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In June, we published an opinion piece on the continued controversy over the Sudbury Housing Authority’s plan to demolish four affordable single-family homes in Pine Lakes.
Since then, residents have watched closely. Here is what two months have — and haven’t — produced.
Start with the silence.
In May, Town Meeting passed Article 39, appropriating up to $500,000 to repair and preserve these homes as single-family residences. It was a clear, funded answer from the town. Since then, neighbors from across the community have reached out to the Authority and its board asking to talk about that appropriation — how to put it to work, how to collaborate.
To date, not a single SHA member has responded or engaged on it. A half-million dollars the town voted to spend on these very homes sits unacknowledged.
Meanwhile, a third home has now gone vacant. The residents of 2 Beechwood unexpectedly moved out in July, and per the Authority’s August board meeting, there are no plans to fill it. That’s now three of the four homes empty — not because they’re all unlivable, but because the sites are being hollowed out ahead of a demolition that is the first step of a multimillion dollar project the town has repeatedly refused to support.
Every month a repairable home sits empty is a month a Sudbury family isn’t living in it.
Now consider the project itself, which has stumbled before a shovel has touched dirt. According to the Authority’s July and August board meetings, the MassDwell contract that was expected this summer still does not exist. The Authority’s development partner, the Cambridge Housing Authority, has gone unresponsive, and the board has openly voiced frustration at the lack of communication.
That partner’s involvement was the Authority’s answer to a basic question: does it have the in-house capacity to manage a multi-million-dollar redevelopment on its own? With Cambridge effectively withdrawn and no replacement consultant engaged, that question is now unanswered. After more than three years without measurable progress, it’s fair to ask whether the Authority has the capacity to carry this out at all. The legal work has been split into two separate contracts, and even board members have said aloud they doubt a finalized contract will be ready as hoped.
This is what “delayed before it started” looks like.
And then there is the part that should give every taxpayer pause.
The MassDwell proposal was selected through a procurement in which MassDwell was the only bidder. Residents have filed multiple public records requests for the detailed Price Proposal — the document submitted in May containing the actual costs and budget. Those requests have gone unanswered for months.
The Authority’s stated reason for withholding it: the Price Proposal “hasn’t been opened.”
Sit with that. The board has spent months moving toward signing a contract with a single, sole-source bidder — and by its own account, no one at the Authority has opened that bidder’s pricing.
How does a public body vote to proceed toward a contract with one company without ever examining what that company intends to charge?
Public money demands public scrutiny, and scrutiny begins with looking at the numbers. Residents shouldn’t have to fight for months to see the price tag on a project their town has repeatedly declined to support.
There’s a deeper irony worth naming. At an August meeting, an Authority official, discussing Liberty Ledge, remarked that they “did not have to max out every piece of land” — favoring a balance of housing, recreation, and open space.
Residents could not agree more. That is precisely the restraint the neighborhood has asked for, for years, at Pine Lakes: don’t cram maximum density onto four small lots when repair keeps affordable homes intact and the town has already paid to do it.
Again — none of this is anti-housing. Sudbury’s subsidized housing stock remains near 12%, above the state’s threshold, and residents have repeatedly said they’ll support new affordable housing at sites that make sense. This was never about whether to house families.
It’s about whether a public agency can ignore its own town — its boards, its Finance Committee, its housing survey, and a direct Town Meeting vote — and press ahead on a stalled, sole-bidder, undisclosed-cost plan while emptying homes in the meantime.
The path forward is the same one the town already chose: accept the repair funding, keep these homes occupied and affordable, and bring any redevelopment plan back into the open.
The Authority has spent two months not answering its neighbors. It’s not too late to start.