Housing Headlines

BOSTON --- Two nonprofits are working with the City of Boston to buy Morton Village, a Mattapan apartment building with 207 low-cost apartments. The sale of this housing is another test of the affordable housing sector's ability to compete with private buyers who would raise rents. Morton Village is being compared to the 347-unit Fairlawn Apartments in Mattapan, which has seen rents rise since it was purchased by a private developer for $65 million in 2018.

BOSTON --- Waiting lists for affordable housing are high but some nonprofit owners like John Woods of the Allston-Brighton Community Development think there may be some opportunities if college renters don't come back and owners with empty units decide to put their properties on the market.

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.