Low-income housing in Walkling Court
Walkling Court is a housing development built by the Medford Housing Authority in 1963. It consists of 144 units, reserved exclusively for low-income seniors and disabled persons, located in between the Whole Foods and a single-family zoning neighborhood. Most "affordable housing" is for residents whose income is no more than 80% of area median income — which, for a one-bedroom in Medford, would be $82,950. Walkling Court is defined as "deeply affordable" housing, meaning that, no matter what a person makes, rent is only 30% of their income.
At the moment, there's a proposed expansion to Walkling Court, partially funded by Medford's Community Preservation Committee (full disclosure: I’m on the CPC) and partially by the state of Massachusetts, that would add 54 additional senior units and 40 additional multifamily units, in addition to upgrading the 144 existing units. Not only does Medford need more affordable housing — we're at 7.2% and should be at 10% minimum — but the buildings in Walkling Court are themselves deteriorating and, in many cases, inaccessible. Building on the expansion is set to begin by Summer 2024.
A diagram of the proposed expansion, from a 2020 presentation by the Medford Housing Authority.
My canvassing map for Sunday, June 11th, placed me squarely in Walkling Court and the neighborhood around it. The purpose of canvassing around Walkling Court in particular was to both convince people that they ought to vote for me and to learn residents' and neighbors' opinions of the proposals. Any time new building is proposed, there's opposition, and going door to door would help me to learn about this opposition.
In Walkling Court that day, the door to one of the complexes was open. I walked up to the second floor and knocked on an apartment door indicated in the app.
A 40-something man answered. "Who are you?"
"My name's Matt Leming. I'm running for Medford City Council."
"How'd you get in here?"
"Door to the building was unlocked."
"You're not supposed to be in here."
"Oh. Sorry."
He looked at the pamphlets I was holding. "I'll take one of those." I handed him one.
Unable to enter apartment buildings, I walked around Walkling Court and approached anybody hanging around outside. Two Haitian women accepted my pamphlet but couldn't speak English. A few older women were smoking outside, and we got into a conversation. After that, I went to the neighboring houses. There, in the streets, I met one woman who was collecting signatures from her neighbors, protesting the expansion. The signature sheet outlined seven complaints about the Walkling Court redevelopment, which can be summarized as follows: (1) too much is packed into too small a space (the number of cars will rise from 40 to 125+ while the number of residents will rise from about 140 to over 350, depending on family headcount); (2) more people and cars will bring in more traffic (there's already too much traffic in the area as is); (3) seniors and families are too different to live near each other, and it should not be a combined complex; (4) adding a road through the complex would invite in too many drivers looking for a shortcut, and the road should be omitted; (5) six-story buildings are too high; (6) the new buildings don't visually complement the rest of the neighborhood; (7) the senior buildings are too close to the commuter rail train tracks, which exposes them to too much noise and diesel pollution.
I chatted for a bit with the lady collecting signatures, who was entrenched in her conviction that these particular aspects of the developments were unacceptable. We had a back and forth. What if the MBTA wanted to build a wall for sound? I asked. They can't build a wall six stories high! she replied. What if they got soundproof windows, I asked? People want to open their windows, she replied. What about adequate ventilation systems? And so on.
To me, the complaints were either hand-wavy or addressable. Saying that six-story buildings are too high, or that seniors and multifamily residents don't belong together — that seemed like a matter of preference and opinion that is vastly outweighed by the need to get more affordable housing in Medford, even if the plans aren’t perfect. The complaint that I took most seriously was number seven — air and noise pollution. But, again, the plans contained ventilation systems and sound-proof windows, and, as I later discovered, seniors were more dissatisfied with the units in the state they were in now.
I learned more about these points at a community meeting the Medford Housing Authority held on July 27th. The MHA spent a lot of time addressing the specifics, like the design and outdoor space. Speed bumps could be added to the through street, or at least one of those "do not enter - residents only" signs. The MHA conducted a survey that revealed that the residents are unhappy about many of their living conditions in the current units, which the redevelopment would address. Four of the top ten complaints from the survey said that the units are too small, they don't have enough storage, they need soundproof walls, and they need more parking. Rooms would be expanded and, in the redevelopment, parking would be located under the new building, thus making better use of space. A friend of a friend from the church I attend is a resident of Walkling and, I mentally noted, their own complaints about the unit seemed to echo the results of this survey: the units are too small and lack storage.
This individual was also concerned about being displaced during the developments, which was another point that the MHA tried to clarify, both to the residents and to me, later, in a personal email: residents would be given Section 8 project-based vouchers, which basically means that they could rent in applicable places on the private market with the same contribution of thirty percent of their income to rent. Tenants could even live out of state, if they preferred, for the duration of the construction.
In my other canvassing around the area, I found that neighboring residents are at least familiar with a few of the complaints from the signature sheet, but I met only two or three who were genuinely as passionate about it as the woman collecting signatures. One neighbor was concerned about the thru road, though he wasn't as strong in his conviction that these were all dealbreakers, and he was overall undecided because he knew Medford did need more affordable housing.
After finishing my canvassing on the 11th, I walked back to Walkling Court. The middle gazebo was occupied by five or six seniors, including two of the women I'd spoken with earlier, and a pizza they were eating. I joined them. "Oh, a red head?" one said. "That's a good sign! You got my vote!" We spoke at length about politics generally, the local city council races, and Walkling Court's redevelopment. "I hate kids!" one woman exclaimed. "I don't want to live around kids!" Then, as an aside to me, she said, "I don't — I have nine grandchildren. I'm just saying that to piss them off."
One lady did live in the current units that were near the train tracks. She said she was from New York, so she didn't care about the noise. She just tuned it out. But, another pointed out, the new units would be closer to the tracks. Again, though, the windows would be soundproof. They offered me a slice of pizza, which turned out to be my dinner.
In closing, a few numbers that sum up the bigger picture: the state of Massachusetts has a waitlist for Section 8 housing that has 125,000 people on it. Medford Housing Authority has 400 names on their own waitlist, and they're not accepting more. In 2022, only 11 families from this list were housed. Medford has three other affordable housing proposals (these are called 40B developments — after a law that allows affordable units to bypass zoning laws if they have a certain number of affordable units — though Walkling is zoned under a different mechanism) working their way through the courts. The Walkling Court expansion is currently the only affordable housing development in Medford that promises to get shovels into the ground in the near future. And we need far more affordable housing, plain and simple.
