How a shuttered hospital site in Lynn is being transformed into affordable housing for seniors

This article was originally published on CommonWealth Beacon.

WHEN LYNN’S only hospital shuttered in 2020, it was a devastating blow for the North Shore city of 100,000 in the throes of the pandemic.

“The closure of Union Hospital is still a source of pain and frustration in this community,” Mayor Jared Nicholson said. “For a city of our size not to have a hospital is an indictment on the health care system.”

But one 10-acre section of the site has already been developed into a community of 26 single family homes for adults over the age of 55 called Woodland Village. And next year, the community will see the five remaining acres of the parcel restored into a 150-unit affordable housing community for seniors.

2Life Communities, an affordable senior housing developer and operator, broke ground on the $85 million project — called Solimine House — in December. Construction is expected to be completed in October 2027, with the resident application process opening next spring for adults age 62 and older with incomes up to 60 percent of the area median income (AMI).

Local leaders say the development will help alleviate the city’s housing shortage and provide an affordable, accessible option for some of Lynn’s most vulnerable residents. The new development will be connected via a covered walkway to Element Care, a nonprofit health care organization located next door, and its Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) center, which serves patients who are enrolled in Medicaid and Medicare. Massachusetts General Brigham’s Lynn Urgent Care and Medical Office Building are also next door.

“What’s particularly exciting about this project is that it integrates approaches to housing and health care, and those are two of the thorniest, most challenging issues we face,” Nicholson said.

After the hospital closure, David Solimine, a local developer and philanthropist who manages Solimine Charitable Corporation, bought the complex for $1 million and soon after demolished it. Community members made it clear that they wanted senior housing on the site in the Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s 2018 Lynn Union Hospital re-use planning study.

“I live right around the corner from the site, and it was my neighborhood hospital,” Solimine said.

Solimine partnered with 2Life Communities and gave them five acres while his charitable corporation built Woodland Village on the other 10 acres. (Solimine manages the corporation as an unpaid volunteer and 100 percent of its income, including the sale proceeds from Woodland Village, is used for charitable purposes in the Lynn area, according to Solimine.)

“This is an easy one,” said Magnolia Contreras, Solimine’s wife and a lifelong Lynn resident. “You’re providing homes to people with limited income in an innovative way where they are going to get health care and other community-level services, build a culture, and build a community. We’ve never seen anything like this in Lynn.”

Even though 38 percent of all affordable rental units in Massachusetts are set aside for older adults, supply is limited. There are more than 460,000 low-income elderly households in the state and only 83,000 affordable rental units for this demographic, according to a 2025 Special Commission on Senior Housing report.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts ranks as the second worst state in the nation after New York for elder economic security, largely due to high housing costs, according to a 2026 report from UMass Boston.

The median household income among Lynn residents age 65 and older is $41,000 compared to the city’s overall median household income of $75,000. Comparatively, seniors in Massachusetts have a median household income of nearly $69,000. Roughly 20 percent of seniors in Lynn live below the poverty line compared to nearly 14 percent of the city’s overall population.

“The desperate need for housing that is affordable to Lynn’s older adults, and the added benefits of our ‘aging in community’ model are going to be a tremendous asset to the community,” said Lizbeth Heyer, president of 2Life Communities.

Solimine House will include 40 units rented to households earning up to 60 percent of AMI, 69 units rented to households earning up to 50 percent of AMI, and 39 units rented to households earning up to 30 percent of AMI. Two rent-free apartments will house live-in staff that will be on call 24 hours a day for residents.

City leaders are hopeful that projects like Solimine House will alleviate other housing pressures by providing a place for seniors to comfortably age while also freeing up more housing for families.

“There is a lack of options for older people to downsize or move into a senior housing community,” Heyer said. “We have a lot of older adults in Lynn and in this state that are living in unsustainable housing situations, where they’re paying a massive amount to live in an apartment or a house that would be more appropriately sized for a family.”