Belmont Mass: Doesn't Want Affordable Housing

The Boston Globe reports:

Officially, the forest has no name. On maps, it is just a parcel of undeveloped land, about 15 acres in size, nestled amid suburban sprawl near Route 2 in the far northeast corner of Belmont.

But in recent years, with a developer looking to build a large residential complex on the parcel that would include affordable housing, locals have given the land an alluring name. They now call it the Silver Maple Forest and are pushing for the state to set aside $6 million to buy the property and incorporate it into the 120-acre Alewife Brook Reservation, before the developer moves forward.

"A great many of us in this community and in Arlington and Cambridge want to preserve that piece of land as a wildlife asset for our children in the future - period," said state Representative Will Brownsberger of Belmont. "That's what it is."

But some suggest that other factors may be at play, including fears about welcoming so much affordable housing to a town that currently has so little. By the state's count, Belmont has 321 affordable housing units, just 3.2 percent of the housing stock in town. And while some have opposed development on this site since 2002, when it was slated to be a research park, others have organized only in the last year, when it became clear that O'Neill Properties, a Pennsylvania firm, is seeking to build a complex of 299 rental units, including 60 slated for affordable housing.

"Maybe it's NIMBY-ism or maybe it's a misconception about affordable housing and what that means," said Christine McMahon, a spokeswoman for the developer, in a reference to the acronym for "not in my backyard." "But we think this project is important. We want to develop affordable housing there."

Some places just hate working class people.