With giant housing rehab going on, thoughts return to building atop parking lots
Even with news that there may be 21 percent fewer people than thought on a wait list for affordable housing, city officials built a case Monday for turning Cambridge-owned parking lots in Central Square into housing.
A City Council roundtable with housing officials replaced the week’s usual full meeting so councillors could hear the effects of a massive Cambridge Housing Authority project rehabilitating aging buildings by moving public housing into private ownership – on paper – via property transfers to nonprofit affiliates.
Because current residents need to be relocated during about construction, there would be no affordable housing available for those on the wait list – until recent attempts at direct contact, estimated to be 9,500 people strong. While 250 of waiting individuals and families would get rental assistance vouchers to get off the list, using those vouchers would almost certainly take them to housing outside Cambridge and lose them their local priority (unless they also work in Cambridge or are a military veteran), housing officials confirmed.
By getting off a years-long waiting list, they would likely be giving up on living in Cambridge.
“There are people who are being displaced because we’re trying to do a good thing, which is update their facilities,” said councillor Simmons, head of the council’s Housing Committee. “We could lose those people … how do we hold onto those 250 residents whose children could be going to school here or have had a long history in Cambridge?”
The Affordable Housing Trust could adjust those preference policies, said Christopher Cotter, the housing director at the city’s Community Development Department.
Parking lot concept
Vice mayor Dennis Benzan reminded the meeting of a longer-term fix: building affordable housing on city-owned parking lots in Central Square.
“Given all the circumstances you describe, and you could say we’re in a brutal housing crisis right now, how important is it for us as a city to build more housing?” Benzan asked assembled experts from the Housing Authority and nonprofits Just-A-Start and Homeowners Rehab Inc.
He described it as a “hard question.” But not only did it draw a universally favorable response at the meeting – it was embraced as an option citywide two years ago. It was discussed favorably by councillors in February 2013; pitched the next month as part of the so-called C2 zoning to be presented to the City Council by the Community Development Department before that summer; was advocated by the Cambridge Residents Alliance group that September; and given a model in the private 10 Essex housing project, with underground parking (albeit for fewer cars) and ground-floor retail, seen that December. Councillors including Benzan and Dennis Carlone raised it as an issue last year, and just last month a resident wondered at the often “completely empty, totally useless-to-the-neighborhood” lots persisting around her Central Square home during debate about a 19-story tower proposed for nearby.
“I think it is incredibly important to build more housing,” said Peter Daly, executive director of HRI. “The parking lots are something we should definitely be looking at, because there’s the ability to develop that housing at a much lower cost than if we went out and purchased something [that could also] take much longer.”
Officials’ additions
City Manager Richard C. Rossi agreed. “What we’re finding now is that the acquisition of property is just way too expensive,” he said. “We really should consider building units on any city-owned lots, and not just rule them out until we’ve had time to evaluate them.”
Partnering through investment even with for-profit developers made more sense than buying units in a development because “we’re just not competitive in the market,” Rossi said. “That would be a little bit of a change for us, but it would be a way to impact this market instead of dollars piling up and us waiting and waiting and waiting.”
While councillor Tim Toomey has been known as a critic of concentrating affordable housing in parts of the city including Central Square and East Cambridge, his comments Monday didn’t address that. He just asked to clarify that state-owned property in Cambridge would be included along with city-owned property in conversations about building housing. He had no particular property in mind, he said in a Wednesday email.
Benzan hoped to double Simmons’ target of 1,000 new units citywide, although focused around Central Square, with inclusionary units for people who were otherwise squeezed out of market-rate housing. Finding a “new stream of land could have a huge impact on what we’re trying to accomplish,” he said.
In that vein, councillor Marc McGovern had a further suggestion about how the city could be more “bold” in pursuing housing affordable to all: seizing stagnant land for the public good. “Somerville has taken a huge [amount] of square footage by eminent domain to build housing,” he noted. “We have Vail Court, we have the Tokyo site, we have other places we haven’t pursued. Those are lots that could be great for affordable housing, and they’re sitting there doing nothing.”
Authority assurances
Until the Housing Authority’s 2,129-unit rehabilitation project (another 302 units at the Millers River project is pending federal approval), it was Cambridge lore that there were some 9,500 people languishing on the housing waiting list, with about 190 per year coming off as they found a home. Attempts to contact people on the list to see if they wanted vouchers drew responses suggesting the list was 21 percent smaller than thought, Deputy Executive Director Michael Johnston said.
