Left In Lowell

The Sun is reporting today that Westford is looking at turning two town properties into affordable housing:

Westford’s Affordable Housing Committee has prioritized two town-owned parcels for new affordable housing.

After six meetings, the committee last week recommended the 40-acre Edwards parcel, off Tyngsboro and Forrest roads, and an eight-acre tract off Boston Road and bordered by Blakes Hill Road, as top priorities for new affordable homes or apartments.

[snip]

“We were looking at all municipal properties to eye our next diversified housing project,” said Selectman Christopher Romeo, co-chair of the housing committee. “We continue to have an affordable-housing need, and we would like to attempt to gain a foothold on locally controlling our own destiny.”

The state recommends that each community set aside 10 percent of its total housing stock as affordable. Westford falls far short of that, with about 2 percent.

Westford obviously took a look at their inadequate housing situation, and decided to do something about it.

Shame on the Lowell City Council and the Lowell Housing Authority for not having the same insight. First, they demolish (actively lobbying the state to change the rules for them) the Julian Steele affordable housing complex at Shaughnessy Ter., so a developer could make money on market-rate and so-called “affordable” (read: middle class affordable, not poverty-line affordable) units. Then they promise to make up the affordable housing elsewhere, but haven’t even managed 25% of what was destroyed (never mind the inestimable value of the community that was lost). So, instead of moving forward and improving our housing situation for poverty-line residents, we’re taking giant steps backward.

As I said in comments to my previous post, “it’s very evident in the way this Council … is developing the city (and helping it be developed) what sort of people they want to move into Lowell, and who they want to move out.”