By Linda Scott
Watertown Resident
First, I’d like to thank all of the candidates for office for putting themselves out there. It’s a grueling process, and I appreciate your efforts. And congratulations to those who were elected. Let’s wish them all great success in these challenging times. Their success is our success.
I’ve received quite a few comments after my last letter in Watertown News entitled ”Because There are No Kings.” See: https://www.watertownmanews.com/2025/10/31/letter-candidates-violating-election-rules-posting-signs-on-city-property/#comment-62905
The question often posed came down to four simple words: Why these three candidates?
This simple four word, coyly accusatory question (“Why these three candidates?) implied that this was the only time that I’ve reported on election irregularities this election season; that these candidates were somehow targeted for their race. But this was not the case. I also commented in Watertown News on another illegal political posting earlier in the season.
Because I placed this election infraction in the comments section of Watertown News and not in letter form, it apparently went unnoticed. Perhaps this election infraction deserves its own letter, so here goes. HAW (Housing for All Watertown), illegally posted signs on poles all over Watertown Square earlier this election season with the large words “Legalize Affordable Housing” and a QR code on them. See below:
I’m guessing this deceptive statement (affordable housing is already legal in Watertown, after all) was meant to get the attention of folks who haven’t been paying as close attention to convince the m to join HAW and thus receive their political recommendations.
An alert citizen noticed the signs and reported them to the City. The City, being consistent with its policies, after using the QR code and discovering that it corresponded with an email of a HAW leader, sent a cease and desist letter to HAW for the removal of these illegally placed signs.
I’d like to point out that this Watertown election infraction that I mentioned in Watertown News in October is the responsibility of this group, HAW.
In a picture that appeared in Watertown News, HAW leadership Daniel Pritchard, Rita Colafella, Sam Ghirlardi, Amy Plovnick, and Josh Rosmarin appeared with Kassie Infante and Jesse Kanson-Benanav, who are not HAW. They are from Abundant Housing MA.
Since HAW is a political group that’s been in Watertown for a few years now, ignorance of the City’s rules does not seem likely.
Finally, a followup:
A group, Abundant Housing, (see the folks on the ends above) that has financed HAW since the beginning has changed its address. It was originally located in Jamaica Plain.
An aside, I love JP! I worked there for quite a few years and fell in love with the people and the neighborhoods. So, one nice day a few years ago, I decided to take a drive to JP to see Abundant Housing’s offices.
Abundant Housing was located in a home in 2023.
And here’s its address now:
Money in housing politics sure must be good!
I encourage you to read the following article to see what one of Watertown’s HAW leaders, Josh Rosmarin, is currently working on: https://massterlist.com/2025/07/17/a-yimby-super-pac-enters-the-arena/
An Opinion: An affordable housing Super Pac “which can operate with few restrictions on its fundraising and spending” funded by developers … strange bedfellows, indeed! What could possibly go wrong?
Finally, I’m grateful to Watertown News for their patience with this clarifying update.
Linda, we do not agree on much but you absolutely nailed it with this. Please keep digging.
Josh Rosmarin’s employer ,”Mind the Gap”, is a PAC started by two very prominent money movers for the Democratic Party. (Josh collected just over 358k last cycle from Dem donors, he looks the be the second largest) They are both professors at Standford Barbara Fried, Joseph Bankman. Those names might sound familiar because their son Sam Bankman Fried (SBF) was sent to prison a few years ago for orchestrating one of the largest financial crimes in US history. Research the collapse of FTX.
https://capitalresearch.org/app/uploads/Mind-The-Gap-Internal-memo.pdf
And yes you are correct, “affordable housing” is a good business to be in. If you look at one of the most recent “affordable housing” projects championed by HAW you can see it is a massive scam to tax payers. The “Willow Park Project” promises 138 units at a total cost of 107m. So some quick math everyone can see each unity costs $775k to build. This will be made available to reenters that earn under 80% of the AMI which I think is around 85k in Watertown.
https://willowparkredevelopment.org/
https://www.watertownmanews.com/2025/02/12/city-council-approves-seed-money-for-willow-park-affordable-housing-development/
Watertown put up 4m in CPA funds (the largest in the towns history), and then POAH (Preservation of Affordable Housing) gets state and federal loans to finance the rest of the project. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/311616634
Since 2020, they have more than doubled their revenue while almost tripling their total debt (that usually ends horribly). But it also shows just how unsustainable what they are doing is. There is something seriously broken if it is costing taxpayers $775,000 to build a single apartment. (it just looks like straight money laundering to me)
Please keep digging in on this issue, it is becoming clear there is a ton of outside money and influence coming to Watertown and other MA towns to extract tax payer dollars by promising things they cannot deliver. And everyone reading this please reach out to your newly elected Council person and make them aware of what is going and ask them to get answers.
First: AHMA isn’t a super PAC. There’s AHMA IEPAC, which is a similarly named, entirely separate organization.
