LYNN — The Affordable Housing Trust Fund voted to approve $75,000 of funding on Monday for a low-income housing project proposed by the Commonwealth Land Trust and Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless.
The Casa Project will be a roughly five-story building with 30-40 studio units, a common space, offices, and storage areas, architect Thaddeus Siemasko said at the presentation of the project to the trust on June 20.
Units would be about 400 to 450 square feet, he said.
The land the building will be located on belongs to the coalition, which reached out to CLT for the collaboration, according to CLT CEO Iva Comey.
“They approached us about developing it and operating it in a way that’s similar to our other programs and locations,” Comey said.
The building will give priority to specific populations such as those struggling with addiction, domestic-violence survivors, and human-trafficking survivors, according to the presentation.
“This project will have a homeless preference,” Development Consultant Maura Camosse Tsongas said. “It will be definitely focused on serving the needs of people at the lowest income, but it will be up to 50% of area median income, so people don’t all have to be homeless in order to come into this housing.”
The office spaces would be for case managers, Siemasko added. CLT has a case-management program for its housing that works closely with the property-management teams, according to Comey.
“We’re able to offer a lot of the services in-house, including mental-health counseling for some of our residents, outreach. We recently started a Narcan distribution program,” Comey said.
CLT has other affordable-housing locations in Boston’s Beacon Hill, Dorchester, Roxbury, and South End neighborhoods, as well as in Lawrence.
At the trust’s meeting Monday evening, it voted to approve the application from CLT and the coalition.
Board of Trustees member Cinda Danh spoke highly of the Casa Project.
“I think they check off all the boxes for me, had great community engagement. I’m very supportive of it,” Danh said.
Board of Trustees member Aaron Clausen, who is also the city’s principal planner, echoed Danh’s sentiments and said the project is “aligned” with the objectives of the trust.
“I just think this is a great use of the funds to move more of these projects into the pipeline, so I too am supportive of this,” Clausen said.
The timeline of the Casa Project, as laid out by the presentation in June, estimates the construction of the building will be completed by June 2026.
Currently, the project is in the pre-development stage, Camosse Tsongas said.
“We’re really looking forward to meeting with community groups and getting people’s feedback on the process and hearing what they think about the building that we’re hoping to design together,” Camosse Tsongas said.
