Newton Fair Housing

04/24/2025

04/18/2025

https://www.newtonbeacon.org/mayor-wins-fair-housing-award/

Mayor Ruthanne Fuller has made affordable housing one of the pillars of her tenure in City Hall. And on Tuesday, she was recognized for that with an award. The Fair Housing Committee—which advises City Hall [...]

04/16/2025

On Tuesday, April 15th, the Newton Fair Housing Committee presented the 2025 Sheila Mondshein Award for Outstanding Leadership in Promoting Fair Housing to Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller. The Planning Department, City Councilors, FHC members, and fair housing advocates gathered to celebrate!

04/15/2025

Please join us to honor Mayor Ruthanne Fuller! RSVP: https://forms.gle/66N9PLQQk6xZQeNU6

02/14/2025

From Newton Mayor Fuller’s 2/14/2025 Email Update:

Fair Housing Still a Challenge

Trained volunteers posing as potential renters with different income levels, family circumstances, backgrounds and racial make-up conducted 134 random housing discrimination tests across the 13 communities included in the WestMetro HOME Consortium, with 10 of the searches in Newton.

Of the 134 total tests undertaken, 69 sampled for discrimination based on a person’s source of income and 65 sampled for discrimination based on race.

The tests were scattered fairly evenly across the 13 communities (one community with fewer rental units had a smaller test sample), with testers applying to 10 addresses in Newton.

Of the 69 testing for housing discrimination on the basis of source of income, 24 (35%) came back with evidence of discrimination, 28 came back with no evidence of discrimination, and 17 came back inconclusive. (Inconclusive results indicate that there was not sufficient evidence to prove discrimination, and yet not enough to rule it out completely.)

Of the 65 testing for housing discrimination on the basis of race, 14 (21%) came back with evidence of discrimination, 38 came back with no evidence of discrimination, and 13 came back inconclusive.

Our understanding is that evidence of discrimination was found in 2 of the 10 tests in Newton.

Newton is the lead community of the WestMetro HOME Consortium, which promotes and funds affordable housing in Bedford, Belmont, Brookline, Concord Framingham, Lexington, Natick, Needham, Sudbury, Waltham, Watertown, Wayland and Newton.

In March 2023, the WestMetro Home Consortium (WMHC) engaged the Housing Discrimination Testing Program (HDTP) at Suffolk University to conduct fair housing testing across the 13 consortium communities over a two-year period.

The results are available in a report, marking the culmination of two years of work. The analysis will serve as a foundation for future efforts to prevent housing discrimination before it happens and to strengthen strategies to address race and income-based discrimination in the region. Please click here to view the full report: https://www.newtonma.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/126824/638751453133624280

The WMHC and HDTP will be hosting two community meetings in February to present the full findings. A virtual meeting will be held via Zoom on Wednesday, Feb. 19 from 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. To join the meeting virtually on February 19, click here: https://newtonma-gov.zoom.us/j/88519686470 or dial +1 646 558 8656 and enter 88519686470 #

You may also come to an in-person meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 26, from 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. at the Newton Free Library, Drucker Auditorium, 330 Homer St. in Newton.

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02/05/2025

Please join us for an Affordable Housing Workshop on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. The Zoom link will be emailed one week before to everyone who registers. You can register here: https://bit.ly/AffordableHousing25

01/31/2025

From Newton Mayor Fuller’s 1/31/2025 Email Update:

“Have you driven by the apartments at 151 North Street in Newton, close to the border of Waltham? These three story twenty-three brick buildings have 112 apartments with a mix of one- and two-bedroom units.

I’m excited that our Newton Affordable Housing Trust (NAHT) received an unprecedented opportunity to support Winn Companies, a Massachusetts led residential development company, to transform all of these units into affordable and workforce housing.

