Blessed Sacrament Could Get More Affordable Housing

The Blessed Sacrament Campus is about to get more future affordable housing.

Developer Norbert School Associates will designate two out of the planned 21 rental units at the Norbert School building affordable, according to Jamey Lionette, Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council member and chair of the Jamaica Plain Housing and Development Committee, at a council meeting Tuesday.

Approval of the units depends on a neighborhood council vote, which was slated for last night’s meeting but pushed back to next month at the request of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood and Development Corp., according to council chair Benjamin Day.

With the possible addition of the two units, the Blessed Sacrament campus would have 83 affordable housing units, making the campus 79 percent affordable housing, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

New Atlantic Development plans to convert the church on the site into 32 market-rate condos. If the Norbert building and church housing plans go forward as currently constituted, 60 percent of the Blessed Sacrament campus - based on 137 total housing units - will be designated affordable housing. 

The Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council and Boston Redevlopment Authority agreed to terms that 50 percent of the units on the Blessed Sacrament campus would be designated affordable in 2005. Norbert School Associates did not have to add to the total based on the 2005 guidelines.

"We asked the developers to make a good-faith effort to include some affordable units" at Norbert, Day said.

There has been opposition to development of the Norbert building – located at 26 Sunnyside St. – by the Hyde Square Task Force and members of the area’s Latin community.

At Norbert, the market rate rental studio apartments could rent for between $1,400 and $1,600 per month and the one-bedrooms could rent for $1,900, according to the Jamaica Plain Gazette. The apartments would be between 500 and 700 square feet.

Despite being technically exempt from an affordable housing requirement, Norbert School Associates member Matthew Kiefer said his development group felt some affordable housing should be included at Norbert.

“We heard the community loud and clear,” Kiefer said in an interview.

The community had come together in the mid-2000s to ensure that the Archdiocese of Boston sold the shuttered Blessed Sacrament campus to neighborhood-minded groups.

New Atlantic Development and the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corp. bought the entire campus in December 2005 for $6 million.

Several pieces of the campus have indeed been redeveloped: The Doña Betsaida Gutiérrez Co-op (including retail space that will soon house a big new restaurant), the Sister Virginia Mulhern House (which has 28 single-occupancy units for the formerly homeless) and Creighton Commons (affordable condos for first-time buyers).