297 Medford is located near the green line, high school, and the central library. A development in its formative stages.

By Liam Beretsky-Jewell

Cambridge-based developer Just A Start (JAS) and The Somerville Community Land Trust (SCLT) have begun the process of planning a 6-to-7-story affordable housing development at 297 Medford Street, a prime location near the Gilman Square T station. JAS is a non-profit, who currently preserves and maintains 645 units of affordable housing, spanning about 20 developments across Cambridge.

They are redeveloping 297 Medford in partnership with the SCLT, which is in the process of acquiring the underlying land at a cost of $3.45 million, with assistance from Somerville Affordable Housing Trust funds. SCLT works to “decommodify housing [by taking it] off of the speculative real estate market. Our goal is to build affordable housing through a community-driven process” explained executive director Ben Baldwin.

 All units at 297 Medford will be income-restricted. The eligibility threshold for a low-income tax credit program that will help finance the housing units is 60% of the area median income (AMI) explained Conor Ring, the project manager with JAS, so the units will be “affordable at no more than 60% of the area median income. Unit mix will probably be a mix of one bedroom, two bedrooms, and three bedrooms,” he added.

A development in its formative stages

JAS is still in the early stages of the project, so details related to parking, architectural design, first floor amenities, and other specifics are still very much on the drawing board. The developers hope the project will be completed by 2029. JAS says it wants to make this project an iterative, community-driven process, and it held the first public outreach meeting on March 5 at the Somerville Public Library.

Comments made at the meeting were overwhelmingly in support of the project. Unlike a controversial 25-level high-rise being proposed on Elm Street in Davis Square, the development at 297 Medford wouldn’t stand out among neighboring mid-rise buildings such as nearby Somerville High School or the Burton F. Faulkner Towers.

The 6-to-7-story design was also chosen for practical reasons, as the height represents somewhat of a “sweet spot” from a cost perspective for the developer. It offers JAS more bang for their buck than a low rise, which is needed to make the project financially viable. On the other end of the spectrum, the step-up to taller high-rise buildings generally means making the jump from wood frame construction to steel, and adhering to more stringent code requirements. “That means you have to build a beefier building, which pushes up costs,” Ring said.

The March 5 community outreach meeting.

Construction costs and funding

The cost of constructing new housing as a whole represents a challenging barrier to increasing the region’s supply of housing. “It’s materials, interest rates, everything,” Ring said. “I feel like every time we go to price a project lately, it is coming in higher than expected.” Public money to support affordable housing is limited, and “the pie is not big enough to fund all the projects that many organizations like ours are working on in Massachusetts,” Ring said, forcing developers to reapply year after year to secure financing. “The state only has so much to go around to fund those projects, so they often take longer than we would like to get off the ground.”

To fund the project beyond land acquisition, JAS anticipates using low-income housing tax credit equity from both the state and federal levels, and hopes to tap into the city’s Community Development Block Grant Program, as well as soft loans awarded to projects by the state. However, the cost of the project “is a moving target, because we haven’t designed a building yet.” 

As with previous JAS developments, a lottery system would most likely be used to narrow down the pool of housing applicants. “We work pretty closely with our property management company and the city in which we operate to make sure that folks know about the units, that they are sort of widely marketed. We take in applications and folks are screened for their eligibility” described Ring.

An important zoning amendment

JAS is seeking to pursue a zoning map change to up-zone the property from its current designation of Midrise 3 to Midrise 4 (MR4). This would allow JAS to build up to 7 stories, thanks to the affordable housing overlay that Somerville adopted in 2020, which is essentially “a density bonus given projects that are 100% affordable.” Under MR4, a market-rate developer could build a four-story building Ring explained. “The overlay sort of gives us even footing with market-rate developers in the competition for scarce land. We can build more units than them, and try to house as many people as possible.”

The request for the zoning map change will be heard at a joint public meeting of the Land Use Committee and the Somerville Planning Board on March 20. They estimate that the new building could include about 50 units of housing – 15 to 20 more than would be possible with Midrise 3.

Baldwin and Ring are encouraging community members who endorse the development to voice support for the zoning change at the upcoming meeting. Ring emphasized, “I think we sort of default to always talking about units, but these aren’t just units. They’re homes. For people who are going to live there and their families, right? So, instead of 20 additional units, it’s 20 additional families,” referring to the additional capacity that the zoning change would unlock.

 “A project like this, it’s a ton of work, but I think the end result is a more just vision of the city where you don’t have to make $200,000 salaries to stick around in Somerville and Cambridge,” Ring added, touching on the project’s vision.