Housing Headlines

NORTON --- Rhode Island Homes recently purchased ten Massachusetts affordable housing complexes with plans to preserve the affordability of 931 units scattered across the state. The developer has proposed making a total of $16.5 million in capital improvements to sites within the first year of ownership.

WORCESTER --- The city continues to debate its housing policy, with the mayor asserting that the emphasis remain on neighborhoods and affordable housing, and the city manager proposing a housing policy less reliant on subsidized low-income units.

WESTWOOD --- Town meeting's OK of four articles has cleared the way for Westwood Station developers to pursue a scaled-down version of its plan to develop land around the train station at the intersection of Routes 128 and 95. The original Phase 1 plan - never started due to the economic crisis - included 2.5 million square feet of stores, offices, and housing The new version calls for a Target, a Wegmans (New York-based grocer), six mid-sized retailiers, 15 smaller retailers, and two restaurants on 35 acres of the 146-acre site.

ARLINGTON --- Long Island-based Timber Ridge Homes has backed out of its arrangement to buy and develop the Symmes Hospital site after it balked at a town bylaw that requires large-scale developers to make 15 percent of its housing affordable. Timber Ridge was going to buy the property from another developer, JPI, and had offered the town $2 million to avoid the affordable housing requirement. Town officials say that is about $4 million less than the bylaw requires.

BURLINGTON --- The downtown overlay district is beginning to show progress as 41 condominiums and 37 apartment units are under construction or near completion. More than 10 percent of Burlington's housing is affordable and the town is considering a measure that would require future developments to have affordable units so the town can keep its percentage of affordable units above 10 percent.

BOSTON --- A Fairhaven real estate firm must pay thousands of dollars in penalties after Attorney General Martha Coakley busted an alleged foreclosure scheme that involved attempts to force tenants out of their homes.