The 48 affordable homes at the base of the 40 Thorndike office building have been slow to fill for a couple of reasons that raise questions developer Leggat McCall and the city of Cambridge are answering only reluctantly.
At an Oct. 2 ribbon-cutting for the 20-story, 475,000-square-foot tower in East Cambridge, city housing director Chris Cotter anticipated the apartments would be occupied as quickly as three months from among 3,500 applicants off the city’s perpetually long waitlists.
Leggat McCall, though, didn’t request occupancy permits for the homes until 2025, a city spokesperson said Thursday.
That made the city’s three-month goal impossible, but spokesperson Jeremy Warnick didn’t have information immediately available for why the delay existed on units that were toured by invited guests – including city and state officials – as ready in October.
The developer declined Thursday to entertain questions about the timeline of delays at 40 Thorndike.
A public records request was filed Thursday with the city; an email from the city said it was considered received Friday.
All of this came about because city staffers were asked for information Monday and Tuesday and declined to reply even to say a response was in the works – leading to the publishing of a story noting that only 17 of the 48 units, or just over one-third of the homes available, have been filled in nine months.
Twenty-eight units out of 48
At this point, 28 of the units have been accepted by applicants, the city said after publication, with eight households expected to move into their new homes in July and another three now signing leases and scheduling move-in dates.
Other applicants have recently toured the property and staff are continuing to work with Leggat McCall to “send additional applicants to the property for tenant screening and to show the property, and to complete the leasing process for approved applicants who want to move in,” according to a city email sent only after publication of the Cambridge Day story, despite the Monday request. For many years the city has complicated the process of information gathering by insisting on emails and formal public records requests – which can take many business days to complete and be denied for a variety of reasons – instead of making staff available for dialogues.
“Admittedly, the process to lease units has taken longer than anticipated,” Warnick said.
Change to application process
A second factor in a delay to fill urgently wanted units at 40 Thorndike is that Leggat McCall changed the application process after it was months along, according to the city.
Municipal housing staff had worked in good faith and sent tenant applications to 40 Thorndike shortly after the opening event in October, Warnick said. Staff had reviewed and approved Leggat McCall’s plan to screen applicants and were ready to put it into action – screening applicants and offering units to those that passed the screening.
In “early 2025,” the developer told staff that because it expects to open a child care center on the site – a long-term part of the plan and discussed at the October event – it needed a Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information check on each applicant rather than the basic criminal background check that had been part of the process. The city’s Housing Department approved a revised screening process in early March “after spending time working to understand how that review might differ from an industry standard criminal background check, and how it would be incorporated into their screening process and communicated with applicants.”
“Applicants at 40 Thorndike who want to lease units have at least 60 days to sign a lease and move into a unit, so this created a brief delay as city staff were ready to begin the process for the property to screen applicants and to then offer units to approved applicants in Q4 2024,” Warnick said in an email.
Staff got its first applicant screening responses back in early April and scheduled tours for approved applicants, which began in mid-April, Warnick said.
Criminal record checks
Pamela Jonah, a spokesperson for Leggat McCall, said: “Due to the unique location of the child care center at the ground floor of the building, the developer and the City of Cambridge jointly agreed that the Massachusetts Cori safety standard was appropriate.”
Asked for specific dates to help understand the timeline that has taken a three-month process to beyond nine months, how many applicants were affected and whether Leggat McCall would require market-rate apartment applicants to go through a Cori check in a residential building with services for children – 40 Thorndike will have no market-rate tenants – the spokesperson said there was “nothing further to add.”
The Cori checks are “more intensive than criminal background reviews conducted at other properties,” Warnick said, though a city application for inclusionary rental housing such as at 40 Thorndike says that applicants who meet income and other eligibility requirements will then face a Cori background check and other hurdles from property managers.
A question about why Cori checks weren’t part of the 40 Thorndike housing process from the start was left Friday with city staff.
Move-ins began May 15
The first resident moved into 40 Thorndike on May 15, Warnick said – four and a half months after the units were hoped to be filled, as a result of the lack of occupancy permits and criminal checks.
Rob Dickey, the Leggat McCall executive vice president who oversaw the 40 Thorndike project, spoke at the Oct. 2 ribbon-cutting of the “48 inclusionary housing units, all of which will begin to get occupied in the next few months.”
“We’re really excited and proud of that component of the project,” Dickey said.
A stronger
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Really good follow up. Thank you