The Cambridge Housing Authority is buying a large parcel of vacant land on Porter St. in the Wellington-Harrington neighborhood and could build approximately 50 units of low-income housing there, officials of the public housing agency said Wednesday. CHA will pay $7.2 million for the property and expects to spend almost $3 million more for pre-development work.
It’s the third property the CHA has bought in the past two years, and another could be coming. On Wednesday the agency’s commissioners held an executive session during their regular meeting to discuss a property acquisition.
The Porter St. site runs from 16 to 28 Porter St. and is 12,916 square feet. It’s only 300 feet from The Verge, a luxury apartment building at 2 Medford St. in Somerville, where two-bedroom apartments are renting “in the range of $4,300,” a CHA memo on the purchase said.
The location of the parcel CHA is buying “near transit and public amenities is ideal for a site for deeply affordable family housing,” the memo said, referring to bus and subway lines, a shopping plaza, the Valente library and the King Open and Cambridge St. Upper public schools. But the neighborhood is a “high-cost area” where the median asking rental cost last summer was $3,400, which would require a household income of $138,000 to afford, the memo said.
CHA plans to finance the land purchase and pre-development costs with $6 million from the Cambridge Affordable Housing Trust, which funnels city money to affordable housing projects, and a $4.2 million loan from the agency’s own coffers. The authority didn’t provide a timeline for when it will begin work on the project and Margaret Moran, deputy executive director for Planning and Development, said the agency was “land-banking.”
This meeting was the last for Executive Director Michael Johnston, who is retiring Friday for health reasons after 34 years at CHA. A cascade of praise from residents and staff that began March 19, when commissioners named planning director Clara Fraden to head the agency, continued at the meeting. One example: tenants at Millers River, the East Cambridge development for older and/or disabled people, interrupted their bingo game to thank Johnston on Zoom for his work to rehabilitate the high-rise building.
Johnston also received a written message of praise from Rep. Ayanna Presley, presented to him at the meeting. The commissioners approved a lengthy resolution with numerous “whereas” paragraphs listing Johnston’s accomplishments at CHA. For his part, he thanked the board and his deputy executive director, Brenda Downing.
HUD targets “mixed families”
On a serious note, Johnston warned of new threats from the Trump administration: “As I exit I have three items that have come out from HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development).”
One is a rule that would bar “mixed families” – households where at least one person has required immigration status but others do not – from living in federally supported housing. CHA has 42 families in that category who now could lose their homes.
“This is a horrendous rule,” Johnston said. “This isn’t something we believe in.”
The other two changes proposed by HUD are not mandatory, Johnston said. One would allow housing authorities to set time limits for housing subsidies and the other would permit authorities to require tenants to work.
CHA will prepare and submit comments on the three proposed changes, Johnston said. As for the work requirement, “here in Cambridge families work,” he said. “The last time we ran the numbers, most families have multiple wage earners” or one worker with multiple jobs.”
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