Wayland Alta Oxbow Owner Sought 24% 'Affordable' Rent Hikes: Residents

WAYLAND, MA — Some residents living in affordable units at a new Wayland apartment complex were facing double-digit rent increases until town officials intervened, according to local officials.

Residents at the Alta Oxbow development — which is now being marketed for sale — visited Town Manager Michael McCall during office hours Aug. 14 to seek help after the complex's owner informed them lease renewals would mean 24% rent increases at the Boston Post Road development. The residents are under an end-of-August deadline to sign new leases, and some told McCall they would likely lose their homes due to the increases.

The residents also told McCall they have faced multiple problems at the complex, including malfunctioning elevators, doors without buttons for wheelchair users and a lack of handicapped parking spaces. Handicapped parking is also subject to the same $175 month parking garage fee residents pay.

Alta Oxbow, formerly known as River's Edge, opened one year ago with 218 luxury units with 55 units set aside as "affordable," with reduced rents for people who earn less than the local area median income (AMI). Of those 55 affordable units, 17 were set aside for people over age 55.

The affordable units were available in 2022 for $1,693 for one-bedroom units and $1,858 for two-bedrooms. To be eligible, renters had to earn less than 80% of the area median income. When Alta Oxbow opened in 2022, AMI limits, which the federal government sets each year, were lower. The AMI limits rose this spring — for example, 80% AMI for a single person in 2022 was about $78,000, but it's now almost $83,000.

A 24% rent increase on a $1,693 per-month apartment is more than $400, boosting the monthly rent to about $2,100.

According to McCall, Alta Oxbow's owner used several years of income increase data to arrive at the 24% increase. After discussion with Texas-based owner Wood Residential, McCall said the company agreed to increases of no more than 10%. The Wayland planning office and the Regional Housing Services Office (RHSO), a local agency that helps nine towns administer affordable housing, were also involved, McCall said.

RHSO Director Elizabeth Rust said eight of the affordable units were set for 24% increases. The reason is that the leases for those units were signed using AMI calculations from 2021. When lease renewals came up this year, the eight units were eligible for two years worth of AMI adjustments. The remaining units did not see such high increases because the leases were signed after the federal government set 2022 AMI rent calculations.

Wood Residential did not return a request for comment on the rent increases.

The project that would become Alta Oxbow began around 2014, when Wayland Town Meeting approved a 190-unit development at 490 Boston Post Road, the site of an old town dump. Wood Partners was picked in 2017 to develop the site, but faced construction delays — including the discovery of asbestos at the site — and planning approvals to increase the number of units.

Wayland pursued the project so the town could meet requirements under the state's 40B law, which mandates that every community in the state have at least 10 percent of housing units designated as affordable. Communities that don't meet the 10% threshold may be prohibited from using zoning rules to stop multifamily projects. Wayland is still slightly under the 10% threshold, even though all of Alta Oxbow's 218 units count toward the town's affordability requirement.

The commercial real estate firm Berkadia is marketing Alta Oxbow as for sale — and is using Wayland's resistance to multifamily projects and the larger Massachusetts housing shortage as selling points.

"The town of Wayland is notoriously difficult approving new development projects, resulting in Alta Oxbow being the only Class A apartment project in the town. While other projects have been proposed, none have been approved meaning that no new supply will be delivered until 2027 or beyond," the Alta Oxbow listing says.

Berkadia did not immediately return a request for comment about either the sale price of Alta Oxbow or if the rent increases were related to the sale.

Wood Residential is the developer behind 17 multifamily projects across Massachusetts, including several other "Alta"-branded properties in Framingham, Walpole, Hopkinton and across the Boston area. The developer is also in the process of building new Alta developments in Marlborough and Worcester.