Housing Headlines

FRAMINGHAM --- The director of Downtown Framingham Inc. criticized the City Council for voting 10-1 in favor of instituting a nine month moratorium on approving multi-family development. Courtney Thaen said new construction of 876 downtown units since 2016 has revitalized the area and given scores of residents the opportunity to walk to work or take public transportation. Councils approved the measure so the city could measure the impact on infrastructure and services.

Besides total dollars ($918M) and numbers of people helped by the state's community development organizations in 2019, what's interesting in reading the MACDC's annual goals report is the number of CDCs that provided business assistance. For instance, 1,256 entrepreneurs received technical assistance from CDCs and the Community Economic Development Center in New Bedford provided small business technical assistance to 57 entrepreneurs.

NEWTON --- With enhanced federal unemployment benefits set to end July 31, Newton officials are prepared for more people to apply to the city's COVID-19 housing relief program. Administered by the nonprofit Metro West Collaborative Development, the $2.5 million fund reportedly helped 150 applicants and distributed $210,000 in July. The average assistance per household was $1,400.

A UMass Donahue study that found a correlation between COVID-19 rates and overcrowded housing comes as no surprise to the executive director of a Chelsea nonprofit. Rafael Mares of The Neighborhood Developers said a lack of affordable housing has forced households to live in crowded situations for years and this "has turned deadly during the pandemic.” Mares added that affordable housing units TND manages in Chelsea and Revere are not overcrowded and have had far lower COVID rates.

In a letter to the Boston Globe, Newton-Needham Regional Chamber President Greg Reibman offered a different perspective on reporting that some of the state's largest business organizations are against a transportation financing tool called regional ballot initiatives. Reibman wrote that before COVID-19 hit, his chamber joined the Alliance for Business Leadership, the Kendall Square Association, the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, and other progressive business organizations in drafting solutions that included regional ballot initiatives that would fund local transit projects. This concept is embraced by some policy makers as a way to better link local transit with housing.

BOSTON --- Gov. Charlie Baker announced today that he's extending the state's eviction moratorium for two months, staving off an estimated 20,000 eviction cases that housing court administrators were predicting could happen if the moratorium was allowed to expire on Aug. 18. The extension, which also applies to foreclosures, means the moratorium is now in place until Oct. 17.