Second: it’s concerning that you think a nonprofit’s filing address is meaningful, and that you chose to visit & photograph one of the founder’s homes to try & malign AHMA.
Meanwhile, 50 Milk St is also home to:
* MA Department of Early Education and Care
* Jobs for the Future, a job retraining nonprofit
* Duet, a nonprofit college coach
* Communities for Restorative Justice, a crime rehabilitation nonprofit
And quite a few more.
Based on your narrative here, all of these wonderful nonprofits should be maligned for leasing space at 50 Milk St for reasons that escape me.
Do you truly think a nonprofit should operate out of someone’s home, instead of having office space of its own?
Hi Jeff,
It looks like Somerville is in the House! It would appear that you are a leader of a housing group too (Somerville YIMBY)?
First, I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. Abundant Housing (AHMA) is not the super pac. It’s been around a few years. In the article I referenced in my letter, there’s a super pac being formed by Molly Goodman, one of the founders of Abundant Housing (as a matter of fact, she’s listed as Board President of Abundant Housing at one point) and Josh Rosmarin…HAW, here in Watertown. (Please see the referenced article in my letter).
Secondly Abundant Housing is not a non-profit agency the way most people would think of one. They are a 501C-4 corporation, that exists mostly for political lobbying purposes. The public can make donations to it, but they are not tax deductible donations, because the 501C-4’s activities are mostly political, NOT charitable.
The other nonprofits that you mention are charitable or educational nonprofits (501C-3’s). The Mass Department of Ed one speaks for itself. Is there a reason that you chose 501C-3 nonprofits to compare to Abundant Housing? Their activities are not the same. See this IRS explanation of 501C-4’s:
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/action-organizations
Question: You seem to be familiar with housing politics in Watertown. What is Housing For All Watertown (HAW) classified as? That seems to be a mystery. They appear to be getting at least occasional support from organizations like Abundant Housing. If so, how is that accounted for?
Thirdly, I’m new to the Cambridge Innovation Center model that is 50 Milk Street. My impression is that it’s quite successful. According to Zoominfo, CIC’s 2025 revenue is $409.9 million (world-wide). I’m not sure how that squares with statements that meeting rentals, yearly office rentals, conferences, etc. make up a lot of their bottomline. It sure sounds like they must get a lot of monetary infusion from elsewhere to reach that goal. Again, just my guess.
And, lastly, why look into Abundant Housing? Because Abundant Housing is a business that has had a direct effect on Watertown. One example is their on-line tutoring session (with HAW) before the Watertown Square Redevelopment meetings… a political “how to push your development agenda.”
How do I know this? Because a few of us from Watertown attended it. People in Watertown were invited to attend. How do I know that Abundant Housing was involved? Because those words flashed on the screen before the session.
This is not a private matter. See AI information on privacy rights for corporations:
“Data privacy: State and federal laws, like the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), may still require disclosure of information about individuals associated with the organization, such as beneficial owners, even if they are tax-exempt.”
“Beneficial owners” refers to people who are in control of this entity, not actual owners. Since Abundant Housing is a nonprofit corporation, their “beneficial owners” information is available.
I was quite surprised when I went to Jamaica Plain that Abundant Housing’s “Corporate Headquarters” turned out to be in that type of building. It’s listed publicly on the records for the corporation.
These types of homes are, luckily, a dime a dozen in JP, and I purposely did not include the address or any identifiable neighborhood characteristics. If you go to Cushing Square in Belmont, you’ll see examples of similar arrangements where businesses are housed in older homes.
As for maligning Abundant Housing by mentioning its name and location?? As you might recall, I specifically mentioned that Abundant Housing does not seem to have participated in the HAW poster infraction in Watertown Square.
A request was made to remove the pictures of the HAW leadership group and Abundant Housing’s corporate headquarters from my letter to Watertown News. That was done, so that may allay any of your concerns. But to reiterate, if you form a corporation out of your domicile, the records will reflect that. It will also reflect this nonprofit corporation’s worth and who the “major players” are in that corporation.
I was equally surprised, upon seeing the pricy Financial District location, that this seemingly small group didn’t rent a small space in the JP community, thus helping their “home” community out.
Quite frankly, it makes sense, besides the price point, that Abundant Housing would choose 50 Milk Street. It’s closer to the big money “movers and shakers” in business and in the State House that they plan to lobby and impress. In lobbying, it is about the money, after all.
Thank you, Linda.
50 Milk St. is a building that primarily contains coworking spaces where you can “rent” an address for very little money without having to rent any actually office space. It’s basically a fancier version of a PO Box, and allows you to book shared physical space as needed if you have to take some sort of important meeting.
When Crises Collide
It’s like the housing “crisis” and the climate “crisis” are playing chicken. We must put all our Preservation dollars toward community housing, some argue, at the expense of open space, recreation, and historic resources. (Never mind even greater density will strain space and recreation, vital resources for the entire community, more than they already are.)
