Town of Arlington, Fair Housing Action Plan (July 2021)

Citation: Town of Arlington, Fair Housing Action Plan (July 2021)
Jurisdiction: Arlington (municipal)
Source: Official source
Original Source: https://www.arlingtonma.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/57214/637641171662530000 ↗

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difficult to support the idea of families with 3 or more children on an environmental basis. This is the one place I
strongly disagree with the Fair Housing draft. Encouraging bigger homes, affordable or not, is contrary to
medium and long term sustainability goals.
7) Lead mitigation is expensive and dirty. Small landlords may not be using it as an excuse to discriminate. Town
funds from the affordable housing trust can be offered to landlords to pay for the lead removal. If they still
refuse lead removal, investigate them for discrimination.
8) Property values should be automatically adjusted each time a property is sold. The new rate should be 90%
of the sale price. New owners are driving up the prices and making it unaffordable for some long-time residents
to stay. The new folks should bear their fair share of the costs they are placing on the rest of us.
9) Town leadership should actively work to recruit tenants by making sure meetings don't interrupt their work
days and that child care is provided (even if it's just teen volunteers.)
Another way to improve involvement is to give many opportunities to participate in ways that are not time-
consuming. For example, a tenant group at 1 location could form for 1-3 meetings about improving recreation
for small children. Their ideas then get moved to another group who suggest toys and do a bit of research on
costs. Their work then gets moved to a 3rd group to implement.
10) Town leadership should take advantage of the universities in the area by having specific issues examined as
a final project for a course. For example, I know a 1st year graduate student who examined a non-profit's
website, conducted usability surveys, and made recommendations to improve the website -- all for free!
11) Rules need to be enforced and