When she moved to Newton in 1978, Doris Ann Sweet and her husband purchased a single-family home for about $60,000. While they weren’t “big earners” at the time, Sweet said they managed to get by.
But that reality has changed in the past 43 years. Those planning to move to Newton nowadays must pay over $1.2 million for a similar property, and Sweet is now on the leadership board for Engine 6, a local affordable housing advocacy group.
“My grandchildren, I can’t imagine any of them getting to the point of being able to buy a home here,” said Sweet, who lives in Auburndale. “It’s just a really formidable barrier to living here, the cost of both rental and homeownership.”
In an effort to make Newton more accessible to potential residents, the City Council on Dec. 6 approved the creation of a Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Ordinance — a plan to streamline the funding approval process, create a repository of funds, and thereby more easily acquire property for housing development, said Deb Crossley, chair of Newton’s Zoning and Planning Committee.
Committee members voted unanimously to approve the effort last month. The ordinance had been a docketed agenda item on the council since November 2020.
The trust will be created sometime next year, said Newton Planning Director Barney Heath, and will start with an allotment of $1.6 million — 35 percent of the Community Preservation Committee’s annual budget.
Due to the ever-increasing cost of living in Newton and around the country, Crossley said, the city is “decades into an affordable housing crisis,” failing to provide more housing for a more economically diverse group of people.
“We know that first time homebuyers can’t afford to come into Newton unless they’re earning well above area median income,” Crossley wrote in an e-mail. “If we fail to expand housing opportunity here we cannot accommodate a next generation.”
Metro Mayors Coalition — part of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, a regional agency focused on land development and housing across Greater Boston — aims to create 185,000 units of affordable housing by 2030.
Councilor Susan Albright, who voted in support of the housing trust, said Newton’s housing crisis is, in part, due to older residents retiring but remaining in the city, creating a “backlog of homes” that prevents new people from moving in.
“This housing shortage is getting more and more critical,” Albright said. “The price of housing keeps going up, and not just low-income people but middle-income people are being priced out of the Greater Boston area.”
Massachusetts laid the groundwork for statewide Municipal Affordable Housing Trusts in 2005 — the law states how, by simple majority, a local government can create a housing trust “for the benefit of low and moderate income households and for the funding of community housing.”
Amy Zarechian, executive director of the Newton Housing Authority, said while the organization runs several housing voucher programs and promotes other application-based projects, households are forced to join a years-long waiting list.
“We tell families that are applying today for 2, 3, 4-bedroom units, we say ‘It’s a 10-year wait,’” Zarechian said. “It really ends up being longer, usually because families will stay in the city as their kids go to school and things like that, so the need is there.”
In the meantime, Albright said the trust is one step in addressing the affordable housing shortage in Newton.
“Creating a housing trust, particularly for the lowest income group, is another tool in our toolbox to try and do something about affordable housing in Newton,” Albright said. “Affordable housing in a place like Newton, where the land costs are so darn high, any help that we can provide in making housing for the lowest income groups is a good thing.”
Cameron Morsberger can be reached at newtonreport@globe.com.