HCA Tenant Council – Internal

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Topic	Description
Town of Arlington Alerts	The Town of Arlington has a text alert system! If you sign up to receive the alerts, you will be notified of things like snow emergencies/parking bans, evacuations, service interruptions, such as water main breaks, traffic, and trash collection delays, and major events in Arlington. The link to register is below: https://www.arlingtonma.gov/connect/arlington-alerts
A Message from Zachrea, HCA’s New Asset Manager

This year is HCA’s 40th anniversary! Every month, there will be a quick story about a piece of HCA history. 

In the late 1980’s, when we last left the fledgling Housing Corporation of Arlington organization, it had suffered a major defeat. HCA’s initial big plan – to acquire homes that the Town had taken for tax title, move them to a vacant Town-owned lot on Lake Street, and sell them at affordable prices to low-income first time homebuyers was resoundingly struck down by Town Meeting.

But our fearless founders did not give up!

They kept their attention on their goal: to help low-income families stay in Arlington, and to create affordable homes that would be a community asset for years to come.

Their next effort was successful! They were able to find other  properties and help local families acquire their first homes affordably.    

In early 1990, HCA identified two homes that had been foreclosed on in Arlington: a 2-family home on Warren Street, and a single family home on Teel Street. The homes were under the jurisdiction of the Select Board due to the significant amount of back taxes owed to the Town.

By early May of 1990, HCA had formed a plan to renovate the homes and sell each unit (3 homes total) to first time homebuyers with household annual incomes between $35,000 and $43,000. The buyers had to be residents of Arlington or Town employees. The homes would be priced at or below $130,000 (vs. the market rate of $200,000). HCA would provide subsidies to the buyers, enabling them to get a lower interest rate on a mortgage, which would enable them to take out a larger mortgage that was still affordable to them. If the buyers sold their homes in the future, the subsidy funds would be owed back to HCA to enable more affordable housing at that time.

It would be a win for (almost) all. There was one family renting one of the units, who HCA would need to help relocate. But three other local families would get to purchase their first home, the town would receive payment for all back taxes owed from the sale of the properties to those owners, and HCA would start to have an impact in stemming the loss of families from Arlington due to the high cost of housing.

In spring of 1990 HCA started actively collecting applications from hopeful households. In late April, they held a public information session. The local paper described the event as “standing room only” as an estimated 120 people crowded into the Senior Center on Maple Street to learn more! Select Board Member Stephen Gilligan welcomed the attendees. HCA’s President Wilson Henderson, and many other HCA members and others, including Bob Bowes, who is still active and supportive of affordable housing in Arlington today,  shared information about a subsidized mortgage program available for first time homebuyers, how a condominium structure works when there are two units and unit owners in one building and other factors to consider when buying a home.

On May 10, 1990, HCA held a lottery to randomly select the families who would be able to purchase Arlington’s first private affordable housing units.

By November 1990 two families had closed on the acquisition of their homes and were moving in on Warren Street! By March 1991 a family had purchased and was moving into their new home on Teel Street! The families included a single mom nurse with two kids, a couple with one child, and a couple with two children.

This initial program was the result of significant effort by so many people, including pushing through significant opposition to affordable housing. A Letter to the Editor in the Arlington Advocate from April 1990 noted that it was problematic that the town was losing affordable housing to condo conversions and redevelopment projects, but also that, “One works hard, saves money, and finds a home within one’s means. Affordable housing proposals should not be an end run around hard work and saving.” We can assume this writer never had to support a family solely from the income of a full-time minimum wage job…

HCA’s efforts — though not yet widely supported — likely helped to turn the tide in opinion about affordable housing, while also helping a small number of local families.

By the mid 1990’s HCA was regularly receiving awards of Community Development Block Grant funds from the Town of Arlington for affordable housing programs.

In 1994 the local paper ran an article about the winners of the Arlington fair housing essay contest, held at Arlington High School – and published the five winning essays. The winners spoke to the importance of fair housing in the context of preventing bigotry or discrimination but also about the importance of socio-economic diversity. They spoke of ensuring that single parents, low-income families or people with disabilities could fairly access an affordable home of their own.

Important shifts in public opinion and policy never happen overnight. Those who care must keep working towards the goal. It likely would have been hard for those early HCA leaders to imagine that — a few decades later — HCA would have a portfolio of 208 units with a beautiful 43-unit building under construction on Sunnyside Ave, and a zoning approval for yet 40 more units near Arlington Center. But those early advocates set the stage that enabled the rest of the work.

📢 Community Events

ℹ️ Community Notices

Topic	Description
CPA Committee	The Town of Arlington has a text alert system! If you sign up to receive the alerts, you will be notified of things like snow emergencies/parking bans, evacuations, service interruptions, such as water main breaks, traffic, and trash collection delays, and major events in Arlington. The link to register is below: https://www.arlingtonma.gov/connect/arlington-alerts
A Message from Zachrea, HCA’s New Asset Manager

This year is HCA’s 40th anniversary! Every month, there will be a quick story about a piece of HCA history. 

