There are three primary federal grants the city uses for affordable housing are going to be allocated soon, and Newton’s Planning Department recently presented a preliminary overview of its five-year plan for that money to the Fair Housing Committee.
Newton receives federal funding to help build and maintain affordable housing for in-need residents and provide them financial assistance. The Planning Department is in charge of allocating these funds and, in order to receive them, applicants have to show how a project fits the community’s needs.
The three federal funds the Planning Department draws from are:
- The Community Development Block Grant (CBDG)
- the Home Investment Partnership Program (HOME)
- and the Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG).
Individuals making 80% of Newton’s average median income or lower can qualify for assistance through CBDG and HOME funded programs, ESG is reserved for individuals and families in need of rapid housing relief due to homelessness and other risks.
Households and families qualify to receive aid based on the average median income of their living area. Newton’s AMI is high, and census data showing the percentage of Newton residents deemed very low income (30% or below the AMI) has shrunk over the last 15 years.
The Planning Department spent the month of October gathering public input through in-person and virtual meetings and a survey.
“The survey has been out for, I think, about a month now. We’ve announced that we were at the harvest festival. We’ve announced it in the mayor’s newsletter,” Allison MacIntyre of the Planning Department said, “We sent it out to all the committees that dealt with housing, and as many of the planning board and planning related committees as we could.”
The planning department is also making an effort to translate the survey for residents speaking Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.
Lara Kritzer, the director of Housing and Development, said the city has promoted the survey to a variety of groups including: The Boys and Girls Club of Newton, and housing groups through the city including the Newton Housing Partnership, and the Senior Center.
Member Josephine McNeil, who is also the executive director of the local housing non-profit CAN-DO Newton, was concerned that low-income families’ needs were not being adequately addressed by the city.
McNeil asked if the planning department could give a breakdown of the age range receiving benefits from these federal programs saying she believed that the city may be disproportionately using federal funds for senior-living-focused communities that could be helping more low-income families.
“I would like to have some data to really be able to argue that point, and when the beginning of the year comes and we start talking about budgets, I’d like to raise the issue.” McNeil said.
The chair of the committee Esther Scholeritz clarified, saying that it was important because the need for multifamily housing caters to a larger portion of the population.
“It would be really helpful to see whether, how much of the population that is considered low and moderate income is a retired population that may, in fact, have very substantial asset values in their homes currently,” Scholeritz said.
The deadline for survey responses is Nov. 15 and some board members did express the desire to extend it in order to get more responses. Kritzer said it was set so the department could comply with the federal deadline and agreed that it was important they received a wide range of responses, but they were under a tight deadline.
“I really appreciate how you really went through all these three different programs just to remind us what they’re for. So really, really helpful,” said member Tatjiana Meschede.
According to Macintyre at the time of the meeting there were around 300 virtual responses. For more information and to complete the survey visit https://www.newtonma.gov/government/planning/housing-community-development