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Date: 6/20/2023
NORTHAMPTON — The city of Northampton is bringing more people to the table to talk about affordable housing and the missing middle housing with the help of a state organization called the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association.
During a launch meeting on June 13, representatives from CHAPA and Northampton community members met to discuss the city’s current housing situation and how a loose coalition could impact the future of housing in Northampton.
Background
CHAPA is known for its legislative advocacy for housing across the state as well as its work with municipalities in helping them understand certain legislation as it is coming out. According to its website, they were instrumental in helping create the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Law, which was developed so families and individuals with low to moderate incomes could find safe and affordable homes in every city and town in the state.
Their mission is to encourage the production and preservation of affordable housing for families that range from no income to moderate income.
“We just want to have a conversation about affordable housing and try to build capacity and more knowledge about building housing at all levels,” said Keith Benoit, the city’s community development planner, in an interview with Reminder Publishing.
According to Benoit, CHAPA is working with Northampton on this new initiative through the organization’s Municipal Engagement Initiative Lite program, which helps municipalities launch their efforts around housing and grow outreach by forming a loose coalition of people who are interested in discussing housing.
He said that this is the first time the city has ever worked with CHAPA on building this broader network of conversations.
The initial launch meeting
The Housing Partnership, which is the city’s mayoral-appointed board charged with identifying and addressing the city’s housing needs, is helping create the space for these conversations with a broader group of people, while CHAPA facilitated the conversation on June 13 by talking about their initiative, data points related to the city, how can more people join the conversation on affordable housing, and what could a loose coalition in Northampton focus on.
“The idea around the Municipal Engagement Initiative is to think about how to build coalitions and how to build community stakeholders,” said Whitney Demetrius, the director of fair housing and municipal engagement for CHAPA. “And by stakeholders, we can really break that down to anyone in the community; residents, business leaders, bike enthusiasts; everyone.”
According to Demetrius, who presented during much of the meeting on June 13, most communities do not have this type of holistic coalition that discusses affordable housing, which is why CHAPA does its best to foster support for affordable housing production in communities like Northampton across the commonwealth.
“Our goal is really to empower those who are most impacted, elevate pro-housing voices, see diverse and sustainable local coalitions, and then change the conversation that then leads to real impact in the work,” Demetrius said.
The city of Northampton is currently working on affordable housing initiatives at the former Moose Lodge location, on the western ledge of the Northampton State Hospital and on Laurel Street but work is on the horizon.
With this meeting, and hopefully future ones, the goal is not necessarily to talk about specific housing projects in the city-according to Benoit-but rather meet people on the ground level and ask people what they are facing when it comes to the city’s housing.
“There have been some challenges with housing [in Northampton],” said Benoit, during the meeting. “This is really not about a specific project. We just want to start and elevate the conversation, get a temperature of the city, what are people thinking about, what are some impediments, [and] what people love about Northampton.”
According to Demetrius, CHAPA has been integral in fostering coalitions for housing in many other communities throughout the state including Amherst, Essex, Arlington, Newton, Medford, Revere and Lynn as well as some others.
“With each model of the work, every community has different concerns, so they shape the work,” Demetrius said. “We don’t come with an agenda…we’re really just here to provide technical assistance to communities.”
CHAPA’s work with Amherst, for example, lead to impactful changes courtesy of the Amherst Affordable Housing Coalition, including advocating for affordable climate change in housing and collaborating with Habitat for Humanity around housing opportunities.
According to Demetrius, the coalition also worked with Valley CDC and helped turn the tides on a housing project in East Gables that benefits low-income individuals as well as those who were recently homeless.
“This [Amherst] group started out just like yourselves,” said Demetrius, when talking to the Northampton crowd. “They came in the room for their first launch meeting, and we started talking about what the housing concerns were, what we love about Amherst and what things we wanted to work on…it led to all of these great things they were able to accomplish.”
Where Northampton stands
According to Monica Keel, the municipal engagement program associate for CHAPA, a lot of the housing stock in Northampton was built in 1939 or earlier, which means a lot of the housing options in the city are a little older than the state average.
“We really want more development now,” Keel said. “Also because some of that aging housing stock, we can redevelop it [and] we can rehab it.”
Through research provided by DataTown, and presented at the meeting, there is not a whole lot of “middle housing” in Northampton. Instead, a quick Zillow snapshot showed how many houses in the city cost either approximately $350,000 or over $1 million.
“There’s not just restrictive housing that is needed but also what is called the ‘missing middle,’” Benoit said. “[Middle housing] is for people who are working full time, that are overqualified for income but are not working six or seven figures.”
Keel’s presentation always painted a picture of cost-burden in Northampton, which determines how many people in the city are using more than 30 % of their income to pay for housing in some capacity. According to the data, a little under 50% of renters are considered “cost-burden” in Northampton.
“We like to keep people below that 30% because we want you to have money for savings, emergency [and entertainment],” Keel said. “This doesn’t include groceries or anything extra like taking care of your kids, childcare and babysitting.”
During the meeting, residents were asked to provide a collage of reasons for why there are barriers to affordable housing in Northampton. Some of this data corroborated a few of the concerns expressed.
Many people at the meeting, according to Demetrius, mentioned a lack of rental options, affordability, parking and lack of apartment buildings as a few of the many barriers aspirational renters and homeowners face.
Others were asked what concerns they are hearing in the community around the idea of housing production. Many mentioned barriers from cost of development, lack of supply, lack of subsidy and lack of incentives.
“We’re going to type all of this up because we really want not just to hear from you in this way, but for [these concerns] to potentially shape some of the agenda and the work that you all do here as they did in Amherst,” Demetrius said.
What’s next
A specific date for the next meeting with this loose coalition is not set but there is hope that another meeting will occur in the fall when people are back from vacation. The goal is to build on the conversation in hopes that the loose coalition meets more regularly in the future.
“This is more of a conversation, and hopefully from [this meeting], more people will be interested in being more involved and that the level of conversation is elevated so that we’re talking about the same issues, but on a different level,” Benoit said.
Readers can learn more about CHAPA by visiting their website: https://www.chapa.org/. They can also follow news on the Housing Partnership by visiting the city’s website.