The Cambridge Housing Authority bought three parcels on Mellen St. from Lesley University and plans to create 90 to 110 housing units for low-income families, CHA director of planning and development Margaret Donnelly Moran said Jan. 14.
The parcels are from 31 to 37 Mellen St. and include four buildings. They cost $13 million, which the city will help pay through the Cambridge Affordable Housing Trust. One of the buildings is a historic property. That building will be kept, Moran said, and the housing authority plans to replace the other three with a single new structure. The trust approved an undisclosed contribution to CHA in executive session last fall while the authority was negotiating with Lesley. The city agency could disclose the contribution amount at its scheduled meeting Thursday.
The authority is acting under the city’s ground-breaking Affordable Housing Overlay zoning ordinance, which gives developers of 100 percent affordable housing projects freedom from some zoning restrictions. The city adopted the new zoning in 2020 to reduce the time needed to approve low- and moderate-income housing and thus give affordable housing developers more ability to compete with market-rate housing builders. In 2023 the city council amended the ordinance to allow higher buildings in some areas.
Lesley has been selling many of its properties in Cambridge as part of a 2021 plan to remake and connect the university’s three campuses in Cambridge and “right-size the university assets,” Lesley said in its 2022 town-gown report to the Planning Board. A number have gone to affordable housing developers.
The housing authority bought 16-18 Wendell St. from Lesley in 2024 and quickly turned the former Lesley dormitory into 22 rooms for formerly homeless households, including some couples. Homeowners Rehab Inc., the affordable housing developer, bought a historic building at 1622 Massachusetts Ave. from Lesley in 2022 and is building 29 affordable units there; HRI also bought 28-30 Wendell St. from the university in 2023 and 2024 with plans to construct 95 units there. Affordable housing developer Just-A-Start purchased two Lesley parking lots at 1828 and 1849 Massachusetts Ave. in 2024 but hasn’t yet proposed plans.
The sales by Lesley have led to more low-income housing to a neighborhood that previously had the third lowest percentage of affordable units among the city’s 13 neighborhoods, according to a 2023 Community Development Department report. Almost six percent of the housing stock in the Baldwin neighborhood between Harvard and Porter Squares was affordable before the purchases from Lesley, the report said.
The sale of 31-37 Mellen St. to CHA is complicated by agreements involving property in a discontinued portion of Mellen St. that Lesley will continue to own. Utilities and sidewalks in the Lesley portion serve the parcels now owned by the authority. A drainage facility in the Lesley portion connects to the Lesley campus and must be preserved, according to records of the agreements involved in the sale.
This story was updated to include a photo of the properties purchased.
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This is great. This acquisition is exactly what the Affordable Housing Overlay was meant to enable, and it is encouraging to see it working in a high-opportunity neighborhood that has long lacked income-restricted housing.
Converting an underused institutional site into 90 to 110 deeply affordable homes, while preserving the historic structure, is a smart use of limited land and public funds that will help keep families in Cambridge.
By using the Overlay and the Affordable Housing Trust to act quickly on a large site near transit and jobs, the city and CHA are making a lasting investment in economic diversity.
the housing pictured has been approved and went through a design review and tweaks. are abutters going to get the same courtesy, design review, public meetings? 146 units in a couple of blocks on a small side street with no parking. there needs to be models by CDD and council so the public (and developers) can see what the impact is on a small neighborhood. We need more visual aids in general other than computer-generated inaccurate renderings leaving design information wanting.
We need more homes, not free storage for private vehicles. This is a dense, transit-accessible are, exactly where affordable housing belongs.
The AHO greatly limits abutters’ ability to block much‑needed housing over minor concerns, like parking. Housing is a human right while free parking is not.
This project serves low-income families. Those who can afford cars should not expect others to subsidize free parking on public land.
Is this triple parcel block also going to be 9 stories on a small side street with no parking? does it have enough infrastructure to support it…?
Parking is not the issue. Cambridge eliminated parking minimums because they suppress housing production.
People need homes, and that matters more than convenient parking. It strains credulity to claim parking is essential in a city where many residents don’t own cars.
If someone truly needs a car, they may need to reconsider city living. The solution is not to block housing for 100+ families.
@Frank perhaps you need to realize that the “storage” is not “free”. Car owners pay a tax when they buy their car, every year they pay excise tax, and when they put gas in their car, they pay a tax. So the govt has their hand in every transaction.
Second, by your logic, I should not pay for police or ambulance or bike lanes just to name a few because I have been fortunate to not use any of them. Why should I subsidize the cost for others? Similarly, people who do not have kids, should not subsidize the use of park by other kids? Right?
These are common sense issues. We can be adamant and say lets pack as many houses we can on every single inch because there some 20K people who have raised they hand to live in Cambridge but they cannot afford it. Or we take the lesson of the snow storm today to realize that building some parking for new housing is necessary so vehicles are kept off street to make way for emergency vehicles.
Whats better in the long term?
@ EastCamb we can call Cambridge street car parking “free” because excise, registration, gas, and Cambridge parking permit costs do not come even close to covering street maintenance, climate crisis, road violence, and other costs that private car ownership puts on all of us in the city. Simple math: private offstreet parking costs $200-$400 monthly. The onstreet parking permit should be a comparable cost.
@EastCamb. The taxes car owners pay already help maintain roads and public safety. They don’t entitle anyone to free public land for private storage.
Excise and gas taxes are modest and mostly state-level, while the value of curb space in a dense city like Cambridge far exceeds what drivers contribute.
Public goods like police, parks, or bike lanes serve everyone whether or not each person uses them daily. That’s how cities function equitably.
But on-street parking is not a public good. It’s a heavily subsidized convenience for a minority of residents that discourages more efficient land use.
If snow clearance and emergency access are the concern, reducing car dependency and building housing with fewer parking spots actually helps.
Each new parking space adds cost, increases traffic, and worsens housing affordability.
In the long term, Cambridge benefits more from walkable, transit-oriented development than from doubling down on car storage.
@EastCamb That’s not how parking works.
On-street residential parking in Cambridge is underpriced relative to its scarcity. You do not “pay for it” when you buy a car. Curb space is a scarce public asset, not something covered by generic car taxes.
Parking economics consistently show that free or very cheap parking increases driving, congestion, and housing costs. Everyone pays, including non-drivers whose taxes also fund roads.
Police and ambulances are textbook cases for broad-based taxation because everyone benefits. One household’s free, dedicated use of public curb space for a private car is not.
“Packing every inch with housing” is a straw man. Current reforms allow modest increases along corridors and in residential areas, not development everywhere.
A snowstorm is not a justification for a land grab. The long-term answer is more housing near transit, less mandatory car storage bundled into homes, rather than treating free on-street storage as an entitlement.
Peace Be Unto You
I understand that the Cambridge Housing Authority (CHA) is buying up, and Lesley University is selling its properties in the Baldwin neighborhood. The buying, I understand, is to produce affordable housing. What is on the drawing board for Tenant Organizations (TO) such as The Alliance of Cambridge Tenants (ACT), being invited in to teach the tenants/residents their rights as renters, under the umbrella of the CHA when redevelopment, has reached the final stage in the Baldwin neighborhood.?
Yours In Peace
Mr. Hasson Rashid
BOARD MEMBER/ALLIANCE OF CAMBRIDGE TENANTS (ACT)
LESLEY UNIVERSITY ALUMNI COUNCIL /MEMBER (LUAC)
BOARD MEMBER NATIONAL LOW IN HOUSING COALITION (NLIHC)