Peter Cook, senior minister of The Plymouth Church in Framingham, United Church of Christ (pictured above), is one of the founders of Housing For All, a faith-based group dedicated to assisting low-income renters and elderly and disabled homeowners.
Framingham residents who are struggling with rising housing costs could be getting a boost soon. A church-based housing group in the town is in the process of hiring a leader to start up programs that would do everything from helping low-income tenants pay their rent to renovating the homes of elderly and disabled people.
The group, which calls itself Housing For All, recently received a grant from a private foundation that will help pay the salary of a new part-time executive director.
“We’re trying to get some infrastructure in place to do what we want to do,” said the Rev. Peter Cook, senior minister of The Plymouth Church in Framingham, United Church of Christ.
Cook, who helped organize the group, said one of the goals is to establish a rental assistance program that would help Framingham residents pay the deposit, first and last month’s rent.
“A lot of times the security deposits are cost-prohibitive for people who are trying to move up in the housing market,” he explained.
The group is also hoping to help renters who have fallen behind on rent with one-time “gifts” and to start a home-renovation program that will recruit volunteers to make needed repairs to the homes of elderly and disabled residents who are on fixed incomes.
The renovation program would help to reach a “broader spectrum of the community” and provide people with an opportunity to “see” and “feel” the affordable housing crisis, said Cook.
“One of the problems with dealing with this affordable housing issue is that people are sort of trapped by their perception and … [a] way to dislodge this is to try to make it personal,” he said.
‘A Voice for Housing’
In addition to starting home-renovation and rental-assistance programs, Housing for All is hoping that the new executive director can help with community organizing and establish a “leaders” fund that will help residents with various community initiatives. The long-term goal is to start a housing trust fund that will help leverage other funding.
Housing for All will be modeling some of its programs on initiatives undertaken by the Worcester Area Mission Society, United Church of Christ, which has worked with congregations and other institutions to renew struggling neighborhoods in Worcester area.
Located 20 miles west of Boston and with about 67,000 residents, Framingham is the largest town in the state. As is the case in many other Bay State communities, its home prices have surged within the last five years.
The median selling price for a single-family home jumped 82 percent from $169,000 in 1997 to $306,950 last year, according to The Warren Group, parent company of Banker & Tradesman. During the first half of this year, that median price had jumped to $314,500.
Condo prices increased 93 percent during that period, from a median selling price of $68,500 in 1997 to $132,000 in 2002.
“You have people who want to get their first home who really find it difficult to break into this market,” said Cook.
Meanwhile, the rents in town have also increased, but the incomes of residents haven’t kept up with the escalating housing costs. About 45 percent of the town’s 26,588 housing units are rental units. A little more than 10 percent of the town’s housing is considered affordable, according to the state Department of Housing and Community Development’s subsidized housing inventory list.
Rents for two-bedroom apartments can range anywhere from $1,200 to $1,500, and even public housing residents have been affected by rent increases of 15 percent to 20 percent, according to some estimates.
“You expect, and it’s well appreciated, that the urban centers, like Lawrence, Boston, Springfield, have a housing crisis. But most of our towns do have housing challenges,” said the Rev. Robert S. Bachelder, executive director of the Worcester Area Mission Society, who is heading the committee to hire a Housing For All director. “This Framingham initiative is great because it’s going to be tackling the housing issue for all people – middle-income, upper-middle-income and low-income.”
Restrictive zoning locally makes it very difficult to build multifamily housing in the town, and historically, the town has lagged well behind other communities when it comes to the number of building permits it issues annually.
“There’s been a constraint on supply here,” said Selectman Chris Ross. “We have a poor record in new-home construction.”
The lack of housing that is affordable to young professional workers is a “constraint on economic development” in Framingham because businesses will not want to locate in an area that can’t provide housing opportunities for workers, said Ross.
“What we’re finding is there is a number of people who are entering the job market – which would be professionals in their 20s and early 30s – who are unable to find any type of housing in this community,” he said
“It’s not just an issue of looking at the people at the very bottom of the ladder, those who are homeless. It’s very much an issue of people who are trying to enter the market with what used to be sufficient means to enter the market but can’t right now,” he said.
So far, Housing For All’s efforts have won the support of several groups in the community, including the Framingham Housing Partnership, the Framingham Interfaith Clergy Association and the MetroWest Habitat for Humanity. The town’s First Baptist church donated $8,000 and First Parish donated office space on Edgell Road.
“Housing for All is an effort to bring together some of the resources through the churches and other volunteer groups … and get a voice for housing,” said Ross. “It’s a constituency that has very little political clout at any level of government because people who already own homes fear that the word ‘affordable’ means low-income, so there’s always resistance to projects.”
