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Affordable apartments for seniors proposed for Four Corners
By adamg on Thu, 09/29/2016 - 10:20am
Architect's rendering.
A group that specializes in creating housing for the elderly is proposing a 54-unit apartment building at 16 Ronald St. in Dorchester aimed at seniors who cannot afford Boston rents.
Hearth, Inc. last week filed plans with the BPDA (formerly the BRA) for a $17.6-million building, to be called the Hearth at Four Corners, that would have 52 one-bedroom apartments and two studios for people 62 or older who make no more than 60% of the Boston area median income. The building would be staffed with workers to assist residents who need some help with their daily living.
Hearth proposes 14 parking spaces for workers and visitors.
Last year, the city, which owned the site of the former Ronald Gibson School, agreed to give the property to Hearth for the project. The city also agreed to kick in $1 million towards construction costs.
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Comments
Downside
Sure, so it's allegedly "affordable", but there's no tenant parking.
Since you seem to have read the whole application ...
Then surely you noticed that a lot of the apartments will be for people unlikely to even have cars - because they're now homeless.
Those kinds of places have
Those kinds of places have all kinds of visitors, and you can't say that none of them would have cars.
It's amazing that so many people take developer's estimates at face value.
This just sounds like income
This just sounds like income restricted housing for people over a certain age. Not saying that's not important, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have cars.
How would they afford cars?
Even if their housing is free, Social Security pays $1300 a month and Medicare doesn't cover prescriptions very well or glasses or dental. Food costs at least $300 a month, and people may still have credit bills from earlier crises.
Owning a car in Boston costs a minimum of $300 a month in insurance and other expenses. I doubt that will be manageable for many people.
When we found a place for a relative with such a restricted income, we found a location where she would not have to have a car for this very reason - it costs way too much given income.
There are very affordable cars.
They could have already had a car, and owning one on that salary is manageable. Then there's still all the visitors.
Salary?
$1300 a month isn't a salary. It is a poverty level pittance. By law, people getting that have to pay around $125 for medicaid and about 1/3 or $430 for housing. That leaves about $750 for everything else - including prescriptions, glasses, dental checkups and dental work, transportation, food, clothing, etc.
Also note that assets have to be shed - including cars - when getting those disability payments. Savings accounts are not allowed - so you can't even save up for a new dental crown or glasses.
You clearly have never dealt with the finances of someone on Social Security and have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Maybe you could afford a car on this "salary" when living at home rent and utility free, but unless your housing is free or almost free you won't be able to manage to pay for a car and eat and get all your medications, too.
Cars are passé.
4 Hubway stations nearby
https://secure.thehubway.com/map/
$5 Membership for low-income Bostonians
https://www.thehubway.com/pricing/boston-bikes-membership
ZipCar and T 1 mile away
http://www.zipcar.com/find-cars/boston
35% of Boston Households do not own a car.
http://www.governing.com/government-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicl...
No, cars are not.
http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/planning/Main/MapsDataandReports/Data/Tra...
68.5% by auto versus 1.1% by bike*
*2010-2011 stats
Need more current stats:
2013: 75.6% of commuters into Boston choose a car (via US Census Bureau)
Commuters
People who live in Boston do not commute into Boston, they take the T downtown.
commuters need to start pushing Mass Gov to provide better rail service so they can commute into Boston. We are sick to death of them cutting through our neighborhood, causing accidents and creating traffic because they choose to drive into work.
Not quite ...
You might want to check out the commuter-rail stations in West Roxbury, Roslindale and Hyde Park at rush hour.
The idea is to do the same thing with the Fairmount Line, at a minimum (they were supposed to give it subway-like frequency to go with the subway fares they introduced a couple years ago, but one of the first things Charlie Baker did was to cancel plans to buy the sort of cars that would be needed to do that).
So the vast majority do own
So the vast majority do own cars. Your own post works against your argument.
You need to brush up on your stats
65% is not a vast majority of anything.
Curious about city owned property of closed schools
Curious about the history of this site. It was a former school and city owned. It seems to make sense that if a former school property was sold, the profits should go back into the school system budget. This is not a criticism of the project- yay for affordable housing- but it is an example of wariness of how the city handles money of former school properties.
I'm glad
That people are building affordable housing for the elderly
Please continue, but also build it for everybody else
Affordable Housing is Difficult to Build in Boston...
And I think this project points out why...
If you look at the price tag ($17.6 million) and the number of housing units to be built (54), that works out to a price tag of $325,000 per unit -- and these are one-bedroom units at the largest, in a development that's not especially fancy. Moreover, they're getting the property from the city for essentially nothing ($100) and the developer is a non-profit.
Plus they need a laundry list of variances which would likely be more difficult for a for-profit entity to obtain even though this project's proximity to a stop on the Fairmount Line makes it a poster child for transit-oriented development.
That close to a train station
That close to a train station they should just build a high rise.
That isn't appropriate scale
That isn't appropriate scale for the rest of the area.
Hearth has a good rep
Hearth has a good reputation and has several such housing facilities all over Boston. Some if not all were efforts that were partnered with the BRA/BPDA. They specialize in homeless seniors or those with serious income issues as the story notes, and in those instances when BHA housing is not easily available. Applicants actually use BHA to apply for housing and those that qualify are referred to Hearth facilities. Their buildings are well-maintained and have a staff of visitors that check in on seniors who need assistance, which is why the site will have an onsite staff as well.
Read up here: http://www.hearth-home.org/
You might even find a neighbor or someone you know on their board of directors or board of visitors.