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Date: 3/2/2022
SOUTHAMPTON – The recent survey on housing told Jim Seney, chair of the Housing Authority, exactly what residents want and need – affordable places to live –but also why it’s so important.
“Townspeople want these kinds of housing options,” Seney said. “They’re either young people getting out of college, or starting a family, who cannot afford to live in the town they grew up in. Or they’re older folks who want to downsize and can’t find anything in town they can afford.”
A shortage of affordable housing stunts growth and may drive away long-term residents. Seney also sees the enrichment of the town’s culture that affordable housing makes possible, an important benefit to both current and future residents.
“The lack of affordable housing creates two issues: the town, in my opinion, lacks diversity of peoples,” Seney said. Appealing to a broad cross-section of the population becomes more important as the commonwealth grows more diverse. A lack of diversity also, for Seney, “lessens our experience as human beings and lessons the experience of our kids in school.”
Several town committees recognize the need for affordable housing, which has pushed Seney and the Housing Trust to become a nexus for efforts to facilitate it. The Zoning Board of Appeals may play a role. Changes in zoning laws make a big difference and are less difficult to achieve than some other measures.
“The easiest means to create affordable housing is lifting restrictions we have on, for example, duplexes,” Seney said. “Lifting restrictions, square footage wise, that we have on mother-in-law apartments. Lifting the restrictions on tiny homes. You open it up when you lift those restrictions.”
Seney pointed to the Habitat for Humanity duplex in Easthampton, on East Street, as an example.
Minimum requirements for road frontage are another zoning change that may reduce housing costs. Seney said that if the minimum frontage is reduced it increases the number of available building lots. More small lots, more smaller homes. The higher density then incentivizes contractors to build smaller homes for bigger profits.
Members of Kestrel Land Trust talked to residents, some time ago, about protecting land with conservation restrictions. The visitors suggested a great strategy to make affordable housing possible: land in bits and pieces.
“When you have land to donate, it doesn’t mean you can’t work with various town boards to carve the land up a little bit,” Seney said. “We’re not…promoting that you take an open space donation and put in a huge affordable housing development – that defeats the purpose of open space – but you could put housing right along the roadway.”
The inclusionary bylaw in the town’s zoning regulations also needs a tweaking. The inclusionary bylaw requires new housing developments have 10 percent of units designated affordable in developments of 10 housing units or more; but therein lies the problem.
“We’ve had a number of cul-de-sac developments and they have all been nine units,” Seney said. His suggestion is to reduce the minimum number of units the bylaw applies to. “Reduce it to five…Right now, people can buy land, build nine units, then wait so many years, then go in and build again. Then it’s not counted as the total number.”
The push for affordable housing also prevents unwanted developments under the 40B laws of the Commonwealth. Under the 40B law for affordable housing, until a municipality achieves 20 to 25 percent of all housing as affordable, developers can sidestep some degree of local control, which municipalities hope to avoid.
Another change to zoning involves the creation of an overlay district. According to Seney, rather than change zoning laws, which can be difficult, the town may establish an overlay zone. Seney sees an overlay working in the commercial district to allow for mixed uses of properties, commercial businesses at street level with affordable housing in upper floors.
Opportunities to enable affordable housing are difficult for the town to benefit from, currently, because few properties come on the market. They get snapped up by eager buyers with mortgage approval letters in hand. That’s why the town needs a housing trust. A housing trust is separate from town government and would make the purchase of properties for affordable housing possible when they first become available.
“The housing trust provides the funding vehicle,” Seney said. “It doesn’t fund, it provides a funding vehicle. It’s a trust. It gives the financial flexibility a town needs when they say, we want to buy this piece of property, or if they want to invest CPA [Community Preservation Act] money into rehabbing this home and making it affordable.”
The recent update of the town’s master plan, the housing survey, and conditions on the state level, according to Seney, make this the ideal time to work hard for affordable housing. The commonwealth relaxed the voting requirements for housing-related municipal decisions from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority, which makes a significant difference in the passage of zoning changes.
Seney, an employee of the veteran’s hospital, acknowledged that change is difficult.
“I don’t delude myself, it’s an uphill battle,” Seney said. “I expect resistance from the folks who understandably worry that we’ll change the character of the town. The way I see it, if you want more affordable options, and that’s clear from the survey, then you have to be able to flex to make that happen.”