Cambridge has been helping low- and moderate-income residents buy affordable homes for more than 30 years. Now many of those homes need extensive work, maintenance that’s too expensive for homeowners who remain lower-income. And some are looking for more city support to save their housing.
In October 2023, the city’s Affordable Housing Trust agreed to contribute $3 million to replace the roof, siding and flashing on a 24-unit condominium building in The Port known as the Print Shop condominiums. (It was used for printing before it was developed into affordable housing in 2009.)
The $3 million may not be enough. Condo owners, two city councillors and even Affordable Housing staff members said at a trust meeting last month that the building at 125 Harvard St. has other serious problems, including an elevator shut down by the fire department for safety reasons, seven vacant condos that aren’t in condition to be sold to new lower-income buyers and long-standing deterioration caused by leaks.
Meanwhile, condo fees have ballooned, owners are on the hook for several hundred dollar-assessments and more financial demands are on the horizon. “Ultimately, while the city has a stated and important goal of helping individuals reach homeownership, the reality is that due to the difficulties related to this property, living in these units has become unaffordable,” councillors Sumbul Siddiqui and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler said in a May 6 letter to the trust and City Manager Yi-An Huang. They wrote after meeting with condo owners.
The Print Shop condominium project isn’t the only affordable homeownership building facing unaffordable expenses, and its condo owners aren’t the only lower-income buyers who can’t pay for maintenance. Owners who bought affordable homes under other city programs complained of rising condo fees and assessments in messages to the trust when it decided in January to change its formula for calculating how much equity a subsidized owner can capture when selling an affordable unit.
When the trust voted to lend $3 million to the Print Shop condominiums on Oct. 26, 2023, a memorandum from Community Development Department housing director Christopher Cotter and senior manager for homeownership Anna Dolmatch said that “as the affordable homeownership stock ages, there will be cases where additional subsidy may be necessary to address major rehab needs and to prevent units from becoming unaffordable or unsaleable.” The memo said “this is not just an issue for all-affordable buildings; there is a mixed-income building where condo fees have doubled to more than $600 for the affordable units to fund ongoing building envelope work, causing some owners to struggle to maintain their housing.”
At last month’s meeting, trust member Susan Schlesinger summed it up: “We’re facing the issue of a maturing homeownership program.” Cotter said staff members will present more information on the issue at the November meeting.
As for the Print Shop condominiums, some owners want to relinquish their units and be allowed to return to first-time homebuyer status so they can buy something else, the councillors’ letter said. Another request: “lift the city’s deed restrictions so owners can recoup costs in a variety of ways, including by having roommates or subletting the units temporarily or allowing a higher rate of return upon sale.” Owners also are asking for emergency grants to make emergency repairs.
Two Print Shop condo owners who spoke at the Oct. 23 trust meeting said problems with leaks and the solar-based electric system – such as no connection between rooftop solar panels and wall outlets – became evident as soon as they moved in in 2009, and residents faced large bills to fix them. Residents have contended that the project, developed by Somerville-based affordable housing and residential services provider Cascap, was poorly constructed.
“It seems like the problems range from ordinary aging to extraordinary work not being done to code,” trust member Raffi Freeman said. “Is there any recourse to the contractor?”
“The short answer is no,” Cotter said. “The building envelope is complicated by 15 years of age.” Still, the staff memo to the trust in October 2023 said: “There are likely many causes for the ongoing issues in this building, including the design, materials, possible construction errors and maintenance problems. Overall, the building has significant, chronic issues that we would not expect to see in a new construction building that is only 15 years old.”
The memo also said that to fund the repairs themselves, owners would have needed to contribute an additional $700 a month each to the reserve fund for the building since residents first moved in.
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Gee it’s almost like building, owning, and maintaining property is expensive.
It’s also almost like Cambridge forgot this reality when designing the program.
Cascap cut corners on a budget limited project? Shocker.
Residents delayed handling what maintenance issues they could until it became a real issue. Shocker.
Surprise assessments? Guess what, they are a fact of life and my condo fees have gone up by $515 a month for the next 7 years.
It’s almost like Cambridge didn’t consider any of this when granting ponies for all!
But no way this will
Happen with the next crop of cheaply built “affordable” units for
The city right? Right?
This is a prime example of what happens when you have a rush to make affordable housing… which when labeled such it always gets cost cutting in building, development, management and maintenance and yet we have councillors who were NOT around when this was built who are willing to repeat this cycle again in the city but with even taller buildings so more people can suffer down the road.
The poor construction is not necessarily due to the building being affordable. I know a condo owner who is in court now suing the contractor of their market rate building for poor construction.
In both cases, what I want to know is why the Cambridge inspectors did not catch the poor construction methods in time. In the case of the print shop, it has had problems since it was built. I think the city should have sued the contractor 15 years ago.
I hope the city looks at ways to prevent this in the future.