Somerville Receives State Grant for Public Housing Redevelopment

SOMERVILLE, MA – Somerville received $300,000 in state funding Wednesday to advance the development of mixed-income housing complexes in the city.

The state granted a total of $600,000 in funding, with the other half going to Chelsea. The money will be used for redeveloping the Clarendon Hill Apartments into new communities that integrate publicly subsidized, workforce, and market-rate housing units.

Chelsea's Innes Apartments will also be redeveloped. A collective total of 846 new housing units are expected to be built using the grant money, according to a state press release.

"Our administration’s Open for Business initiative is rethinking state landholdings across Massachusetts, creating new opportunities for housing and economic development on underutilized state-owned parcels," said Gov. Charlie Baker in a release. "Through our new Partnership to Expand Housing Opportunities, we will give local public housing authorities the tools to act in a similar manner. These planning grants will allow Chelsea and Somerville to advance public-private partnerships that will substantially improve the quality of life for residents of public housing communities, while increasing the construction of private rental housing."

Under the Partnership to Expand Housing Opportunities, local housing authorities enter into development partnerships with outside developers to revitalize public housing properties. In return for the modernization of these complexes, including a full replacement of current subsidized units, the development partners will build additional market-rate and workforce housing units.

"To address the region’s pressing housing needs, we need the kind of inclusive approaches that the state’s Partnership to Expand Housing Opportunities is supporting," said Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone in a release. "So I want to thank DHCD, not only for funding the Clarendon Hill project, but for shining a light on the need to both expand workforce and market rate housing as well as provide quality public housing for our most vulnerable residents."

The Somerville Housing Authority will collaborate with Gate Residential, Preservation of Affordable Housing and the Somerville Community Corporation to redevelop Clarendon Hill into a new 526-unit mixed-income complex. The community's current 216 subsidized units will be revitalized, and an additional 254 market-rate units and 56 units of workforce housing will be constructed.

The state is also making a second round of planning and predevelopment grants available to local housing authorities; the new round of grants will allot a minimum of $250,000 to communities to advance redevelopment and modernization projects.

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