried that a development of this size without any age restrictions would result in overburdening the nearby Baker School with school children.

MILTON --- Frustrated by neigbhor oppoistion which he characterized as "pay taxes, don't use your land for anything," developer and former planning board candidate Todd Hamilton has scrapped plans to build three homes on 12 acres and will instead seek a Ch. 40B comprehensive permit to build 77 two- and three-bedroom townhouses.

BOSTON --- Developer Susan Gittelman, a regular contributor to Banker & Tradesman's opinion pages, worries that the recent move by a legislator to tack an amendment onto the housing bond bill to stop a Norwood 40B is setting a bad precedent.

WASHINGTON, D.C. --- Matthew Yglesias, Slate's business and economics writer, pokes fun at the D.C. area's zoning requirements, which often mandate that single-family homes have yards far bigger than consumers like him really want.