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Board approves apartment with massive amount of storage
By adamg on Tue, 08/10/2021 - 11:03am
The Zoning Board of Appeal today approved a plan by CubeSmart to add a one-bedroom apartment to its self-storage facility at 968 Massachusetts Ave. - for a manager to live in to help assure 24-hour security for the storage units.
CubeSmart attorney Timothy Fraser said the one-bedroom, 996-square-foot unit with an office and a kitchenette would only be offered to a company manager, with no family, willing to live on the second floor of the storage facility.
In 2018, city investigators found several people living in some of the self-storage units - with rents around $230 a month.
Fraser said having an on-site manager would help ensure that never happens again.
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Comments
With no family?
How will they enforce that? That violates fair housing laws.
Self selecting?
Would you want to have a spouse and young kids in an apartment like that in the middle of Methadone Mile?
But also, this isn't an apartment that just anybody can rent, it's only offered as a part of employment.
People are desperate, I could
People are desperate, I could see someone making the attempt and then it could become a legal issue.
I wonder if they could handle this with just setting an occupancy level. How do other similar places do this? Many historical homes have caretakers and I imagine that they do not want to have children running around either. There must be some sort of exemption when it is onsite. I think about all of these vacation hotspots that offer onsite housing and when people go to work on oil rigs and sleep on site.
It could be as simple as building a venn diagram with overlapping circles. So in theory they could hire someone with a family , a term of working for them requires they live on site, but onsite is occupancy for only one?
I thought occupancy limit
I thought occupancy limit clauses in leases typically have exceptions for your spouse and children.
Eh
Yes, that parcel and the ones immediately surrounding it are all commercial/industrial, but it's on the edge of that zone, literally a few hundred feet away from housing on Shetland St and those streets. Quick walk to a nice playground, child care center, shopping, and the Mason school and community pool. Not actually a bad place for housing.
I assume the development of South Bay is going to take over the whole Newmarket area in a few years and all the low-rise industrial will be replaced with mid- or high-rise mixed residential/light commercial as has happened over near Fenway Park. The impact on the prices in the working-class lower-density neighborhoods toward Dudley Street could be an issue, but an addition of a ton of housing units might mitigate that too if they're truly affordable. There's no reason there should be all that heavy industry/18-wheeler stuff right in a city, particularly given how that area cuts up the city and makes it not great to walk/bike between neighborhoods without veering way north or south. Something that looks more like Boylston St/Brookline Ave (but with better traffic calming) would be a lot nicer for walking/biking through.
Your
Privilege is showing..
Your
Ignorance is showing.
Caretaker quarters
It would violate FHA if it were a standard rental apartment, but I'm pretty sure it's exempt when it's housing provided for a caretaker to live on site.
Like a lighthouse keeper, right?
Only with worse views.
Exactly
And people probably don't write poems and stories about the person whose job it is to live in the storage facility and serve as a beacon to all those weary...uh...people who store things?
Raymond Carver
I can see this as a Raymond Carver short story.
A weary, scotch-loving divorced dad gets his first place after a shot period crashing with his brother. As superintendent, he picks up the intrusive but banal habit of stealing and reading tenants’ mail. Eventually, he learns that one of his tenants is a widow who recently relocated from far away because her daughter needed to come to Boston for hospitalization for a severe condition. The protagonist uses this insight and performs secret, small acts of kindness to help the single mom—ordering groceries, leaving small gifts for the daughter in her storage unit, cleaning services showing up to tidy up her apartment. All the while the protagonist rhuminates on his own the state of his own family, his ex wife and daughter. He imagines having to visit his own daughter in the hospital and wonders if during such illness he could be supportive of his ex wife, for whom he holds much bitterness.
He eventually passes the widow mom in the hall and they have brief, mundane conversation. It is obvious she does not suspect the protagonist as the one providing the small kindnesses. A few days later, the protagonist is creeping the mail again and sees that the mom’s mail is forwarded to her old address. She has moved and there is no word whether the daughter had died or was discharged. The story ends with protagonist stating that was the last time he read mail that was not his.
Another worm can
Can the employer discriminate based on relationship status or having/not having kids?
What if the caretaker becomes pregnant - would they be fired for being pregnant?
Seems like the company may be making promises that it can't legally keep.
Not a primary residence
I'm curious if they'd claim this isn't going to be a primary residence, rather just a company owned furnished apartment where the manager on duty can take a shower and get a few hours of sleep during an otherwise long (several day) shift.
To prohibit a family they'd have a "no kids at work" policy.
This makes more sense. You
This makes more sense. You would need more than one apartment if they didn't work 24-7. It seems like you are just there to respond to alarms when the office is closed. Even if the manager had exclusive use of the apartment, they could just stay there when the office is closed and go home to their family otherwise.
I don't think it is illegal to not allow extra people to stay there, it would be illegal to discriminate against job candidates that had families or spouses.
Like a firehouse
That makes more sense.
But it doesn't square with Adam's story.
I think it is a very good idea to have a caretaker there 24/7 - but if they are specifying "live in" and "no family", it gets into some very odd job and housing rights space very quickly.
Hmm...
I'm not sure it does. I think that legally it wouldn't fall under free market housing. People can and do live places that have all sorts of rules about what you can do and who you can have there. Think live-in staff at schools, treatment programs, convents, ships, camps, etc. -- they often aren't allowed to freely have guests even. When you take the job, you're agreeing to what you can and can't do, and you're getting housing as a benefit. I'm pretty sure different laws apply than if someone is just deciding to be a landlord and is renting out their property.
Oh, also people who are not employees but who are living at a school, treatment program, rooming house, shelter, etc. -- they also have regulations about what's allowed and not allowed and aren't subject to more general housing laws.
In both situations, I think the space is less legally considered "yours" than a typical rented apartment. People don't generally have the same tenants' rights like freedom from having their space entered. They're aware of this though, and they agree to it when they decide to live somewhere (that usually doesn't require full payment of rent).
This isn't a new/ unheard of
This isn't a new/ unheard of situation for other businesses- I live in the same area as a neighborhood center-type place that has an overnight custodian/ caretaker who has a place in an adjacent building
Not to be too facetious about it- but there was even a "Flintstones" episode about 55 years ago or so where Fred took a 2nd job as the live-in super at an apartment building with Wilma and Pebbles
Sideshow Bob used to live there.
"This next question is a bit...touchy." "If you want to live in the box it's an extra $5."
"All the guys in here are working on revenge!"