Winn Companies is well on its way to receiving funding from the City, the State, and other sources to acquire Newton Gardens (formerly known as Albemarle Gardens). They plan to make all the apartments permanently affordable to households at 110% of our Area Median Income (AMI). With the use of the City’s Affordable Housing Trust Funds, 30 of these units will be made even more deeply affordable to households at 80% (14 units) and 30% AMI (16 units). (Click here and scroll down to see the 2024 HUD Income limits: https://www.newtonma.gov/government/planning/housing-community-development )

We created the Newton Affordable Housing Trust in December 2021 to provide a streamlined process for funding and creating affordable housing throughout Newton.

As a member of the Trust, which includes experts in affordable housing development and funding as well as representatives from the City Council and Community Preservation Committee, I am excited to have an opportunity to help move this project forward. I joined other NAHT members at their meeting on January 21 when a unanimous vote was taken to authorize $4 million in Trust funding to assist Winn Companies in acquiring Newton Gardens.”

09/11/2024

Property managers, landlords, and developers interested in understanding their obligations under Fair Housing Law are invited to a 90 minute, free virtual training on Wednesday, October 9th from 3pm to 4:30pm. Learn how your company can avoid housing discrimination, comply with the law’s prohibitions and requirements, and a property manager’s role in the fair housing complaint process. The training will be accessible through this Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83719259013. This training is sponsored by the Housing Discrimination Testing Program at Suffolk University Law School and the Regional Housing Services Office.

08/29/2024

You will receive an enrollment notification within 1-2 weeks of the course start date notifying if your request was approved, waitlisted, or declined.

08/29/2024

From Newton Mayor Fuller‘s 8/28/2024 Update

Riverside Pivots (Again)

We have had two significant projects approved by the City Council in the last five years ̶ Northland and Riverside.

The developers of both have pivoted in the last few weeks as the economy in Massachusetts has changed.

Last week, the MBTA Board of Directors gave the go-ahead to Mark Development to pursue a new special permit with the Newton City Council to build approximately 545 housing units at the Riverside T Station (at the intersection of Grove Street, I-95 and the Mass Pike in Auburndale) during the first phase of construction. This modifies the previously approved plan that had included a lab/office component as well ground-level retail. (The previous plan called for 550 housing units.)

As the State is the owner of the Riverside Station and its vast parking lot, the MBTA Board needed to first give its approval before Mark Development could seek a revised Special Permit from Newton’s City Council.

According to Mark Development, their new proposed first phase of development would include 545 units of housing with 20 to 25 percent of them being affordable. A potential second phase in the future could include an office/lab building and another 100 units of housing.

The presentation to the MBTA Board indicated they changed the project due to a combination of rising interest rates, increased construction costs, and a slowdown / over capacity in the office and lab market….

In the previously approved plan for Riverside, I had supported the project in no small part because of the inclusion of the commercial component of the project. We need housing and we also need office buildings or labs. The commercial component attracts jobs, increases customers for our businesses, and improves our tax base.

With the currently dim outlook for office space/labs, I’m supportive of a well-conceived Riverside project which includes diverse market rate and affordable housing, and preserves the opportunity for a future commercial component at this well situated location with an MBTA station and access to two key highways.

08/06/2024

In Newton, “Governor Maura Healey today signed into law the most ambitious legislation in Massachusetts history to tackle the state’s greatest challenge – housing costs. The Affordable Homes Act and related initiatives will support the production, preservation and rehabilitation of more than 65,000 homes statewide over the next five years. It is the largest housing bond bill ever filed in Massachusetts, at more than triple the spending authorizations of the last housing bill passed in 2018.

The historic legislation authorizes $5.16 billion in spending over the next five years along with 49 policy initiatives to counter rising housing costs caused by high demand and limited supply.”

https://www.mass.gov/news/governor-maura-healey-signs-most-ambitious-legislation-to-address-housing-costs-in-state-history #:~:text=%E2%80%9CWith%2520today's%2520signing%2520of%2520the,time%2520and%2520first%252Dgeneration%2520homebuyers.”

07/05/2024

“Retrofitting existing buildings to make them more energy efficient provides both sustainability benefits and an opportunity for affordable housing.”

Retrofitting existing buildings to make them more energy efficient provides both sustainability benefits and an opportunity for affordable housing.