Forum Tonight On Real Estate Transfer Fees

Arlington MA

04 March, 2021

3:14 PM

Description

Your Arlington Last Updated: 04 March 2021 Written by Joan Roman The Housing Plan Implementation Committee and town planning invite you to attend a virtual informational session at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 4. Learn about real estate transfer fees, the proposed Town Meeting article about the issue and home-rule petition process, how other communities plan to use such fees and to answer your questions. The panelists for this forum include: Frank (Rich) Feeley, Concord Housing Foundation president and retired faculty member at the Boston University School of Public Health; Hannah Carrillo, Sustainable Neighborhoods coordinator in the City of Somerville's Housing Division and leading the statewide advocacy group, Transfer Fee Coalition; Ellen Shachter, director of Somerville's Office of Housing Stability and also leading the Transfer Fee Coalition; and Erin Zwirko, assistant director, Planning and Community Development. Register in advance for this meeting >> After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. The Housing Plan Implementation Committee began discussing the potential benefits of adopting such a transfer fee more than a year ago as a companion to the adoption of an Affordable Housing Trust. Both were submitted for the 2020 annual Town Meeting, and the affordable-housing trust was continued to the November 2020 Special Town Meeting, where it was adopted with an overwhelming majority of members. The fee article has been resubmitted to the 2021 annual Town Meeting warrant. The article is filed as a home-rule petition, which, if adopted and approved by the state Legislature, would eventually have to be added to a ballot for an upcoming election in Arlington. Such a fee provides a continual and renewing source of revenue for the Arlington Affordable Housing Trust Fund. If adopted by Town Meeting, the housing trust will be prepared to assist low- and moderate-income households in a holistic and well-capitalized way that Arlington has not yet been able to achieve even with the dedicated funding from the Community Preservation Act and the Community Development Block Grant funds, a Feb. 23 town news release says. This would serve as a vehicle to aggregate resources to support the creation and preservation of affordable units by the Arlington Housing Authority, the Housing Corp. of Arlington and others. The forum will be recorded and shared if you are unable to attend this virtual event. For more information, contact Erin Zwirko at 781-316-3091 or ezwirko at town.arlington.ma.us. YourArlington.com has provided news and opinion about Arlington, Mass., since 2006. Publisher Bob Sprague is a former editor at The Boston Globe, Boston Herald and Arlington Advocate. Read more at https://www.yourarlington.com/about.