During its March 13 meeting, Harvard’s Municipal Affordable Housing Trust (MAHT) voted unanimously to approve revisions to its policies and procedures. The changes are focused on the composition of the trust and the scope of trust activities.
The trust will no longer be authorized to purchase property, hold options to purchase property, partner with public or private entities for the development of public housing, or participate in the improvement or construction of affordable housing. The trust will limit its activities to conducting market and feasibility studies, covering transaction costs associated with charitable gifts to the trust fund, and seeking grants and other outside funding to underwrite activities. In a recent interview, Selectman and MAHT trustee Ron Ricci stated that these changes have been made because of events associated with the purchase of the historic Poor Farm property at 166 Littleton Road.
When the Poor Farm property was purchased in 2013 for $1.2 million, then members of the trust had high hopes for developing affordable housing on the property. An RFP was issued but garnered only one response. When the proposal was presented to the town in November 2014, abutting neighbors objected to the density of the proposal. Faced with such strong opposition, the trust opted to discontinue efforts to develop the property and voted to sell in December 2014. Since that time, the trust has made several unsuccessful attempts to sell the property. In the meantime, the cost of engineering studies and the mortgage expense have cost the town $700,000.
Ricci doesn’t want the trust to find itself in this position again. In a recent interview he reflected that the trust “has been most successful when it subsidizes or gives a grant to a third party” and that ”going forward, the trust needs to be looking out for similar opportunities.” He pointed out that, to date, the purchase of land by the trust has created no units of affordable housing for Harvard but that money spent on subsidizing the activities of others ($200,000 for the Bowers Brook senior housing facility on Ayer Road and $140,000 for Emerson Green on Grant Road at Devens) has created 87 units of affordable housing.
The MAHT is also reducing the number of its trustees. Since its creation in 2006, the trust has been composed of seven members. The number of trustees will be changing from seven to five. The trust has also expressed a desire that one of the five be a member of the Planning Board. Ricci says the change will make it easier for the trust to coordinate with the Planning Board on activities related to affordable housing, including maintaining the town’s subsidized housing inventory.
