Greetings, and welcome to “Meteorological Spring”! Yes, that is a real thing which I just learned about this year. While “Astronomical Spring” (based on the vernal equinox) doesn’t start this year until March 19, apparently meteorologists (and isn’t the weather what we REALLY care about) have decided on a different scheme, and consider March/April/May as “Spring.” Makes sense to me; let’s just hope the weather cooperates.
Now, on to the week.
Select Board Approves Brookline’s Updated Housing Production Plan!
Our big news this week is the long-awaited approval by the Select Board of Brookline’s updated Housing Production Plan (HPP), which will now be forwarded to the State’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (HLC) for their approval. While hard to believe, the effort to comprehensively update the 2016-2021 HPP has been in the works since Fall 2020, when B4E and our allies supported — and passed! — Warrant Article 34, calling on the Town to put housing affordability and production on our collective agenda. The HPP provides a roadmap with concrete goals, strategies, and possible zoning reforms to boost the creation and preservation of affordable housing. For more details, you can see the final plan here; for context, we also recommend the memos to the Select Board from Planning Director Kara Brewton (here) and consultant Judi Barrett (here). Now, on to implementation and more housing!
Two Brookline Town Board and Commission Meetings this Week
The Community Preservation Act Committee will meet via Zoom on Monday, March 4, at 6:30 pm (meeting link here; no registration required, and the full agenda is here). While meeting agenda is primarily administrative, and does not include consideration of grant recommendations, we think this is a committee worth watching carefully, since it is charged with making recommendations to the May 2024 Town Meeting for allocation of the up to $10,000,000 in CPA funds that Brookline has accumulated over the three years since we passed the CPA. Of the $14,113,827 in applications, $10,563,687 (about 75%) are for the creation or preservation of affordable housing, including a joint application from the Housing Advisory Board and the Brookline Housing Authority for the BHA’s Walnut/Juniper/High Street public housing redevelopment (see B4E’s support letter here) and applications from the Brookline Community Development Corporation for its Housing Stability Program and renovation of its existing properties (see our support letter here). If there is an opportunity for public comment, please consider advocating for these proposals.
The Housing Advisory Board (HAB) will have its regular monthly meeting Wednesday, March 6, from 5:30-7:30 pm via Zoom. In addition to updates, the packed agenda will include further discussion of Accessory Dwelling Units and the Governor’s Housing Bill, an innovative “Plus One” concept to allow additional housing in our two and three family zones, and an informal discussion, led by Select Board Chair Bernard Green, on “How to make Brookline more welcoming as a prospective place to live for African-American and Hispanic households.” You can register here, and see the full agenda here.
Not Too Late to Run for Town Meeting + Support the B4E PAC
Brookline is governed by a five member Select Board, which is our “executive,” and a 255+ member Town Meeting, which is our “legislature.” One-third of the Town Meeting Members (TMMs) are elected each year, in May, which means about 85 seats are open this year, five in each of our 17 precincts, many of which may not be contested. Town Meeting usually meets twice a year, in the fall and spring, for several nights each, in hybrid format. Being a TMM is engaging and important, and we need your voice and vote to support pro-housing and climate policies. There is still plenty of time before the March 19 deadline to submit your petition (you only need 10 signatures, and we will help!), so if you are interested, just email us at BrooklineForEveryone@gmail.com; we’d love to connect (about this or anything else!).
And, we continue to need your financial help to run a strong campaign to elect our pro-housing candidates. Please consider a generous donation to the Brookline for Everyone PAC to fund our campaign efforts!
What We’re Reading This Week
- What has Zoning Reform Accomplished in Cambridge, Massachusetts? This is a short update from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies on implementation of the Affordable Housing Overlay District (AHOD) in Cambridge, our neighbor across the river. According to the article, there are now eight AHOD developments with 727 units actively underway, and a dozen more under review — which is an impressive result. Many of the projects are in parts of Cambridge that previously had little affordable housing development, meeting one of the AHODs main goals. (Brookline has an AHOD Study Committee, commissioned by Warrant Article 41 at the Fall 2022 Town Meeting, which has recently engaged a consultant to help analyze how an AHOD can be structured in Brookline; for more information, you can see the AHOD Study Committee Rolling Meeting Agendas and Minutes.)
- The Good News about Milton. Many of us have been following Milton’s failure to adopt its MBTA-CA plan, but the news is not all bad. We encourage you to check out this blog from Abundant Housing MA’s Regional Organizer Joyce Mandell about good work by local residents and organizers that preceded the final “no” vote, hopefully setting the stage (along with pressure from the Attorney General’s lawsuit) for a better result in the near future.