The Founding of HCA

In the mid 1980’s, many Arlington residents were starting to worry. Their middle-income town used to be affordable, but home prices and rents were quickly climbing. They were hearing more and more about couples who could not afford to purchase their first home. The local newspaper, The Arlington Advocate, was sharing stories about single moms having a very hard time finding housing, and even becoming homeless. They ran a story about a nun trying to help Vietnamese refugees resettle but having trouble because of “skyrocketing rents”. They wrote about apartment buildings and two-family homes being converted to condominiums, causing massive displacement of renters and putting the squeeze on a very tight rental market.

The Town of Arlington took action. In early 1986, upon the urging of local residents and leaders, the town formed an Affordable Housing Task Force. The Task Force was chaired by then Select Board Member Robert Murray, who was quoted as saying, “I see the housing crunch to be a social problem, and like every other social problem, if you ignore it long enough, it will hit you. We all have a social responsibility to try to solve that social problem.”

The Task Force’s early goals included helping couples who earned less than $50,000 a year to purchase homes, and to help households with rental vouchers to find apartments that their vouchers could cover. They wanted to explore several potential strategies: working with a bank to raise funds for a down payment assistance program, working with a private developer to commit to restricting some of their condominium units as affordable, identifying abandoned properties with overdue taxes where the owners might resell those homes as affordable and pay off their property debts, and reducing the property tax obligation for low-income homebuyers.

After many months of studying the strategies, and developing a set of possible approaches, on October 9, 1986 the Task Force formed a brand new organization to help advance local housing efforts: Housing Corporation of Arlington!

HCA’s Articles of Incorporation, filed with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, noted that the organization’s purpose would be to “acquire, develop, improve, sell; manage and lease affordable housing in the Town of Arlington for low and moderate income families and to provide other social and civic  services  to benefit  low and moderate income members of society.”

The organization’s first board included members from the original task force, as well as others.

One of HCA’s first tasks was to find a location for three donated homes (two from Bank Five, and one from a developer) that were slated to be torn down in order for other developments to be built on their lots.

The goal was to relocate the homes and sell them at affordable prices. The proceeds would also be the seed money to support other affordable housing development efforts.

Robert Murray — the chair from the Task Force and a Select Board Member — was HCA’s first President.  As HCA was getting started, he noted, “If some of the things fall right for us, we can offer a lot of help within a year.”

But things did not fall right for HCA in that first year!

HCA needed to find lots to move their donated homes. They went to the Conservation Commission regarding some land in their control, but met a dead end. They went to Town Meeting to request that the Town transfer a 16,000 square foot lot on Lake Street to HCA so that a donated 2-family home could be relocated there to create affordable homes.

76 residents signed a petition against the idea. Then it came to Town Meeting for a vote. The debate was vigorous.

HCA member John Doyle noted that a well-kept yard and new homes would improve the current condition of the area, and would add to the tax base. Robert Murray reminded Town Meeting members of the dire need for affordable housing.

Howard Swartz, One of the Lake Street lot neighbors who led the opposition noted (we suspect largely erroneously!): “It’s a fire hazard, violates the rights of abutters, uses lush green space, threatens the bike path, will cost the Town money and doesn’t have sufficient funding.”

The transfer of Town land to HCA for affordable housing was voted down by Town Meeting, 99-44.

After the vote, an editorial in the Arlington Advocate noted: “The residents of [Lake Street] behaved in curiously ungrateful manner at the prospect of becoming the unasked recipients of a Bank Five Affordable House. How shortsighted. Imagine, the only affordable dwelling within 20 miles. Neighbors could get rich just charging a visitation fee. See? There it is. Yes, really; That’s an affordable house.”

But the same author was also very critical of HCA and its supporters, saying: “Why don’t the Affordables use their dual roles on all these boards to secure affordable housing in the flood of new construction and condo-conversion units now inundating Lake Monotomy. What a silly question! That would take bread out of the mouths of the developers and their real estate cronies.”

That defeat was significant and must have felt terrible. HCA did not ever find any location for the donated homes and had to abandon that plan altogether. HCA continued to pursue their many other ideas: passing linkage to generate funds for affordable housing development, awarding Town owned land for affordable housing development, and providing tax relief to landlords who keep rents low. But none of these strategies came to fruition in the early years.

And yet! Here we are, nearly 40 years later, with a portfolio of 208 apartments, and another 83 in our pipeline. Today, Arlington residents deeply understand and care about the need for affordable housing, and they want to ensure that we can welcome and retain a diversity of neighbors and household incomes in our community.

Sometimes you just have to start, knowing that the road may be long, knowing that there will be many barriers, and even defeats. Sometimes you just need to move forward the best you can, because your cause is that important. Because you can’t do nothing when you see a problem that is hurting other people.

We are grateful that those early HCA board members and housing supporters did not give up! All of their efforts in those early days – even the efforts that didn’t pan out – laid the foundation for everything that was to come. They allowed HCA to continue to evolve, grow, and see true success over time.

