Chelsea has the third-highest share of subsidized housing of any large community in Massachusetts. Of 14,521 year-round housing units counted in 2020, 2,422 are on the state’s Subsidized Housing Inventory, 16.68 percent. Only Boston, at 21.54 percent, and Holyoke, at 19.44 percent, are higher among municipalities with more than 10,000 units. Springfield is at 16.54 percent and Lawrence at 13.26.
Where the number comes from
The table is in a City Manager’s letter to the council from February, answering a councillor’s request for an accounting of the city’s affordable housing. The Subsidized Housing Inventory is the state’s count of deed-restricted affordable units, the same count used to decide whether a community has met the 10 percent threshold under Chapter 40B. Chelsea passed 10 percent long ago, which is why the 40B developments that dominate zoning fights in the suburbs do not happen here.
The letter’s attachment lists the properties behind the number: the Chelsea Housing Authority’s state and federal developments, the HUD-financed towers on Admirals Hill and Captains Row, the tax-credit buildings on Chestnut and Marlboro, Section 8 project-based units scattered from Bellingham Street to Winnisimmet, and the smaller nonprofit portfolios on Broadway and Grove Street. It also explains that owners of tax-credit properties must certify every year that they are renting to income-qualified tenants or lose the credits.
What the number does and does not say
Sixteen percent means one Chelsea home in six is restricted to lower-income households by a deed or a subsidy contract. It does not mean one Chelsea household in six can afford its rent. The inventory counts restricted units; it says nothing about the other 12,000, where market rents in a city that is roughly three-quarters renters have risen faster than in almost any Gateway City. It also says nothing about the inclusionary zoning ordinance, which the council rewrote this summer after it produced 49 affordable units in seven years, or about the 198 public housing units at Fitzpatrick and Prattville that are about to be demolished and replaced.
The number cuts both ways in the arguments the city is having. To people who say Chelsea has done its share and other communities should do theirs, 16.68 percent is the proof. To people who say the city keeps building subsidized units while losing the working families who fall between subsidy and market, it is the wrong measure. The council asked for something else in the same order, a list of the tax abatements the city grants, and as of the February letter the Assessing Department had not produced it. No later packet shows that it ever did.