New Affordable Apartments in Brookline, Town Meetings, and More

Let's start with some very good news this week: 50 very affordable, income-restricted rental apartments will soon be available in Brookline! Known as Puddingstone at Chestnut Hill, these are part of a brand-new 250-unit Chapter 40B development at Hancock Village, and include 8 units for households with incomes up to 30% of area median income (AMI) and 42 units at up to…
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HPP Wins Final Select Board Approval + Not too Late to Run for Town Meeting

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;…
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Big GBIO Rally Next Sunday (March 3) and Election Updates

Greetings, we hope you had a good weekend. Congratulations to all the parents who survived (and maybe even enjoyed?) Brookline’s School Vacation Week. We want to start with a reminder that early voting for the Presidential primary is underway in Brookline. You can vote at Town Hall this week, Monday through Thursday, 8am to 5pm, and Friday 8am to 12:30pm.…
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Accessory Dwelling Units at the Housing Advisory Board and Using Data to Support Pro-Housing Activism

We want to start this week's newsletter recognizing Black History Month by pointing to a piece from the White House's Council of Economic Advisory - Exclusionary Zoning: Its Effect on Racial Discrimination in the Housing Market. We've learned from scholars like Richard Rothstein and Amy Dain, among many others, that housing and zoning policy have long been used to segregate by…
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Ask the Select Board to Fund the Brookline CDC’s Rental Assistance Program, Meeting with Senator Creem with GBIO

This week there has been a great deal of coverage on the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies' "America's Rental Housing 2024" report (including CBS, NYT, NPR). It's worth a review. And as prominent housing finance and urbanism scholar Dan Immergluck highlighted on Bluesky, while folks are focused on middle income households paying more than 30% of their income on…
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Meeting with Senator Creem with GBIO, Brookline Meetings We’re Following, and Learning About Missing Middle Housing

Hope everyone has been able to stay warm this weekend. Let’s dive right in. Join Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) for a meeting with Senator Cynthia Creem and Reps. Kay Khan, Ruth Balser, and Alice Peisch Mark your calendars for an in-district meeting with Senator Cynthia Creem and Reps. Kay Khan, Ruth Balser, and Alice Peisch hosted by our friends…
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