Veterans Housing in Dracut
The Lowell Sun
By Meg McIntyre | mmcintyre@lowellsun.com |
PUBLISHED: November 13, 2019 at 6:28 pm | UPDATED: November 14, 2019 at 8:59 am
DRACUT — The road to this point has been a long one. But housing for veterans is finally coming to Dracut.
As Interim Town Manager Ann Vandal puts it, the town has been pushing for affordable veterans housing for “probably forever.” And thanks to the Lowell-based community development corporation Coalition for a Better Acre — and about $1.8 million in state funding — that long-held dream is set to become a reality by the end of 2020.
More than 50 people, including a slew of local and state officials, crowded into the selectmen’s meeting room at the Dracut Town Offices Wednesday afternoon as Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito announced that $4.2 million from the Community Scale Housing Initiative (CSHI) will be allocated among four Massachusetts municipalities.
Dracut will receive $1.8 million, while Westford is slated to receive more than $850,000 for a senior housing project on Carlisle Road. The other two communities selected for the funds are Fall River and Hyannis.
The initiative is a joint effort of the Department of Housing and Community Development and MassHousing to provide funding for small scale projects.The money will support a total of 40 new housing units, with 30 of them designated as affordable housing, according to Polito.
“In a commonwealth that continues to grow its economy, the one challenge that we have is that we don’t have enough housing of choice for the people that live here or who aspire to live here or need to live here to work,” Polito said. “We clearly need you as partners to help solve that challenge. We anticipate needing 135,000 new units of housing by 2025.”
In Dracut, the former Dracut Centre School at 11 Spring Park Ave., which also previously served as the Town Annex, will be converted into nine units of veteran-priority housing. According to Yun-Ju Choi, executive director of Coalition for a Better Acre, the units will likely be priced between $900 and $920 for one-bedroom apartments and around $1,100 for two-bedroom apartments, and tenants will not be responsible for utilities.
Speaking to the crowd Wednesday, Choi emphasized the importance of affordable housing, especially when it comes to supporting former service members. She told attendees about her father, who served in the Korean Marines during the Korean War. At 86, he now suffers from dementia and still copes with post-traumatic stress disorder, she said.
“After 70 years, he can’t let that go and he talks about it often now,” she said. “This is the reason why it’s so important for all of us to not only thank the veterans, but also provide housing and support they need.”
State Sen. Barry Finegold and state Rep. Colleen Gary, who both represent Dracut, also attended the announcement Wednesday and gave their strong support for the project.
“How can that be that we ask these people to go off, defend our freedom, and when they come back, they don’t have the resources, or worse than that, they don’t have the places to live, because we don’t do that for them,” Finegold said. “And we say that every year at Veterans Day, how we need to take care of our veterans. But today, we’re doing something about that.”
Veterans from Dracut will be given first priority for the new units, Choi said, and the coalition will partner with organizations such as the Veterans Northeast Outreach Center and Veterans Assisting Veterans to solicit referrals for potential tenants.
The total project cost is expected to come in around $3.7 million, largely due to the historic character of the building. In addition to the $1.8 million the coalition will receive from the CSHI, the project is supported by a combination of town funds, tax credits and other funding sources. The town is handing off the property for $1, and has committed more than $1.2 million in Community Preservation Funds, she said. The coalition hopes to begin work within the next three months or so, and construction is expected to take roughly nine months, putting the project on track to be completed by the end of 2020.
For Vandal, it’s exciting to see the project finally come to fruition.
“From the minute we moved out of that building, the question was, what are we gonna do with this? We hated to tear it down. We just didn’t want that to be an option; there’s too much history behind it.” Vandal said. “And to be able to put veterans in there that need the assistance and need a place to call home is — it’s just the most satisfying thing that you could think of for a building like that.”