North Adams Housing Authority Receives CHAP

By Jack GuerinoiBerkshires Staff
10:28AM / Tuesday, March 26, 2019Print Story | Email Story

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Housing Authority has been given the OK to begin a Rental Assistance Demonstration conversion.

Housing Authority Executive Director Jennifer Hohn released a letter from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development received last week notifying the authority.

"North Adams Housing Authority is excited to receive our award letter from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for a 'Commitment to Enter into Housing Assistance Payments,' " Hohn said.

Rental Assistance Demonstration, or RAD, allows HUD housing authorities to move their units to the Section 8 platform and to leverage debt and equity for re-investment without affecting tenant rights and rents, or housing authority control.

"The Rental Assistance Demonstration will enable NAHA to preserve its public housing stock utilizing a more sustainable future funding source," Hohn said. "Additionally, it will allow access to other financial resources in order to make necessary improvements to properties and also perform upgrades which will enhance residents' quality of life and increase the overall attractiveness of NAHA's developments."

The 304 units within Greylock Valley in the West End, Riverview on Lincoln Street, and Ashland Street Apartments will be moved to the project-based voucher assistance platform.

The North Adams Housing Authority has been on a waiting list for some time now. This was extended because of the government shutdown earlier this year.

The Housing Authority Commission did take some action toward the program in February and voted to hire Dominion, a company specializing in housing and health care facilities, to conduct a physical needs assessment, which is a requirement of RAD.

The letter stated that the Housing Authority must now meet CHAP Milestones and deadlines.

Hohn said she anticipates the conversion will be complete by next year.

"NAHA will continue to maintain an open dialogue with the residents during this process," she said. "We are hopeful that the conversion will be completed by summer 2020."

Tags: Housing Authority,

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North Adams School Project Awards $51M Bid

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
05:10AM / Friday, February 13, 2026

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Building Committee has awarded the Greylock School project to Fontaine Bros. Inc. of Springfield.

Mayor Jennifer Macksey said she could "breathe a little better" with a bid contract that comes in nearly $2 million under budget.

The committee approved a bid of $50,498,544 on Thursday night that includes two alternates — the rebuild of the Appalachian Trail kiosk and the relocation and reconstruction of the baseball field.

"I will say, all in all, for us to have overall the number of bidders that we had interested in our project, and especially to receive the GC bids that we did, the team Colliers and TSKP certainly did a good job attracting people to us," she said. "But this project ... really shows the testament of the good work that Colliers and TSKP and all of you have been doing throughout this process."

Fontaine had the low bid between Brait Builders of Marshfield and J&J Contractors Inc. of North Billerica.

The project had been bid out at $52,250,000 with three alternates: moving the ballfield, the kiosk and vertical geothermal wells.

Committee members asked Timothy Alix of Collier's International, the owner's project manager, about his impressions of the bidders. He was most familiar with Fontaine, having worked with the company on a half-dozen school projects and noted it was the contractor on the Mountain View Elementary School in Easthampton that the Massachusetts School Building Authority has held up as an example school. He also had some of his colleagues call on projects that he had not personally worked on.

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