Housing Headlines

BOSTON --- In a news release issued Friday, July 17, the Asian Community Development Corp. announced that it is extending its eviction moratorium through the end of 2020, joining such other property owners as Winn Companies and the Boston Housing Authority. In making the announcement, Executive Director Angie Liou said, “It has always been preferable for ACDC to work with struggling tenants to identify rental assistance and to work out a payment plan,” she said. “Eviction should and has been a last resort. Our goal remains to keep families in their homes, no matter how tough the times are.”

Using Salem's foiled bid to add a bylaw that would have required builders to include affordable units in projects of six units or more, a Boston Globe editorial urged state lawmakers to pass Gov. Baker's Housing Choice legislation and chided a legislative committee for removing the measure from an economic development bill. Baker's proposal would allow many zoning changes to be OK'd by simple majority. Salem's proposal fell one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed for passage.

BOSTON --- As a complement to the Housing Choice legislation it is trying to get passed, the Baker-Polito Administration has been administering the Housing Choice Communities program, which gives communities that reach certain housing benchmarks access to grant funding. This week, the administration announced eight more communities have earned the designation and 56 more have been redesignated. According to DHCD, Housing Choice communities are responsible for building 73 percent of the new units from 2015 and 2019.

NEWTON --- The Washington Street corridor, which runs parallel to the commuter rail and the Mass Pike, will see more apartments as the Newton Zoning Board of Appeals has approved Dunstan East, a 234-unit mixed-income apartments just east of West Newton Square. The project is being developed by Mark Development, which is nearly done constructing Washington Place, a 140-unit project just east of where Dunstan East will be built.

SALEM --- An inclusionary zoning proposal championed by Mayor Kim Driscoll was defeated by the City Council on July 9 despite getting a 7-4 majority vote in favor of the measure. The proposal, which would require projects of six units or more to include affordable units, fell one vote short of the required two-thirds majority needed. After voting against the measure, councilor Domingo Dominguez criticized the mayor for not addressing the housing crisis. " "We've had 14 years of this administration and have no results," he said.

In a wide-ranging Q&A with the Boston Globe, the director of housing and neighborhoods at The Boston Foundation didn't just confine her remarks to steps that need to be taken to make the housing delivery system more racially equitable, but also said that low wages need to be addressed. "In order to build a thriving Black and brown middle class, first you need to have middle-class incomes," said Soni Gupta. "When it comes to higher-paying jobs, they’re still very white, even in nonprofits, so we have to make sure that we have Black and brown people represented there."