Yet Watertown still has an obligation to battle climate change, not least by ameliorating the “heat islands” that plague certain neighborhoods. This would argue for more open space, or at least investing in more green open space, and maintaining recreation facilities in what open space we have. That doesn’t sound too hard, but we haven’t done it yet, not by a long shot.
We can spend on both, and should, prudently. Otherwise, our budget will be in crisis, and that’s not so easy a fix.
Josh,
This is very true, but do you know that our City Planning Department (DCDP) is allowed to count new private cement terraces as “open space”? I call your attention to the back of 166 Main Street, a relatively new building. Those large paved private terraces off of the back of the building are counted as “open space,” and ironically add to the reporting that the City does on how much “open space” they’ve added to Watertown.
We’ve confronted our city on this (deceptive?) practice, which appears to continue even after hearing our concerns….more new heat islands of our own making! There’s a very big difference between “open space” and “green open space.” One helps our struggling environment, and one does not. The irony is we are in total control of these new “spaces.” I refer you to Libby Shaw, who knows more about this than I ever will.
I won’t go as far as outrage, but I will cop to profound disappointment to learn this. Especially when I see elegant solutions to the contrary. When I walk to WSq, I usually take the footpath behind the Arsenal Street developments. There is a beautiful small rain garden tucked behind The Gables that one would never know was there. One side of Arsenal Street is (my idea of) Hell, the other is a mini-Eden. I keep reminding myself to bring a book next time I pass. Would it be a deal breaker to provide something similar for each new 3,4,5 story building designed for the Square? I’d even support a small one-off tax break for every building manager who tore out useless (as in unused and unusable) pavement and converted it to greenery. Paid by the square foot: the more you plant, the more you save.
Some people want to deal with the housing crisis and some don’t.
And some people who don’t live here have no interest in improving the city for that people that do. And some people who do, do.
A perfect reply Josh. Thankyou.
And some people don’t live there because there isn’t enough housing, hence the crisis. Your turn.
No, I’m good. But I do wonder what we—you and I—should make of a housing crisis (not my word, but fine) in the midst of a population FALL. According to the census, Watertown’s population peaked in the 39,000’s in the 1960s and ‘70s. One estimate has it at 33,000 now. Maybe that’s because families are smaller, or adult children have moved out of the family manse—but it at least suggests that we have enough housing for our residents. A tautology, as they already are our residents. I suppose we could build more inexpensive housing, but with room for at least 6,000 more just to get back to where we were, is it a crisis? Blame Cambridge: once rent control ended, the people who perhaps could have afforded market prices there, moved out and drove up market prices nearby, Watertown very much included. I took out any snark (or tried) in case you want to respond. No obligation.
Yep, Eric, Hell has officially frozen over!
Coincidentally, I was at a meeting last night sponsored by The Watertown Business Coalition at Italian Design Interiors on Spring Street (beautiful furniture, by the way!). One of the participants in the discussion that night was Andrew Copelotti, of Arsenal Yards fame.
He said that he estimated that it costs $550,000 per unit to build apartments now, and that that is unsustainable. That is quite a bit lower from the number you came up with. We may be comparing apples and oranges, but we should look into that further.
I remember a story told to me in the “bad old days” in Boston. I was a first year teacher, and I was conversing with a teacher who was ready to retire. We were talking about some of the absurdities of how Boston spent money back then.
She told me about working in a building that was planned to be demolished that summer. As she was teaching, a crew was carefully replacing all of the fire escapes on one side of the building…a contract is a contract, after all!
No time is time to waste money, but now, in this financial climate, is definitely not the time!
I’ll try to take a further look…how about you as well? And I invite others in the City who have skills in this area to devote a little time to researching this and filling us in on what you discover.
And how about super pacs? Anyone good at researching this and how much money is going to go into the hands of the people running them?
Linda,
To your conversation with Andrew, yes when a private builder goes to build market rate apartments the general rule for the Boston area is 500k-600k per unit. Those are the kinds of “market rate” units we see going up on main street, arsenal yards , etc… that then rent for 3k-4k a month. The goal for the developer is for the rents to cover the cost in 1o years, you add in taxes and maintenance and hopefully in 15 years you have all the principle from the project back and a nice steady cashflow going forward.
The companies building these “affordable” units do not operate with the same economic incentives. Affordable in this case just mean using tax dollars it actually has nothing to do with the price of anything. So these companies are highly inefficient because they are using someone else’s money (tax dollars) to solve other peoples (people making under 80% AMI) problems. These contracts are riddled with complete waste, inflated prices, etc.. because it is not like it’s their money being used to build anything it tax payer money. And they don’t have to do a good job because the tenants aren’t the ones paying the majority of the rent its ,you guessed it, the tax payer.
We will need to see the campaign finance disclosures for this cycle, I know Josh donated to Nicole Gardner during her initial run in 2021. (she raised almost 10k for that election)