Our Stories

Making Equitable Transit-Accessible Homes a Reality

In Boston, LISC and its partners have created an “accelerator” fund to spur the creation of mixed-use, affordable housing in close proximity to good public transportation. In a column for The Salem News, Bob Van Meter lays out the ways this kind of housing can reduce expenses and car use for low-income families, and opens a pathway to jobs, amenities and a better quality of life. The fund’s first project, eight historic buildings in Salem, MA undergoing a rehab, will bring those opportunities to dozens of local families.

The excerpt below is from:
To help communities thrive, create transit-accessible affordable housing
Originally published in The Salem News

Access to quality affordable housing is extremely important for the health and success of individuals and families. Increasingly, however, housing affordability is being redefined to include the combined cost of housing and transportation, emphasizing the importance of access to good public transportation as a factor in siting affordable housing. That’s why LISC Boston created the Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (ETOD) Accelerator Fund. And on Friday, the Congress Street Residences in Salem became our first ETOD Accelerator Fund project to advance to construction.

The Residences, owned by our partners at the North Shore Community Development Coalition, reflect this new focus on access to public transportation, and for that reason were the first project to receive financing from the Accelerator Fund. Developed with support from Mass Development and the state, the Boston Foundation and the Hyams Foundation, the Accelerator Fund encourages development and preservation of equitable, mixed-use, affordable housing that will revitalize and preserve neighborhoods.

All of the Residences’ units are within close proximity to public transportation, including the commuter rail station. With seven units reserved for the formerly homeless, 16 dedicated to households earning less than 30 percent of the area median income, and the balance of the 64 apartments available to households at 60 percent of the area median income, the development represents precisely the kind of smart transit-oriented development LISC seeks to foster. Continued[+]...

Bob Van MeterABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Van Meter, Executive Director, LISC Boston
Prior to joining LISC in 2008, Bob led the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation, and was a project manager and real estate director at the Fenway Community Development Corporation. Bob served on the board of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations for ten years and spent eight years as a community organizer in Chicago and Boston.

$25.9 million renovation across eight buildings