Housing Headlines

HUDSON --- The possible redevelopment of the old police station for affordable housing has cleared another procedural hurdle as selectmen signed off on a Town Meeting warrant article that will ask voters to transfer the property to the local Affordable Housing Trust.

SWAMPSCOTT --- The town's inclusionary zoning bylawy - amended in 2019 to be more effective - has generated a $150,000 payment into the town's affordable housing trust from developer Tom Groom, who opted to pay into the fund in lieu of making 10 percent of his units affordable at a 28-unit Fishermans Watch condominium project he developed on Greenwood Ave. The trustees anticipate three more payments from two other housing developments, cumulatively worth $450,000, according to Kimberly Martin-Epstein, a lawyer and chair of the Swampscott Affordable Housing Trust Fund board.

EVERETT --- City Planner Tony Sousa says he's excited about development activity at two Upper Broadway properties, with the city about to issue a proposal to seek developers to create senior and veterans housing at the former Pope John High School and The Neighborhood Developers (TND) moving forward with redeveloping the former St. Theresa's Church into 77 senior housing units, six homeownership units and commercial space which will house Mystic Valley Elder Services. Sousa said WinnCompanies, TND and another developer have showed interest in Pope John.

BOSTON --- While we don't have good local data yet, a national survey from an organization that helps landlords find and screen tenants found that over 40 percent of households are making payments by either pulling from emergency savings or borrowing from family members. This finding only increases fears that the impact of COVID-19 on peoples' ability to keep up with housing costs will be disproportionately felt by Black and Latino households in Massachusetts, who have less access to familial wealth than whites, according to a 2015 Boston Fed study.

Blacks and Latino homebuyers are migrating away from Boston, according to mortgage origination data analyzed by MassINC. From 2007 TO 2017, the percentage of the state's Black homebuyers who bought in Boston dropped from 27 to 11 percent while the share of Blacks buying homes in gateway cities jumped from 38 to 53 percent. Meanwhile, Latino home buyers purchasing in Boston fell by 5 percentage points and grew by 12 points to 60 percent in Gateway Cities.

In its latest tracking of Massachusetts unemployment filings, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council reports that over 108,000 of the 454,000 people will need help paying rent or mortgage payments once extra public assistance related to COVID-19 runs out. MAPC projects that these households will need about $117 million per month in housing assistance. Of that, renters will need $57.2 million per month to make ends meet. The average monthly assistance needed is $940 per rental household and $1,250 per owner household.