Condo Media - November 2016 - 33

misconceptions about the people who
qualify for affordable housing. If the
median income in an area is $150,000,
he notes, 80 percent of it is hardly below
the poverty line.
"We're not talking about people who
are unemployed and on food stamps,"
he notes. "We're talking about young
professionals, who are just getting started in their careers," or about teachers
and firemen who work in a community,
but can't afford to live there.
He uses the example of a friend of his
wife's-a nurse-who just won a lottery
for a 40b unit in Boston's pricey South
End. "Why should anyone object to her
living there?"
NO DIFFERENCES
Industry professionals agree that affordable buyers are no less likely than
market owners to be good citizens,
respectful of others, and compliant
with association rules. The reverse is
also true, they note: Market owners are

equally likely to violate rules and clash
with their neighbors.
How owners behave in a community has more to do with "their
personalities, their attitudes and
their upbringing," Wolf says, than
with their income level or how much
they paid for their units.
The tensions in a mixed-income community are the same tensions you will
find in any shared ownership community, Brookline's Bullock agrees. "There
are always some people who don't get
along with others," she notes.
While some owners may, in fact, resent those who paid less for their units,
Bullock says she can recall hearing from
only one woman "who went crazy" because of that. And you can find the same
resentment, she notes, in a market-rate
community between buyers who
purchased at the peak of a market, and
those who purchased the same units at
half the price, after the market crashed.
Some managers have reported prob-

lems with affordable-housing owners
who have always rented apartments and
don't understand what is involved in
condominium ownership. But managers
report the same problem with first-time
owners of market-rate condominiums,
who are equally uninformed about their
obligations and the restrictions on what
they can do.
Brawley, who manages a mixed-income
community in Brookline, hasn't found
any inherent tensions between market
rate and affordable owners. Tensions
in her community, she says, are more
cultural than financial, reflecting the differing norms of residents who come from
many different countries and who have
different assumptions about, for example,
how many people should occupy a single
unit. Communication can also be problematic with a large population of owners
for whom English is a second language, or
who don't speak English at all. But none
of these issues are related to the mixedincome structure, Brawley emphasizes.

NOTHING SURPRISES US.

Having served condominium associations longer than any
other local bank, there is little we haven't seen. From short- and
long-term financing, to saving for rainy days, to a full range of
payment collection services, Brookline Bank can meet most
any financial need.
To benefit from our experience, contact:
Wes Blair
wblair@brkl.com
617-927-7974

BrooklineBank.com

Adam Bokon
abokon@brkl.com
617-927-7973

Member FDIC / Member DIF
Equal Housing Lender

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