The Housing and Development Committee of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council (JPNC) held its regular monthly meeting this past Tuesday evening (July 22) via Zoom.
On hand for the session were chair Purple Reign, vice chair Willie Mitchell, and fellow members Sarah Freeman, Alcurtis Clark, Bernie Doherty, Lorenzo Bartoloni, Gert Thorn, and Kathy Brown.
Also in attendance was Zavia Dickerson, the new liaison to Jamaica Plain from the mayor's office.
The committee heard a presentation from Aiden Regan, the founder and CEO of Restored Living. According to its website, "Restored Living was founded in response to a unanimous feeling that housing in Massachusetts is unsatisfactory. It's too expensive, and the properties within people's rental budget are small and poor quality. For the reasons stated on our learn page, we've concluded that collaborative purchasing is the most immediate solution to getting people into homeownership."
"We're trying to help people co-purchase together," Regan told the committee members. "Buying a multi-family together is a more-affordable alternative to renting or individually purchasing a condo. Our business model is to form groups of purchasers and then find properties that suit them."
Regan noted that he works informally with city officials such as Paige Roosa, the Director of the Mayor's Housing Innovation Lab, to assist with finding homes that are suitable for this form of home ownership. He said the biggest obstacle faced by co-purchasers is how to transfer ownership when one of the owners wants to sell.
Regan fielded questions from the committee members, some of whom spoke favorably of their own experiences with co-purchasing agreements.
The committee discussed the progress of the MBTA's project to replace the current Arborway bus garage with a new garage that will house 200 electric buses.
The long-delayed project — which initially was proposed in 1999 (long before electric buses were even imagined) at which time the T and the city signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that designated eight acres of the site for community development purposes — had been on track for completion by 2029.
However, a lack of funding by the legislature over the past two years left the project in limbo in the design stage. Then this past spring, the T board allocated funding to move the project forward. The T is under a legislative mandate to have an all-electric bus fleet by 2040.
"We need to talk about the kind of buses they will be using, whether the building will be enclosed and its overall design, and about the eight acres that have been promised for community development purposes," said Thorn, referencing the T's proposal to take two of the eight acres for employee parking, which would reduce the acreage available for community development purposes.
It should be noted that when the T and the city signed the MOU in 1999, the city was going to give its adjacent pole yard to the T in exchange for the transfer of the eight acres for community development land.
However, in the intervening two decades, the city has decided to keep its former pole yard for use by the city's DPW, thereby requiring the T to find an alternative for parking for its employees.
"We also need to take 'ownership' of the type of housing that will be built on the community development space," Thorn suggested.
The Housing and Development Committee established an Arborway Yard Subcommittee four years ago to represent the interests of the JPNC and the community. The subcommittee met regularly with T officials, but essentially disbanded when the project went on hold. It is now being reconstituted.
Purple Reign reported to the committee that Marc Kaplan, the developer of the 3326 Washington St. rental complex who rescued the project from bankruptcy, informed her that he has modified the mix of affordable units in the project in response to the requests of community advocates for more affordability.
"This was a collaborative effort," she said. "We didn't get everything that we wanted, but Mr. Kaplan was willing to work with us and we got some changes. It shows that when we fight together, we win."
"This project is so much better because of the advocacy," added Brown, who herself has been a longtime and forceful advocate for affordable housing.
The next meeting of the Housing and Development Committee is set for August 18 at 7:00 PM via Zoom.