This week the Union Square Neighborhood Council (USNC) and US2 signed an amendment to their Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) that paves the way for the development of a 51-unit affordable housing project in Union Square.

The amendment clarifies poorly defined elements of the CBA and provides compensation for the delay in moving forward with the project in the form of the expedited delivery of 8 units of workforce housing in US2’s D3.2/D3.3 project.

The 2019 CBA the USNC negotiated with US2 called for completion of an affordable housing project on Webster and Prospect St in time for the opening of the Union Square Green Line station. The project was meant to partially address the increased demand for housing adjacent to US2’s life science complex and to help mitigate the displacement of low and moderate-income residents from the area.

According to Matthias Rudolf, co-chair of the USNC, “The delay in moving forward with this project comes at a time when Union Square area escalating housing costs have forced many long-term residents to move to surrounding cities where housing costs are lower.”

The signing marks an essential step towards the development of a long-promised affordable housing project. Necessitated by US2’s change in the proposed process for delivering the housing, it specifies that instead of building the housing with an affordable housing developer, US2 will now purchase the land and transfer ownership to Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH), a nationally known non-profit developer.