NSP Capital Grants Announced

Boston – The Baker-Polito Administration and MassHousing announced a total of $4.6 million in Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) grants to eight community-based organizations and municipalities to support the redevelopment or rehabilitation of 31 affordable homes, including 22 affordable homeownership opportunities.

The NSP is a new capital grant program that provides municipalities and nonprofit developers with funds to address blight, abandonment, and disinvestment in residential neighborhoods, by providing grants for the construction, reconstruction, renovation, or repair of substandard rental and homeownership properties. These are the first grants awarded through the program.

The program provides deeper levels of construction subsidy than were previously available through state sources, allowing municipalities and their development partners to address the impacts of longstanding neglect. The $50 million program was authorized as part of a $626 million economic development bill Governor Baker signed into law last year. MassHousing administers NSP on behalf of the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development.

Communities across the Commonwealth are eligible to apply for NSP grant funding, with the program prioritizing projects that will have the greatest impact in weaker markets, including rural communities and communities disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The program also prioritizes projects that promote homeownership and that include diverse sponsors. All homes created or rehabilitated through the program will remain affordable for at least 15 years.

The awarded projects include:

  • 11 Green Street, Carver: Habitat for Humanity of Greater Plymouth is acquiring a long-vacant and blighted property from the Town of Carver and redeveloping the home into a new homeownership opportunity for low-income first-time homebuyers, with a preference for veterans.
  • City of Fitchburg: Habitat for Humanity North Central Massachusetts will acquire a vacant parcel from the City of Fitchburg and construct a new single-family home, which will be sold to a first-time homebuyer earning up to 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI).
  • Pine Street, Holyoke: OneHolyoke Community Development Corporation (CDC) will utilize NSP funding to create a duplex-style home on a vacant lot in Holyoke’s Churchill neighborhood, which will be entirely owned by one owner-occupant.
  • 15 Orchard Street, Lawrence: Lawrence CommunityWorks (LCW) will construct four new family-sized homeownership townhomes on a vacant parcel that will be sold to first-time homebuyers earning up to 80% of AMI.
  • Old Hill neighborhood infill, Springfield: The City of Springfield will partner with the nonprofit Home City Development to construct 11 new affordable single-family homes on municipally owned vacant lots in the Old Hill neighborhood.
  • Tranquility House, Springfield: Tranquility House is an existing eight-unit single-room-occupancy building that provides congregate supportive housing to women in recovery who are facing homelessness. NSP funds will allow OPCS to address extensive deferred capital needs at the property as well as the rehabilitation of interior spaces.
  • 12 Congress Street, Worcester: Worcester Community Housing Resources (WCHR) will utilize NSP funding to renovate a two-family property in an historic neighborhood that has sat abandoned for a decade and fallen into severe disrepair.
  • 33 Merrick Street, Worcester: Worcester Common Ground will create two new homeownership opportunities for first-time homebuyers on a long-vacant lot in Worcester’s Piedmont neighborhood.