Affordable Housing Preserved in Harvard Square

Ann Allosso says she was really too old for this type of thing.

Every Friday this past summer, the 73-year-old Allosso slipped flyers under doors in the Chapman Arms apartment buildings—a total of fifty units, four floors, and one rickety elevator. Every Monday, Allosso—who calls herself “the mother of the building”—led the meeting advertised on the flyer in the Chapman’s lobby.

Each week they discussed the same issue: The Chapman Arms building, located on Mt. Auburn Street, was on the market for the first time in nearly three decades, and it seemed likely that the building’s new owner would eliminate Chapman’s affordable housing units.

Chapman had been a mixed-income housing complex since 1986. That year, 25 units became affordable units, rented out at a markedly lower cost, while its twenty-five other apartments remained at market price.

When the Chapman went up for sale last year, the building’s location attracted many potential buyers, eager to turn a profit. Tenants like Allosso, unnerved by the circling would-be landlords, were afraid that they would be displaced from their homes.

“I didn’t have the least bit of hope,” says Allosso, who has lived in the same reduced-rent apartment at Chapman Arms since 1986.

But last month, Harvard, which owns the land on which Chapman sits; the city of Cambridge; and Homeowners Rehab, Inc., a local nonprofit dedicated to preserving affordable housing, banded together and forged a plan to save the building by preserving it under Massachusetts’s Chapter 40T, extending the guarantee for affordable housing for 50 more years.

According to Allosso, residents were overjoyed when they heard that Chapman would retain its mixed-income status, a resource made scarce in Cambridge by the multitudes of individuals seeking it.

“We needed a quick engagement between Harvard University and Homeowner’s Rehab, and from my mouth to God’s ear, that’s what happened,” Allosso says.

“THE CRAIGIE”

Situated next to a Harvard office building and across the street from the Mt. Auburn post office, Chapman Arms looks like most of the buildings in Harvard Square: red brick, white trim, historic, nondescript. With its entrance tucked away on one of the Square’s many side-streets irrelevant to undergraduate student life, the Chapman is effectively in the Harvard bubble but at the same time out of sight. Vines have climbed their way up the building’s brick facade, and the number four is the building’s sole mark of identification.

But Chapman’s innocuous appearance belies the diversity of its residents and the building’s storied past.

“We have Muslims, we have Ethiopians, we have students, the elderly, the young. We have everything,” Alloso says.

Alloso adds that mixed-income pricing makes the Chapman Arms community especially diverse. Most of its market-rate tenants are students at the Harvard School of Education and Harvard Business School. Tenants in low-income run the gamut from retirees to young immigrant families.

Chapman has a long legacy of providing affordable housing in the Square. In the early 1900s, the building served as an undergraduate dormitory, containing 36 apartments, to provide affordable housing to students.

According to an article from the Cambridge Chronicle, published on October 2, 1897, “The Craigie is a dormitory for Harvard men, so designed as to meet the needs of those who desire comfortable quarters at a low price.” At that time, Chapman Arms was often called “The Craigie.”

The building was designed by Josephine Wright Chapman, one of the earliest woman architects in America, earning it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1963, a serial killer known as the ‘Boston Strangler’ murdered his tenth victim in Chapman Arms, stabbing 23-year-old tenant Beverly Samans to death in her first-floor apartment.

Harvard officially acquired the building in 1967. Back then the building was loud, Allosso says, and the tenants kept their doors open. “It was a hippie building—it was a mess,” she says.

In 1985, Harvard evicted the Chapman’s tenants so that it could renovate and turn the structure into mixed-use housing, giving each tenant relocation assistance and a cash reward. The University bought the land on which Chapman Arms sits that same year and sold the building itself to Cambridge Housing Associates, namely senior partner Robert J. Kuehn Jr.

During the sale, Harvard stipulated that the building would rent 25 units at market rate and 25 units at a discounted rate for affordable housing tenants.

But the guarantee of affordable housing would not last forever. The sale contract only required that the owner offer affordable housing units until 2016.

And as that deadline approached, investors keen to make a profit off of the building prepared to pounce.

FIGHTING TO PRESERVE

Low-income housing at Chapman became threatened in the wake of a funeral.

On June 15, 2006, Kuehn died in his office on the first floor of Chapman Arms. Kuehn, who had been the Chapman’s steward for 20 years, bequeathed his share of the building to a pool of 30 investors.

In spring 2011—nearly five years after Kuehn’s death and five years before the affordable housing requirement would expire—the investors listed the property with a broker.

But investors did this without informing the residents, and this decision was found to be in violation of Massachusetts’ Chapter 40T, a law designed to help preserve affordable housing. The listing of the building was delayed, giving Cambridge the time needed to devise a plan that would ensure that Chapman would remain a mixed-income housing complex.

“Chapter 40T was instrumental in the preservation of Chapman,” Chris Cotter, Cambridge housing director says. “It allowed us...[the time] to put together a credible preservation plan with a credible offer.”

Allosso started holding meetings in Chapman Arms’ lobby late last spring. Allosso and eight other tenants attended a June Cambridge City Council meeting in the hope that the Councillors would come to their aid.

After the meeting, then-Mayor David P. Maher sat down for tea and a conversation with the residents in his office, Allosso says. Maher gave them hope, informing them that he was going to lunch with “someone from Harvard.”

Later that summer, Harvard and the Cambridge Department of Housing and Community teamed up to preserve the mixed-income apartments. They sought the help of Homeowner’s Rehab, Inc.

The three hammered out a deal and finalized their plans late last month. Harvard extended its ground lease—requiring affordable housing be preserved for at least 50 more years—and facilitated HRI’s purchase of the building.

Cotter says Harvard was “instrumental in coming to the table.”

“They could have said no,” Allosso says. Still, she thinks Chapman Arms’ physical proximity to the University made the affordable housing debacle a problem hard for Harvard to ignore. “We’re a feather in their cap, we’re in their neighborhood. How could they turn us out?”

PAYING THE RENT

Allosso estimates that if Chapman Arms had not preserved its affordable housing units, it would have taken four or five years for her to be placed in a new affordable housing unit.

The housing prices are, in part, due to the fact that Harvard—the wealthiest University in the world—makes Cambridge its home, creating high demand for apartments.

“The demand is incredibly strong,” Cotter says. “The waiting list is well over 10,000 folks.”

A Cantabridgian working for minimum wage would need to work 120 hours a week to affordable a rentable apartment in Cambridge, according to a study done by Homeowner’s Rehab, Inc.

But over the past century, Harvard has played a big role in enabling and funding affordable housing in Cambridge.

Over the course of the 1900s, Harvard sold 100 housing units for one-third of the market rate to Cambridge for affordable housing. In 2000, the University created the 20/20/2000 program that designated $20 million for a 20-year affordable housing low-interest revolving loan. This program has helped to finance one out of every six units built in Cambridge and Boston. Harvard is also adding additional affordable housing units in Charlesview Apartments in Allston.

Harvard says their involvement in preserving Chapman Arms signifies a deep commitment to the community.

“The preservation of twenty-five affordable units at the Chapman Arms is an example of Harvard’s significant commitment to support affordable housing and the quality of life in Cambridge and Boston,” wrote Christine Heenan, the University vice president for public affairs and communication. “Harvard strives to be a supportive partner to local leaders who are champions of a diverse and healthy community.”

—Staff writer Kerry M. Flynn can be reached at kflynn@college.harvard.edu. —Staff writer Caroline M. McKay can be reached at carolinemckay@college.harvard.edu.