Housing Headlines

ASHLAND --- A developer has submitted a 40B proposal to build 32 single-family homes on a 13 acre tract off Fountain Street, to be called Overlook Commons. The project would include at least eight units affordable at 80 percent of the area median income.

BOSTON --- Mayor Thomas Menino has tapped Evelyn Friedman to revitalize Boston's neighborhoods as the city's next chief of housing and director of the Department of Neighborhood Development. Friedman served as the executive director of Nuestra Comunidad Development Corp. in Roxbury for the past 17 years. Friedman will work with John Palmieri, director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, to redouble the city's efforts to improve Boston's neighborhoods.

NORTH ANDOVER --- Selectmen have decided that a more than $700,000 payment coming from an expansion of an elderly housing community will go for construction of affordable housing in town as originally intended.

BEVERLY --- A state-subsidized public housing complex on Herrick Street that was shut down in 2004 due to disrepair will soon be rehabilitated into 12 one- and two-bedroom apartments for elderly and disabled people.

CHATHAM --- The Highlander Motel on Main Street may be torn down and redeveloped into 24 two-bedroom condominiums under the state's 40B comprehensive permit law. Six of the units would be affordable and sold at $135,000 each.

CHARLTON --- HAP Inc. of Springfield has received $3.4 million in state funding to rehabilitate and preserve the Cady Brook 40-unit affordable housing complex.