But McGovern worried that the authority’s 10-day window for people to signal they wanted vouchers might be a too aggressive. Not everyone opens their mail immediately, and “there’s a lot of documentation” to gather leading up to a rigorous four- to six-week screening period, he said, urging also that the loss of local priority be re-examined or at least highlighted in letters to wait-listed people. “For some, that’ll be a deal-breaker.”
Housing Authority officials had a couple of longer-term assurances to make:
The authority will act as property managers for the public units with no changes to staff or protections for tenants, which “turned out to be much harder than we anticipated,” especially since the rules of public housing technically don’t apply to these “Rental Assistance Demonstration” rehabilitation projects, authority Executive Director Greg Russ said. “We have established protections embedded in the deal.”
The result of the rehabs will be higher-standard housing than doesn’t have a “project” feel, Russ said, crediting his staff for fighting the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on funding restrictions. “We’ve taken a lot of heat from HUD,” he said.
The rehabilitation would equal an investment of about $830 million over the next next three to five years, he said.
Residents at 812 Memorial Drive have been undergoing years of traumatic, stressful pseudo renovations that have been taking an enormous tool on their health and finances.
Elevator Blues
It was a bright, breezy autumn day as I returned from the grocery store carrying my purchases. It had been a relief to get out of the building and enjoy some sunshine and fresh air – or as much fresh air as you could draw in through a facemask. With a growing feeling of dread I approached my apartment building. Struggling to get my key card to open the door I sighted bare wires dangling fecklessly from the wall socket where the door opener had once been. Shifting my groceries in my arms I wrestled the lobby door open and was relieved to see there was only one other person in the lobby.
My fellow-tenant had her arm in a sling. When I asked her what happened she confided to me that she had tripped over boxes that were used to pack up all her belongings for a forced internal displacement move of many weeks, which all us tenants were being subjected to. Several more people entered the lobby. Another tenant hobbled in with her knee in a brace. This was the result of items left haphazardly by movers in her temporary apartment. Getting up during the night to use the bathroom she inadvertently tripped over an item left in her path, which necessitated a midnight trip to the emergency room similarly to the resident with her shoulder in a sling.
Having been forced to pack up and move out of our apartments for five weeks we tenants were now slowly and deviously being made aware that our tribulations were far from over in respect to our apartments being defiled and demolished. Lately we had observed some tenants were having their windows torn out, heating units moved, ductwork broken down and various other acts of despoilment which would necessitate us being forced out of our apartment for days on end. During the initial displacements several items were broken by the movers without any commensurate reimbursement. Our phones, TV service and electricity were also disrupted entailing shut offs and expensive re-installations. A couple of my neighbors understandably had been hospitalized with “nervous” breakdowns. The elderly and the fragile were reaching the end of their endurance. Actually, some were beyond that point.
The lobby was strewn haphazardly with packages. Items the tenants had ordered online mostly. There was also construction equipment congesting the area and leaning precariously against the walls. Some stacks of packages blocked access to our mailboxes. Waiting tenants in the lobby excitedly buzzed about a TV News segment they had seen of our building’s lobby showing a surveillance video capturing a man entering the unsecured lobby. He stacked a pile of packages in his arms and absconded out the door into a waiting car. Who could that be? Obviously, it must be someone who knew that the lobby was unsecured and filled with packages and Xmas cheer. That could be anyone: delivery people, movers, contractors, friends or visitors of tenants or maintenance. The place was a whirring hive of disjointed activity.
When I entered the lobby of building 812 Memorial Dr I was prepared to kill time as there was only one elevator working for roughly 200 apartments. The other elevator had been disabled for months. In addition to residents using the one elevator there were endless steams of moving men, swarms of construction workers, busy maintenance men, stressed-out building office personnel, delivery people as well as clusters of downtrodden residents. Preparing to wait interminably for the lone elevator to arrive I glanced over at the mail counter and saw a new bulletin immortalized by lamination.
When the Covid pandemic struck we tenants received many bulletins and leaflets warning us that only one person – or at the most two people – should be on the elevator at a time, always with a mask on and social-distancing. Construction workers weren’t allowed on the elevator with tenants. Tenants had priority because: “The tenant’s health is our number one concern” or words to that effect. Thus spake the signs deployed by HRI (Human Rights Ignored), WIN (We Inspire Nihilism) and HOU (Housing Opportunities Unavailable). That was the undying code of behavior during the initial grip of this rampant pandemic. Or so we thought.
