The LWV–Salem Affordable Housing working group meets monthly to advance three priorities:
Protecting tenants’ rights
Protecting existing affordable housing
Creating new affordable housing
We regularly attend the meetings of the Board of Commissioners of the Salem Housing Authority (SHA), and we will be publishing LWV–Salem Observer Corps notes on those meetings. There’s a lot going on at the SHA, including a proposal to build a new 150-unit development off First Street. We’ll be setting up a new webpage to cover SHA, but for the moment here are the Observer Corps notes:
August 2025 SHA Board Meeting
September 2025 SHA Board Meeting - coming soon!
You can read the SHA Board’s official minutes on their webpage.
Más Puertas/More Doors is a new initiative that we are working on! We want to build Más Puertas/More Doors as a coalition that brings together pro-housing people and organizations in Salem to increase our visibility and influence. Would you be interested in serving on the steering committee for six months (October 2025 - March 2026)? Please email us because we’d love your help!
We envision Más Puertas/More Doors as a way to connect people who don’t necessarily see themselves as “housing activists,” but who care deeply about the availability of housing in Salem. (And is there anyone who doesn’t care about that?)
We would like to thank CHAPA (the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association) for accepting us into their Municipal Engagement Initiative (the MEI Lite version) and putting us on the road to creating Más Puertas/More Doors.
Zoning 101 and Affordable Housing
Resources for those new to the topic:
Watch a forum with guest speaker Sue Connelly from the Massachusetts Housing Partnership
Read any of our introductory blog posts:
What is Single-Family Residential Zoning (R1)?