Apartment Moratorium In Framingham: Hearings Coming Up

FRAMINGHAM, MA — The Framingham City Council will soon begin discussions about placing a temporary moratorium on apartment projects. The Council voted on Tuesday night to hold several hearings on the issue.

This week, District 1 Councilor Christine Long asked the Council to hold a public hearing after hundreds of residents signed a petition backing the moratorium. That hearing will likely happen at the Council's second meeting in April. The Council also voted on Tuesday to review the petition in the planning and zoning subcommittee. Both votes were unanimous.

The petition sent to city officials on Monday was signed by 365 people. The organizers say they are concerned no one is studying what impact apartments will have on traffic and the school system.

The apartment moratorium was also talked about during last year's City Council election. Many Councilors said during Tuesday's meeting that there's an appetite in Framingham to study what impact apartment construction is having on the city.

"We need to hit the pause button," Councilor Michael Cannon said Tuesday night. "We need to get a sense how this flood of apartments are being absorbed so we know what the impact is to the schools and our other infrastructure"

According to Long, a longtime member of the Planning Board, about 1,400 apartment units have been approved for construction since 2016, with more than half in the downtown area alone. Many of those units — just under 900 — have yet to even open. Developments at 266 Waverly St., 59 Fountain St., and 480 Franklin St., are still under construction. Those three developments hold 738 units alone.

Framingham — and the entire Boston area — is in the midst of a housing shortage, which has led to skyrocketing rents.

In March, the average price of a one-bedroom apartment in Framingham was about, $1,800, according to the rent listing website Zumper. Five years ago, a one-bedroom cost about $1,350 here.

A 2019 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that Framingham has a shortage of affordable units. About a quarter of the city's 13,000 rental households are low-income, and 82 percent are rent-burdened, which means that a household is spending more than one-third of its income on rent.

A study released in December by the Massachusetts Housing Partnership found that cities like Framingham have lots of room to develop near transit hubs, which might help cut down on traffic.

There are also several important apartment developments set to come online soon. The Modera Apartments at 266 Waverly Street is set to open soon with 270 units. Meanwhile, developers are turning the former Bancroft Building, 59 Fountain St., into a 258-unit complex, with an expected completion sometime in 2020. In the Nobscot area, a developer plans to turn a largely abandoned shopping plaza into 158 units — a project that is being bolstered by a $3.4 million MassWorks grant to rebuild the intersection of Edgell Road, Edmands Road, and Water Street