With the help of a grant from the Local Initiatives Support Corp., the Waltham Alliance to Create Housing is planning to renovate the apartments in this building at 509 Moody St. for lower-income households.
Seven communities in Greater Boston are receiving a little over $200,000 in grants to renovate and build affordable housing.
The Local Initiatives Support Corp., a community development funding organization, is providing the grants through its Suburban Housing Initiative. Launched in January, the Suburban Housing Initiative is designed to help nonprofit community-based groups produce affordable housing that employs smart-growth principles. The Boston metropolitan area is one of the first places where LISC’s initiative will be tried in communities that have offered little low-cost housing for families.
In a ceremony last Thursday, LISC announced the first communities to receive grants under the Suburban Housing Initiative: Needham, Gloucester, Ipswich, Waltham, Watertown, Belmont and Arlington.
In Needham, Needham Opportunities Inc. partnered with the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance to apply for a grant to demolish 20 single-family homes that are part of the community’s public housing inventory and replace them with 40 new housing units. The nonprofit organization received $55,000.
Rich Gatto, who is the board chairman of Needham Opportunities Inc., said the homes that are being demolished were originally built as veterans’ housing and are part of the public housing inventory. The homes will be replaced with 20 two-family homes, essentially doubling the number of low-cost housing units.
“They’ll be better houses and larger houses,” he said.
Twenty of the units will remain as public housing rentals, and the other 20 will be sold as condominiums to first-time homebuyers who are earning less than 80 percent of the area median income. Needham Opportunities Inc. is hoping to help even lower-income homebuyers. “We’ll try to get as low as 50 percent [of the area median income]. It will depend on the financing package we put together,” said Gatto.
LISC, best known for helping to revitalize low-income urban neighborhoods, launched the Suburban Housing Initiative in recognition of the need for affordable housing in the suburbs, not just cities.
‘Affirmative Steps’
In the Bay State, housing has taken on a particular sense of urgency because many communities are struggling with skyrocketing housing costs. In addition, town officials are battling to control housing development and growth in the face of the state’s so-called anti-snob zoning law known as Chapter 40B.
The controversial law enables developers to go through a speedier, comprehensive permitting process in communities where less than 10 percent of the housing stock is affordable if they set aside a portion of the housing units they intend to build for low- and moderate-income households.
“A lot of the suburbs are facing pressure around the 40B law and Needham’s certainly in that boat,” said Gatto.
But Needham is trying to take “affirmative steps” to plan and create housing that is good for the community, according to Gatto. The project that Needham Opportunities Inc. is undertaking is a prime example of Needham’s efforts. “This is the way we’d like to do it,” he said.
Another beneficiary of the Suburban Housing Initiative is the Waltham Alliance to Create Housing, or WATCH, which will be splitting a $55,000 grant with Watertown Community Housing and the Belmont Housing Trust.
Jennifer Van Campen, executive director of WATCH, said the organization is using the funds to renovate seven apartments that will be rented to people earning 50 percent of the area median income. WATCH purchased the apartments, which were previously privately owned and rented at market-rates, last December. Monthly rents will range from $375 to about $700.
The apartments are located in a mixed-use building on Moody Street that features first-floor office space. The offices will remain and WATCH plans to occupy one of them.
“Part of the reason we looked at this project is there is a crisis going in Waltham,” said Van Campen. “Rental housing – two-family, three-family and four-family homes are being bought and bulldozed and condominiums are being put in to replace them.” The condominiums are typically too expensive for current renters in the community, according to Van Campen, and therefore many tenants are displaced.
In addition to using the grant to renovate and build housing, some funds will be used for advocacy to build local support for affordable housing, according to Van Campen.
The other groups receiving grants were: North Shore Housing Trust and Salem Harbor Community Development Corp., $55,000; and the Housing Corporation of Arlington, $37,500.
Aglaia Pikounis can be reached at apikounis@thewarrengroup.com.
