Greetings everyone,
This Mother’s Day, we honor all the mothers, grandmothers, stepmothers, and caregivers who nurture families and communities — and we recommit to the fight for a town where every family can thrive. Anna Jarvis founded Mother’s Day not as a commercial holiday, but as a call to honor her mother’s work for peace and justice. Today, we carry that spirit forward by advocating for housing policies that reflect those same values — care, dignity, and fairness. Too many families in our community are burdened by rising rents, excluded by zoning laws, or pushed out by a lack of affordable options. On a day devoted to honoring those who raise and protect us, we remember: there is no act of love more powerful than working to ensure everyone has a safe, stable place to call home.
THANK YOU AGAIN to everyone who ran for office, volunteered, and donated to our successful Town Election last Tuesday! Next on the calendar is Spring Town Meeting, which will be in person only in the High School Auditorium (other than for those who need reasonable accommodation). Town Meeting begins in two weeks on Tuesday, May 27 at 7:00 PM, and will continue for up to five additional nights (May 28, and June 4, 5 and if needed, June 10 and 11. Members of the public are welcome to attend at the High School, and can also view it live at this link. You can find videos of prior meetings here.
Watch this space for Brookline for Everyone’s endorsements on Warrant Articles to advance our goal of making Brookline more affordable, environmentally sustainable, racially inclusive, fiscally stable by helping create more housing of all kinds and encouraging economic development. Spoiler alert: our recommendations will certainly include support for Warrant Article 24, which would seek the authority to allow Brookline to charge a small Real Estate Transfer Fee to help fund our Affordable Housing Trust, and for Warrant Article 26, which would express Town Meeting’s support for changing state law to prohibit landlords from charging tenants for the landlord’s real estate broker fees.
We’ll also include information on reaching out to your Town Meeting Members (TMMs) on our priorities (or anything else!).
Two Brookline Meetings of Note this Week
- The Community Preservation Act Committee (CPAC) will be meeting on Monday, May 12, at 5:30 pm via Zoom only. The meeting will include a plan for presentation of the CPA recommendations for the upcoming Town Meeting, along with an overview of the timeline for the next year’s application cycle, which begins with the mandatory submission of project eligibility applications between July 1 and July 22, 2025. The agenda and meeting materials are here, and you can register here.
- The recently formed Centre Street Lots Committee meets on Thursday, May 15, at 6:00 pm, at the Denny Room of the Public Health Building at 11 Pierce Street, with a Zoom option. The committee is considering how to make better use of the Town parking lots behind Coolidge Corner. Can they be used for economic development and transit-oriented housing in addition to providing the needed parking? The meeting agenda will consider draft guiding principles, presentation of preliminary survey results, and a presentation on “tactical urbanism.” For more information, check out the project webpage here. The full agenda and attachments are here, and you can register here for the Zoom.
What We’re Reading
This week we want to highlight a great piece in Fast Company titled “Should we prioritize housing or climate? It’s time to stop acting like we have to choose,” by Heather Clark. In the piece Clark relays why collapsing home insurance markets in the face of recent climate disasters makes mortgages difficult or impossible to obtain. Connecting the cost of insurance with the crucial need to mitigate climate change, Clark points to why leaders within both the housing affordability and climate movements must work more closely together. Here in Brookline we’ve been fortunate to have a lot of overlap amongst climate and housing activists, and both groups should continue to collaborate to address two of the major challenges facing our community.
Thanks and have a great week,
Jonathan Klein, on behalf of Brookline for Everyone