We lately heard that there were Covid cases in our building under quarantine; probably the more contagious Delta Variant or maybe even the ultra contagious Omicron Variant as that’s the variant presently coming into vogue. Now I saw a sign laying on the lobby mail counter saying that everyone was allowed to get in the elevator together, six at a time, wear a mask, but no mention of social distancing – in contrast to the previous directives.
Having waited about twenty minutes I was at the front of the horde when the elevator finally arrived. It disgorged about a dozen harried occupants. Because of the number of people who burst forth from such a small space one of the waiting mob in the lobby joked, “This is like a Clown Car.” The impatiently waiting people surged forward to try to jam into the elevator before they were stranded in the lobby again.
Securing a place in the elevator I tried to practice the previously mandated six-foot “social distancing” and inadvertently jabbed the contractor behind me in the gut with my sharp elbow. He moaned and cursed under his breath so I readjusted my position to the side and stepped on the foot of a mover and heard the bones in his foot crunch. He gasped in pain and shot me a murderous look. I felt like I was at a Travis Scott concert in Austin Texas where a dozen people were crushed to death in a surging mob. Many tenants here in building 812, not having had hot water in their apartments for many months, were denied even the solace of starting the day with a hot shower. I wondered how many tenants had downgraded their hygienic practices. Who could blame them if they did? Phew, what was that rank odor?
Suddenly the elevator dropped about four floors before coming to an abrupt stop. We passengers looked at each other in alarm and confusion filled with apprehension as to what might happen next. Grinding ominously the elevator resumed its leisurely upward climb as if nothing had happened. I wondered, “Will anyone die, faint, or throw up.” Fortunately, no one did in this instance. Still, we will never know if someone caught or passed on Covid during their trips in these confined quarters.
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Several days later………12/8/21. NO Elevator …Again
I was forced to walk up nine flights of stairs with my shopping cart yesterday.
Being eighty-one with two prosthetic hips and a bad heart I was nevertheless forced to climb up nine flights of stairs dragging my shopping cart up with me yesterday. The elevator was broken again; stuck on the nineteenth floor. After waiting in the lobby for over an hour for the elevator I went to the management office to find out what was going on, i.e. when the elevator would be fixed and could I have a chair to sit on as my legs were giving out from standing in wait so long? I was told I couldn’t have a chair in the lobby, but could sit in the office to wait for the elevator. Of course I couldn’t wait for the elevator in the office because the elevator didn’t stop in the office; therefore I wouldn’t be able to catch it when it arrived in the lobby. Besides, it was getting late and some office staff were leaving and others preparing to close the office.
Earlier, when I arrived in the lobby with my shopping cart and groceries it was sunny and bright outside. Now it was getting dark. Others were also waiting in the lobby; old and young. Another senior woman had a shopping cart packed high with grocery bags. She also lived too many flights up to take the stairs to her apartment. Back in the lobby after waiting for about another half hour I went to the office again to beg for a chair. Again I was told “No” that they only had chairs for their kitchen and I couldn’t use those. There were lots of folding chairs in the Community Room on the second floor, but no one would go get those. Tired of waiting, several tenants in their twenties or thirties decided to hoof it up to their 18th floor apartments. We wished we could do the same.
Finally, we had no choice if we could no longer stand and wait for someone to come and fix the elevator (how long would that take; hours? till 10 pm?) Many of us had plans, things we needed to do that afternoon and evening. That idea died a lingering death. By the time we got home we’d be too exhausted and dispirited to do anything but fume or crumple while reflecting on the long drawn-out abuse we were enduring to benefit the real estate barons and their investors.
So, with no other options, we tenants went around to the back of the building, by the garbage dumpsters, where the door to the stairs is located. There we began our long upward ascent. Puffing with hearts beating like jackhammers, floor by seemingly endless floor we tenants plodded on. Dragging my shopping cart behind me, bump-kerplunk, bump-kerplunk people passed by me, up and down, up and down they trudged. By the time I reached my floor my legs were numb, my throat parched. I opened my door and collapsed inside. I made it! Next day I paid the price for that staggering rise to great heights.