After a year of study, this month the city is scheduled to release its Housing Production Plan for approval by City Council, which will include recommendations for how best to increase both the total amount of housing stock in the city and the inventory of affordable housing in particular.
As the city contemplates how to implement those plans, we would like to provide context through a series that tells the stories of how Melrose’s current stock of affordable housing was established. “Affordable Housing” in this series will be defined as housing eligible for inclusion on the state’s Chapter 40b subsidized housing inventory (SHI). You can read more about those guidelines here: https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2017/10/18/mhphandbookzoning.pdf.
Such housing is not evenly distributed. In fact, the vast majority of SHI-eligible units in Melrose are located in just seven developments. Each of these living spaces took strikingly different paths to realization, encountering different legal hurdles along the way and relying on differing funding streams to finance them. What they had in common was the passion of certain individuals and organizations in the community who stopped at nothing to see them built.
We hope that telling these stories will inspire renewed passion in our community to create the housing that Melrosians need in 2021.
P.S. This series would not be possible without the dedication of the Melrose Public Library’s reference staff, who over the course of decades compiled a series of news clippings on housing which you will see throughout these postings.
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