Women with eating disorders, frail seniors and renters with kids are the latest targets of the NIMBYs here in Massachusetts, a truly special breed that sees danger and community despoliation lurking behind every building proposal, however seemingly innocent or benign.
Even as Massachusetts struggles with an increasingly dire shortage of housing, suburbs and towns across the state are pushing back harder than ever against just about any proposal that would put a roof over someone else’s head.
But, alas, the NIMBYs don’t see it that way. In fact, they believe they are defending their communities and their way of life all those would-be Donald Trumps out there, eager to make a buck at their expense.
Just take Norwood, where opponents battling construction of new, affordable apartments – desperately needed in one of the most expensive rental markets in the country – have dressed up their anti-housing campaign with the trappings of a charitable cause.
The aptly named “1.5 Percent Task Force” is asking private landowners to “donate” their property to the town. The goal? Meeting a loophole in the state’s affordable housing law that exempts communities if 1.5 percent of all developable land in town is used for affordable housing.
Land owned by the town isn’t included in the calculation of developable land. So taking it off the hands of private owners reduces the overall pie, making it easier to reach the mark.
“It sounds like something you would read in The Onion,” noted one long-time observer of local housing development.
Old, Crazy And Unwelcome
Sadly, it’s not. There’s lots of competition out there for the Mean-Spirited NIMBY Award, but a group of Framingham residents battling a proposal by Walden Behavioral Care certainly ranks up there.
The Marist Fathers probably thought they had found the perfect buyer when they cut a deal a couple years ago to sell for their bucolic 28-acre Framingham campus to Walden. After all, what could be nobler than a treatment and educational facility for women struggling eating and mood disorders?
No go, though. Neighbors have hired an attorney and fought the proposal tooth and nail in court, arguing Walden’s latest proposal uses “a legal loophole to bring a mental health hospital into the neighborhood under the guise of an education use,” notes a report in the MetroWest Daily News.
There goes the neighborhood – the crazies are moving in!
Andover NIMBYs believe they have spotted a far more pernicious threat, though, in a pair of proposals for new senior living developments.
One plan calls for a 133-apartment senior housing project, including one building for an unimaginably imposing three stories – clearly the developer must think he’s in downtown Boston to consider such heights. More ominously, about half the units will be for seniors with “memory care” issues. Look out, here comes trouble! Another proposal calls for an assisted living complex with 103 apartments.
Opponents contend it is now open season in Andover, with the town on the target list for developers with all sorts of senior housing schemes. And while the residents of these new facilities may certainly look sweet and harmless, put them together in larger numbers and you’ve got problems.
Thankfully Andover has a modern-day Paul Revere to spread the alarm about the small army of grey hairs ready to wreak havoc in town.
“I think Andover is wide open ground for developers right now,” one opponent told the Andover Townsman. “We’re not only concerned about our immediate neighbors, but all of our neighbors across the town.”
Time to call out the National Guard!
No Kids Allowed
While Andover girds itself to do battle with all those senior housing proposals, Sudbury has a much different message for developers.
Weighing redevelopment plans for an old Raytheon plant on Route 20, town officials want to see senior housing built there – a bold move given the perils Andover is now experiencing.
But Sudbury is battling an even great threat – the potential that some dastardly developer might have the nerve to build affordable apartments that would attract renters with children from who knows where.
Town officials already headed off one such proposal last year, when they spent nearly $3 million to buy a lot, a preemptive strike, so to speak, to prevent affordable apartments from being built there. In such tight fiscal times, surely that was money well spent.
But compared to Norwood, Sudbury and Andover are tinkering around the edges in their valiant battle against the ravages of new housing construction.
In Norwood, town officials are going for the jugular, looking to exempt their town once and for all from having to seriously consider allowing developers to build new apartment projects, especially ones that include trouble-attracting affordable units.
In fact, a campaign to collect private land donations and meet the 1.5 percent loophole has already attracted civic-minded businesses like CarMax, which is probably all too happy to give away unneeded land it is paying commercial taxes on right now.
While housing opponents believe they have already met the requirement, the 1.5 Percent Task Force wants to create a “buffer” of additional property to forestall any challenges.
We’re not talking about an acre here or acre there, but more than 200 acres of land that Norwood’s NIMBYs would rather see taken off the tax rolls altogether – and used for nothing at all – to prevent more apartments from being built in town.
“I think the danger here is that there is a perception of housing as something negative,” said Clark Ziegler, executive director of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership. “The conversation has shifted from what the state and the region need to do to have a healthy vibrant economy, to sort of a technical game of trying to get out of any responsibility for housing permitting.”
Hypocrites In Newton
In fact, lunch-bucket Norwood is a trendsetter for a change, with oh-so-progressive Newton, home to probably the largest collection of housing advocates in the state, rolling out a similar strategy.
While Norwood is struggling to get beyond the 1.5 percent market and insulate itself from a veritable plague of new apartment development, Newton Mayor Setti Warren has tallied up all the land in town and has come to a miraculous conclusion. A full 1.8 percent of the Garden City is covered with affordable housing of one type or another, which means Newton has met the requirements of 40B, the state’s affordable housing law.
Kind of amazing, since far less than 10 percent of the housing stock in Newton – the traditional measurement for compliance – is considered affordable. Not to mention the median single-family home price of $941,000 in 2014. State officials recently ruled that Newton is still below the 1.5 percent mark, but don’t think we’ve heard the end of it.
Still, it dovetails nicely with another exhibition of NIMBYism in Newton: Intense opposition to converting an old fire station in the Waban section into a half dozen apartments for the chronically homeless.
It all goes to show that NIMBYism in Massachusetts knows no political bounds – or shame, for that matter.
Email: sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com
