Housing Headlines

SPENCER --- Officials in this town west of Worcester gathered on Friday August 22 to celebrate an agreement that will allow Mental Health Programs Inc. of Boston to transform the town's former high school into 35 units of affordable housing for low-income seniors.

CHICOPEE --- Ousted Community Development Department Director Jeanne M. Kidwell is preparing to sue the city for wrongful termination. Mayor Michael D. Bissonnette dismissed Kidwell from her duties on Aug. 1, citing federal audits that found that the city did not properly award and administer $8.4 million in block grant funding. Kidwell says the mayor is using the audits to fire her after she questioned the addition of Thomas Haberlin and Kathleen Lingenberg as part-time directors of economic development and housing respectively.

DORCHESTER --- Earlier this month, the public got to see Corcoran Jennison's proposal to build 350 units of rental housing, 250,000 square feet of retail space and 200,000 square feet of office space on the current site of the Bayside Expo Center. The plan also includes a major reworking of the roads around Columbia Point.

EASTHAMPTON --- A legal review and a third public hearing are the next steps in this community's bid to create an ordinance that would encourage developers to build more affordable housing by allowing them to build more units per acre than is currently allowed.

FITCHBURG --- The city's redevelopment authority has extended the deadline for proposals to develop a downtown site into retail and residential, even as nearby property owners are questioning the plan, noting that a pharmacy company is also interested in the site.

BOSTON --- The city has selected a developer to fix four foreclosed homes in a hard-hit Dorchester neighborhood and is looking to do more en masse foreclosure rehab work in other Boston neighborhoods.