This year is HCA’s 40th anniversary! Every month, there will be a quick story about a piece of HCA history. This month’s story is written by HCA board member Laura Weiner, and it is about the first house that HCA ever bought, back in 2001! *edited for length

HCA’s first acquisition

by Laura Wiener 

In fall of 2000 I became the first Director of Housing for the Town of Arlington. By that time I had been on the Board of HCA for as long as I lived in Arlington, since 1987.

I was lucky when I started my new job, because two very committed public servants had been putting money aside for affordable housing for a couple of years — Alan McClennen, Director of Planning and Community Development (and my new boss) and Select Board member Charlie Lyons. Each year for 3 years they had allocated $100,000 from the federal Community Development Block Grant program for affordable housing, even though they weren’t sure how it would get spent.

HCA was still a young organization at that time — only 4 years old — and had not developed any housing yet, despite real effort.  But we all felt that HCA was the logical purchaser, since it was an independent non-profit established by the Town to create affordable housing. I had a little bit of experience working with a non-profit in Watertown that had purchased a 2-family for affordable housing. So I felt like that was the easiest way to get started. 

I worked with a broker, looking at 2-families, and most everything was at least $400,000, which was very expensive at the time. Then, I saw a property for just under $300,000. It was small, but in good condition and with a big backyard. I remember calling Alan on a Saturday and telling him about it, and he said, “Do it!”, and I did! That modest 2-family house on Smith Street with the large yard became the home for 2 single-mom households, each with one child. One of those women continues to live there today. It felt so good to jump in and start, and to help two families who were truly in danger of being pushed out of Arlington, if not worse.  

That was just the start! HCA eventually acquired 15 2-family homes for Arlington families. Over time, HCA transitioned to acquiring (or building) larger properties that could help more families as the housing crisis continued to worsen.

As we celebrate our 40th anniversary year, we honor that house on Smith Street, the first in a growing portfolio of protected, restricted, stable affordable homes for Arlington families.

📢 Community Events

Date	Event
Thursday February 12, 6pm	The first Tenant Council meeting of 2026 will be at the Robbins Library on Thursday, Feb 12 at 6pm. We have a full slate! Come to hear Andrew Wofford, HCA’s Real Estate Project Manager, give an update on the capital repair process, which are large-scale repairs and improvements made to your buildings. HCA’s property management staff will be there as well to give a report on their progress implementing the policy changes that they have promised the Tenants.
Monday March 9,  7:00pm	HCA’s first meeting with the Arlington Rezoning Board about Emma’s Court was a great success. Thank you to all who came to show your support! Want to help with the process? Call or email Jackson to get more information!

ℹ️ Community Notices

Topic	Description
TOWN SNOW ALERTS	The Town of Arlington has a text alert system! If you sign up to receive the alerts, you will be notified of things like snow emergencies/parking bans, evacuations, service interruptions, such as water main breaks, traffic, and trash collection delays, and major events in Arlington. The link to register is below: https://www.arlingtonma.gov/connect/arlington-alerts
RESIDENT PORTAL REWARDS??	You may have received an email like this one from LOFT, our  resident portal. They are not spam emails or scam, but an offer to join their completely optional loyalty program. If you have any further questions regarding the resident portal, please contact the management office at arlington@peabodyproperties.com or 781-777-2345

Date	Event
Monday January 26,  7:30pm	HCA’s first meeting with the Arlington Rezoning Board about Emma’s Court is on Monday 1/26. Want to help with the process? Call or email Jackson to get more information!
Thursday February 12, 6pm	The first Tenant Council meeting of 2026 will be at the Robbins Library on Thursday, Feb 12 at 6pm. We have a full slate! Come to hear Andrew Wofford, HCA’s Real Estate Project Manager, give an update on the capital repair process, which are large-scale repairs and improvements made to your buildings. HCA’s property management staff will be there as well to give a report on their progress implementing the policy changes that they have promised the Tenants.
Thursday February 5, 12pm	HCA has partnered with the Town of Arlington to work on creating climate resiliency rooms at some of HCA’s buildings – rooms that will have A/C and electricity during power outages – and we are working together to host a climate resiliency workshop at the Robbins Library. Come and learn about how Arlington and HCA are working together to make our homes and community more resilient to climate change and weather events!

ℹ️ Community Notices

As we wrap up 2025, there is a lot to reflect on – a lot has changed for all of us this year, and it is important that each of us takes some time to dwell, think, reflect, and to learn.

It has been a great year at HCA – 3 new full-time staff members started, we acquired 59 more units of housing that will help us achieve our goal of Arlington having enough affordable housing for all, and the Tenant Council has grown so much, including securing the first ever tenant-led policy changes at HCA as a result of having meetings with property management. 

I am grateful for every single one of you – you are what makes HCA the place that it is – and I am looking forward to continuing our work together in 2026.

– Jackson

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