Housing Headlines

AMHERST --- After 18 months and 10 meetings totaling nearly 30 hours, the Zoning Board of Appeals approved a Ch. 40B comprehensive land use permit to allow the Valley Community Development Corporation to construct 28 single-room apartments for the very low income and homeless. The board granted the permit with 89 conditions and is also asking that 70 percent of the units be set aside for local residents, a condition that must be OK'd by the state.

SALEM --- After over a year of meetings, the Salem Redevelopment Authority voted to select WinnCompanies to redevelop the 158-year old historic courthouse, an older county building and an adjacent city-owned parking lot into a mixed-use project with 129 housing units, 19 in the historic buildings and 110 in an eight-story mixed-use building on the parking lot site.

SUNDERLAND --- With state and local funding secured, Rural Development Inc. (RDI) is expecting to begin construction on transforming 120 Main St. into 33 units of affordable rental housing for seniors by the spring, according to Gina Govoni, executive director of the Franklin County Regional Housing and Redevelopment Authority, which oversees RDI. The project will be funded primarily with federal and state low-income housing tax credits. The Town of Sunderland is contributing $100,000 in local funds.

WEYMOUTH --- A few months after turning down proposals from two private developers to rebuild the Lakeview Manor public housing, town officials are ready to put out another request for proposals. Earlier this year, a committee of town and housing authority officials turned down proposals from John M. Corcoran Companies and a joint plan submitted by WinnDevelopment in collaboration with Neighborworks Housing Solutions and Arch Communities LLC.

Nine communities voted to adopt the Community Preservation Act this week, the local funding law that is used to support open space, historic preservation and affordable housing. The results boosted the number of communities with CPA to 186 or 53 percent of the communities in Massachusetts. This marks the third highest number approved in an election, just behind November 2016 (11) and November 2004 (10). Communities that OK'd the measure were Framingham, Franklin, Greenfield, Hopedale, Lancaster, Lee, Milton, Shrewsbury, and Whitman.

BOSTON --- With financial support from the City of Boston, the new owners of a 207-unit Mattapan apartment complex for working class renters in Mattapan has reached an agreement to make only modest rent hikes for at least the next five years. California-based Ananath Capital Management reached the agreement with tenants one month after closing on its $41 million purchase of Morton Village. The City of Boston put in $4 million, stipulating that the owners keep rents low for the long-term.