Month: May 2014

Blighted Miller Park lost bid for $1,000,000 federal grant but city funds bring new hope. The City of Malden has awarded the much-needed funds to bulldoze and renovate Miller Park. Four steel girders topped with a roof of cinder block that became a massive lean to for drug dealers will soon be razed and replaced with trees, plants and pathways with painted hopscotches. The unrecognizable remnants of a vandalized tot lot exchanged for new playground equipment and one of the few remaining basketball courts in the area will be completely refurbished. The neighborhood will reclaim its long needed park that many had feared entering and a new green space will belong to the community. Originally called Harvard St. Park, it was renamed for YMCA outreach worker Robert Miller who devoted himself to the neighborhood youth. The park abuts the Malden Housing Authority and single family homes. Located in the city’s poorest area, Miller Park began its slow decline from neglect about 20 years ago because of the lack of city funds. Unlike other areas of […]

To say that the demand for affordable housing has increased since Malden’s strategic five-year plan (2010-2014) and its 2010 master plan were formulated would be stating the obvious. City, state and federal funding has been spent with good intentions and a number of positive results to “preserve” and “expand” affordable housing for Malden’s low- and moderate-income residents. With funding resources dwindling and the debate as to how those funds would best serve those in need,  it will have to be decided if temporary or permanent shelter is the way to go — although some school of thought suggests that window of opportunity has closed since millions have already been spent on temporary shelters. According to a December 2013 Boston Globe article by Megan Woolhouse and David Abel: “Record numbers of homeless families are overwhelming  the state’s emergency shelter system, filling motel rooms at the cost to taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars a year.  In the past five years, state spending on motels has exploded to more than $46 million from about $1 million […]