Worcester New Housing Policy

Let me get my priorities straight.  Happy Easter and enjoy your family this week-end, whihc looks to be beautiful, and watch the Red Sox-Yankees Opening Day game Sunday.  This past Wednesday the City of Worcester presented their new Housing policy to the City Council.  Click here. 

It is kind of long so my homework assignment is to read through it today and tomorrow and give my review for Easter Sunday. Before I do that, lets review the 2002 RKG Housing report to the City of Worcester, click here.    Here are some of the hi-lights:

• The City of Worcester should find a balance in its affordabe housing needs that benefits all of its residents.   
• More emphasis should be placed on attracting a bigher class of people, who in turn would improve the commercial vitality of the City, and allow the City to leverage more private investment to increase the amount of upper-end products.
• While renovation work has helped stabilize some of the neighborhoods, especially at a time when the redevelopment was needed, their subsidized development has alientated some local builders/developers.
• The CDC's in the future should be considered more of a developer of last choice, and the focus of the CDC's should shift to creating necessary amentities that are lacking in some of the densely developed areas of the submarkets. 

In 2002 none of these recommendations were adopted.   Are you happy with the results in the City of Worcester since then??     I am not.  

As I heard Kate Toomey say once during the last campaign, the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, but expect different results.    Lets hope this new Housing policy reflects the recommendations outlined in the RKG Study 8 years ago and this time we listen.