Housing Headlines

BOSTON --- Mayor Marty Walsh's bid to raise fees on large-scale developments to fund affordable housing and job training cleared one of its final hurdles on Feb. 11 as the Boston Planning & Development Agency board OK'd the plan to raise so-called linkage fees by 42 percent from $10.81 per square foot to $15.39 per square foot. Of this total, $13 will be devoted to affordable housing and $2.39 for workforce training.

NEWTON --- It's not back to the drawing board but a shift from hotel to life sciences & small cut in housing will bring developers Normandy Partners and Mark Development back before the City Council for approval. Despite the shift in plans for the mixed use project that includes over 500 apartments, Greg Reibman of the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce said the city has been trying to attract life sciences for years and he called the change "golden goose" city has been waiting for in terms of jobs & tax revenue.

SWAMPSCOTT --- The prospect of 128 apartments didn't sit well with residents at a recent neighborhood meeting hosted by the town and attended by representatives from WinnCompanies, a Massachusetts-based housing developer. Traffic and flooding were the primary concerns of residents in a town where an estimated three percent of its units are considered affordable. Winn is applying for a Ch. 40B land use permit to build the town's first five-story building on a 1.6 percent acre site near the town's commuter rail stop.

BOSTON --- The longtime former executive of the Madison Park Development Corp. has been named an executive vice president at Colliers, possibly the first woman of color to be named to an executive role at one of the city's major real estate companies. Jeanne Pinado acknowledged that she “may be the first” Black female executive at a real estate brokerage in Boston. But, she added, “I want my legacy to be that I’m not the last.”

The coldest weekend of the year put the Northampton and Amherst area shelter systems to the test, with a fire destroying a camp, shelters overflowing and a better supply of federal and state funds making it possible for shelter staff to put homeless in motel rooms.

NEW YORK --- The Local Initiatives Support Corp. announced today that president and CEO, Maurice Jones, will be stepping down to take the helm of OneTen, a newly formed venture working to hire and advance a million Black Americans who do not have four-year college degrees into family-sustaining jobs.