Beverly Citizen
Area becomes focus for more affordable housing
By BobGates/ rgates@cnc.com
Thursday, November 24, 2005
An effort to create more affordable housing on the North Shore comes as the Beverly Affordable Housing Coalition announced earlier this month that it has signed a purchase-and-sales agreement to buy the Mayflower Motel, on Cabot St., which has 34 single-room apartments that rent for about $160 a week and are considered affordable housing for working people.
BAHC plans to pay $2.3 million for the property, which also includes several storefronts. They have already lined up a $100,000 grant from the city's community development office and plans to work on other government sources through a March 1 deadline. The sale is expected to be finalized in May.
A group of housing advocates is launching a public awareness campaign to push for more affordable housing for working people, and have chosen Beverly as a "target town."
A similar effort was launched in MetroWest where the group set a goal of building 13,000 affordable housing units by 2010.
In Essex County, the effort is called "home@last" and is a combination of the Citizens Housing and Planning Association and the North Shore Housing Trust.
With the Essex County work there is no set goal, said Karen Wiener, special projects director at the housing association.
A recently released United Way survey ranked affordable housing as the second most critical social need on the North Shore; access to health care was first.
While the objective, Wiener said, is to create more housing, "If we build more McMansions on three-acre lots that won't help much."
"The ultimate goal is to recognize how much we need affordable housing in our communities," she said.
A Web search revealed just how serious the issue is with no houses or condominiums affordable for an average first-time home buyer, according to the housing association's calculations.
Beverly was chosen as a targeted community in the county-wide effort to make sure it reached all corners of the county, as well as urban, suburban and rural areas.
Already, Beverly exceeds the state mandated goal of Chapter 40B, the so-called anti-snob zoning law. In a count late last year, the city had 1,759 housing units labeled as affordable, according to Bill O'Hare, the city's director of Community Development. That's 10.9 percent of its 16,150 housing units, meaning it meets the state's mandate and retains local zoning control.
If the city were to have less than 10 percent of its units labeled as affordable, a developer could skirt local zoning with a so-called comprehensive permit for a project that would include a certain amount of affordable units. The price of affordable units is determined using the region's average income.
"There is some good work going on in Beverly and there is some potential," Wiener said.
The group was scheduled to make presentation this week to the City Council and a group of city clergy.
"We're trying to reach people in different settings, to show them that once a housing development is built people are happy with it," she said.
They also hope to reach out to groups like the Chamber of Commerce and Rotary as businesses increasingly become aware that a lack of affordable housing threatens their workforce, she said.
For the first time, Wiener said, the state has lost population and business are seeing their workforce pinched.
"Who we're trying to reach is a lot of people who are 47, 57 or 67 who don't realize what it costs to rent an apartment or buy a house in Beverly," she said.
Many middle age and older Essex County residents, if they were to buy their home today, could not afford it, according to statistics compiled as part of the affordable housing campaign. Of Essex County's 270,000 households, more than half, or 157,000, would not be able to afford their home today. In part, home@last attributes the rapid rise in prices to housing production not keeping up with the number of new households in the county.
Wiener attributed the lack of housing production to restrictive zoning and adverse public reaction to proposed housing developments.
"We want people to be more open minded when a project comes forward," she said.
Wiener rebutted the notion that new housing and open space needs are in conflict, citing 13 projects in the county that have resulted in new housing and open space being preserved. CHAPA, she said, is part of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance, that is pushing for new housing in developed areas, including above downtown businesses.
Last year, the average sale price of a home in Beverly was $375,000. This week, the city assessor announced that the average single family home value, based on last year's sales, is $366,000.
Based on the average household income in Beverly last year - $61,975 - that same household could only afford a house priced at $281,600. The calculation is based on a family spending a third of its income on housing. About 19,000 renters and another 34,000 homeowners in Essex County are labeled "cost burdened" because they pay more than a third of their income towards housing.
But a search of the Multiple Listings Service this week found that there were no single-family homes for sale in Beverly under $300,000. The least expensive single-family home was listed for $305,000 - a 1,100 square-foot Cape with three bedrooms on Crosby Avenue. In fact, the listing calls it a "great starter home."
The home@last campaign says that the market for first time home-buyers is equally sobering. Using the average income in Beverly for first-time buyers, the group says first-tine buyers can afford a home priced at just $186,720, far less than any of the houses for sale this week were priced.
First time home buyers do have some hope in the condominium market. While none are for sale for the amount that first-time buyers can afford, according to the organization's statistics, there are 12 condominiums listed for less than $260,000. The least expensive condominium listed for sale in Beverly this week was a 946 square-foot unit at the Gateway on Rantoul Street for $255,000.
On the Web: http://www.chapa.org/home-at-last/index.html