Published May 13, 2021
By MAUREEN DOHERTY
NORTH READING — During the public comment portion of Monday night’s Select Board meeting, Gillis Drive resident Elizabeth Coolidge-Stolz made a direct, heartfelt appeal to the board to provide her family with the assistance they need to fight the challenge to the town’s Safe Harbor status as it relates to the Chapter 40B application by NY Ventures LLC.
Under this 40B application, property owner Nick Yebba, through NY Ventures, seeks to develop 200 rental units at 20 Elm Street on land that was formerly part of the Thomson Country Club. Yebba’s Teresa’s Restaurant along with the pub and pool would remain but land used previously for tennis courts and a driving range plus other land on the site, which backs up to the Ipswich River and residential homes on Riverside Drive, Gillis Drive and Elm Street, would be developed to support this project.
Coolidge-Stolz is an abutter to the site. Nearly two years ago the town appealed the project to the state’s Housing Appeals Committee (HAC), the body that adjudicates appeals of 40B projects on the basis that the town has Safe Harbor status. One of the ways a town achieves this status is if 1.5% or more of the property in the town is dedicated to supportive housing, such as provided by other 40B units. But also included in this number are the group homes where people with developmental and/or physical disabilities live and receive 24/7 supportive care.
However, the state provides the cities and towns with this percentage, known as GLAM, without revealing the locations of the group homes to any party — be that the municipality, the developers or the abutters. The state does not reveal this raw data, which would include the addresses of the group homes, in its calculations because doing so could unshield medically sensitive information on the group home residents. These group homes are licensed through the state, not the towns.
The developer has challenged the state’s GLAM number, which put the town at about 1.55% or just over the threshold to claim Safe Harbor.
It is this challenge that has, in her words, put Coolidge-Stolz into the cross-hairs of the developer’s request and her need to protect her disabled son, who requires 24/7 care and who resides in a group home in North Reading. Therefore, if the town loses its appeal she believes her son as well as those he lives with and every other group home resident in town would be identified and could be subjected to potentially having their civil liberties infringed upon or their identities stolen in addition to being subjected potentially to other forms of harassment or harm from which they are unable to defend themselves.
Losing the appeal would also pose a ripple effect to every other group home resident in the state, Coolidge-Stolz believes. Because of this, she has hired a lawyer on her own to fight it, spending to date upwards of $10,000 due to what is at stake. Due to her status as her son’s guardian, she was able to become a party to the appeal. But she has been unable to receive funding from any advocacy groups for the disabled and her appeal to the Attorney General’s office has gone unheard.
Go Fund Me set up
Upon hearing of her plight, friends set up a gofundme account to defray her legal expenses. To date it has raised $2,200 toward her $10,000 goal.
As Select Board Chairwoman Kate Manupelli pointed out, the town cannot comment on active litigation but she did invite Coolidge-Stolz to have closed door discussion with the board in the future.
Those who wish to learn more about the gofundme account may visit “40B Safe Harbor Protect People in Group Homes at:
gofundme.com/f/40b-safe-harbor-protect-people-in-group-homes
The following is the statement Elizabeth Coolidge-Stolz read to the Select Board:
“I’m speaking tonight about the 40B proposal for 20 Elm Street. The town filed for safe harbor in August 2019.
“One of the two ways to meet the state’s goals for housing is through the General Land Area Minimums, the GLAM criteria, because the state says we should have at least 1.5% of appropriate land in affordable or subsidized housing.
“The numbers provided by the state says that we did.
“The developer’s lawyers filed an appeal immediately because Mr. Yebba would not accept that as an answer.
“I believed the adjudication of the town’s claim would play out according to law in the Housing Appeals Committee. I was wrong, or at least naïve.
“No developer had ever before questioned the state’s credibility or honesty in providing the numbers underlying the GLAM calculations.
“Mr. Yebba not only did, his lawyers stated in his initial appeal that they not only noted that North Reading has a large number of group homes — subsidized housing for the most vulnerable, disabled, citizens among us — but they intended to identify and attack those numbers to decrease the acreage numbers for North Reading and ‘prove,’ to use their words, that North Reading does not have safe harbor and Mr. Yebba is entitled to build as he sees fit.
“No one whose family member lives in one of those homes was notified. My only child is a resident in one of those homes.
“When Mr. Yebba didn’t win the right to get and use the raw numbers in Committee, his lawyers filed subpoenas last October with four state agencies to force the raw data to be given to them — something that would break layers of state and federal protections for people.
“And at that point, knowing that he was attacking my family and that of a large number of other people directly, I asked for help from nonprofits, got a letter of support from the Arc of Massachusetts, and ultimately had to hire my own litigator to represent the rights of these people because the only argument made otherwise was that ‘the law should be followed because it is the law.’
“The state did not directly represent the rights of these citizens.
“Now we are in the endgame with the Safe Harbor adjudication, and Mr. Yebba is still proceeding to play his last cards, claiming rights to examine how the group home data are gathered, processed, still risking exposure of specific homes and people, and still uncaring how rights are trampled.
“We know he does not care about affordable housing because he has offered more than once to drop the 40B proposal if the town re-zones to give him a development that offers the financial profit he wants.
“I know that group homes cannot pack and move. I know that their occupants need 24/7 help and assistance 1:1 outside the home. That is the level of need that got my ward in the queue for a group home placement before they became of age for transition there.
“I ask for the help of the Select Board, as well as our other citizens, to protect these residents of North Reading and our Safe Harbor status.
“Please consider asking the Attorney General to protect the civil rights of these persons directly. Given the state acreage number for group homes, there may be up to 200 or so people directly at risk, about the same number as the number of rental apartments Mr. Yebba would like to build for his investment.
“We do so much better when we act together. I would like to see inclusive, permanent housing built at appropriate locations in town. The sooner we can get off the defensive for temporary units built at a location where no one can walk anywhere and the only sidewalk is on the far side of the road, the sooner we can put our time, sweat, and money into better housing that people will not be forced to leave in 10 years.
Thank you.”
