A comfortable majority of Town Meeting members voted Oct. 20 to approve a Select Board plan that accelerates the removal of tenants from the Stephen Palmer apartments out of concern the town could become the de facto landlord of the 28-unit building when it returns to town control in May 2027.
Requiring a two-thirds vote of approval after a procedural ruling by Town Moderator Michael Fee, the Stephen Palmer article was approved by a raised-hand vote of 135-49. The vote advances the move-out date for the tenants to Oct. 31, 2026 — six months earlier than tenants had long been expecting.
The vote was conducted after more than an hour and a half of sometimes emotional discussion of the merits and ethics of speeding up the process under which 28 mostly older tenants will be required to find new places to live.
“This is hard,” were Select Board member Marianne Cooley’s first words when she began her presentation asking Town Meeting to fund an agreement the town negotiated with Crowninshield/SPA, the current owner of the building.
“We’re talking about people’s homes and community. Our neighbors. We need to acknowledge this, and it is the responsibility of this body to make good decisions for the town,” Cooley said.
Cooley faced the challenge of asking Town Meeting to balance the interests of the town with the needs of a vulnerable cohort of older tenants stressed by the prospect of having to vacate their units, which currently rent for below-market rates, and confront a highly challenging housing market.
A half century in the making
May 3, 2027, marks the expiration of a 50-year ground lease held by Crowninshield/SPA on the 37,000-square-foot former elementary school on a 1.5-acre lot at the corner of May and Pickering streets.
Once the ground lease expires, the building and land revert to the town, which has not identified a future use for the site. The Stephen Palmer Development Review Committee, which met for the first time on Oct. 15, has been formed to “engage the Needham community to envision the future” of the 111-year-old building.
The turnback to the town has been made more challenging because the 1977 lease has no provision for Crowninshield/SPA to return an empty building. This created the prospect of the town, which has no existing capacity for property management, possibly inheriting a fully occupied building.
Cooley said the town turned its attention to the transition in 2023, when it began discussing terms of the handover with the landlord.
“We thought four years in advance of the lease’s end was early enough to start,” she said. “I think we now understand we could have started earlier, as we’re learning about new issues daily.”
Cooley explained the key elements of the memorandum of agreement the town negotiated with Crowninshield/SPA. In return for the landlord leaving units vacant as tenants depart, the town will make Crowninshield/SPA whole by reimbursing it for the rental income it would be foregoing. The Town Meeting article was a request for the $385,000 estimated to be required to fund it.
This mechanism will be in place through the expiration of the ground lease in May 2027 or until a vacant building is returned to the town, which could happen if all tenants vacate before May 3, 2027.
Tenants will be eligible to receive relocation assistance of up to $10,000. The assistance would be funded by promised (but not yet approved) transfers from the town’s reserve fund. Eligible relocation costs include the rent differential between their future and current rent for up to four months, security deposit, moving costs and application fees.
The article was supported by the Finance Committee, which voted unanimously in favor at a meeting held immediately before Town Meeting. As was true of Cooley’s presentation, FinCom Chair John Connelly’s comments at Town Meeting acknowledged the plight of the tenants.
“We realize how difficult the situation is for the current residents of the Stephen Palmer building,” Connelly said. “No one wants or likes to move from a place that they call home, but sometimes the situation requires that, and that is the situation we unfortunately find ourselves in here.”
“No current leases will be terminated, and all current leases will play out according to their terms,” he said.
He characterized the plan as “rational and reasonable” and added the $385,000 will not put undue strain on the balance of the town’s reserve fund.
Town Meeting members express concern, resident offended
During the discussion of the article, a resident of the apartments took exception to the implication that residents might not leave when their leases were up, thus requiring the town to manage an occupied building.
“Some people suspect … there’s a possibility that we wouldn’t leave by May 2027, which I as a tenant find highly insulting,” said Judith McIntyre.
“Do you really expect people, most of whom are over 70, some into their 80s, to squat after May 3, 2027? We’ll be out. We’re responsible citizens. We pay our rent. We will be out the week we’ve always expected to be out, so we’re not asking the town for anything.”
While only about one-quarter of Town Meeting members ended up opposing the article, more members spoke against it than in favor. Several members asked what exactly the town gains from advancing the move-out date by six months and whether that was worth the pain and disruption it would likely cause tenants.
“This just seems cruel,” said Holly Clarke from Precinct D. “We’ve talked for years about the need for more housing and affordable housing. Tonight, we’re talking about people who live in it. We can’t possibly just believe in concepts. We have to take care of each other.”
Precinct A member Emily Cooper, a housing professional, asked if the town had considered hiring a new management company and possibly maintaining the building’s use as housing, given there’s no plan for what comes next and the property will be sitting empty.
Cooley responded that option was considered but there was doubt about its “fruitfulness.”
“A new property management company would be coming into a building that has been systematically disinvested in for a while, right? We have very low rents right now, so it creates a very challenging situation,” she said.
Paul Alpert from Precinct C asked what would happen if a tenant or tenants did not depart when all leases expire on Oct. 31, 2026, and whether this would lead to eviction proceedings.
“I need to be clear,” Cooley replied. “The town is asking that tenants leave by Oct. 31, 2026. It is also true that Oct. 31, 2026, is the end of the tenant’s lease. If a tenant is still there after that date, they are on month-to-month. There is no other support that the town will have to be giving them.”
“The town is not the landlord,” she added. “We are not doing any eviction proceedings in that period.”
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