Newton, Massachusetts Buys an Apartment Building to Keep it Affordable

The city of Newton, Massachusetts is taking a different approach to affordable housing development. Rather than subsidizing new construction, the city helped an affordable housing developer buy an apartment building that was up for sale.

As Andrew Brinker explains in the Boston Globe, the developer will renovate the units and offer them at below-market rents, allowing current residents to stay in the building. 

The strategy helps preserve “naturally occurring affordable housing” such as older buildings, helps reduce tenant turnover, and gets new affordable housing on the market faster and at a lower cost. It also prevents other developers from buying the building and hiking rents.

The project was funded in part by $4 million from the Newton Affordable Housing Trust, $6.6 million from the state, and $10 million from private investors. The total cost of $44 million comes out to roughly $400,000 per unit, $200,000 less than the cost of building a comparably sized new building. The city says the project will be “workforce housing” restricted to tenants making $39,700 to $141,592 for a two-person household.