When it comes to affordable housing, a few Bay State towns have made great strides in producing homes for lower-income families, but the majority have struggled just to take baby steps.
While 39 communities have been able to reach the state-set goal of 10 percent affordable housing, most communities in Massachusetts have failed to attain that target, according to the state’s latest subsidized housing inventory.
There are 82 cities and towns in Massachusetts where less than 2 percent of the housing stock is certified as affordable by the state, and another 42 fall between the 2 percent to 3 percent range. Those 124 towns and cities represent more than a third of the communities in the commonwealth.
Many smaller communities attempting to increase their affordable housing face a variety of obstacles including stiff resistance from residents and a lack of infrastructure to support robust development. Some of those towns have actually seen their affordable housing count slip in the last eight years.
Several have seen affordable housing development solely because of projects completed under the state’s comprehensive permitting statute, Chapter 40B. The state’s so-called anti-snob zoning law enables developers to construct denser mixed-income housing developments and bypass certain local zoning rules in communities where less than 10 percent of the housing is deemed affordable by the state.
Many of the communities that have less than 2 percent affordable housing, including Charlemont, Ashburnham and Boylston, are rural communities located in the western and central part of the Bay State. Several, however, including Carlisle, Winchester and Dover, are affluent suburbs in Greater Boston where home prices are beyond the reach of most working families.
Robert Engler, a developer and affordable housing consultant, said there are a variety of reasons why some communities are so far behind the 10 percent goal. Some of the communities that have low affordable housing counts are rural and don’t have strong housing markets and demand, Engler said. Many of them don’t have the economic conditions, including job growth, to support mixed-income housing. Other communities are built up, with few developable sites, he said.
“Not every site is a good affordable housing site,” said Engler, a principal of Stockard & Engler & Brigham, a consulting firm based in Cambridge.
But Engler said it’s harder to explain why communities in eastern Massachusetts, particularly those near cities like Boston where the demand is strong, have little affordable housing. “That’s a harder call,” he said. “There’s a market anywhere in eastern Massachusetts, but it’s also a question of finding developable sites.”
Chapter and Purse
Another well-known challenge is that many communities haven’t been quick to embrace affordable housing. Developers and other housing advocates have long complained about the NIMBYism (not in my backyard) that has been pervasive in Massachusetts.
Most towns resist low-cost housing development, according to Engler, so it’s extremely difficult for town planners and other elected officials to try to identify spots in their communities where affordable housing should be constructed.
“It’s easier to allow a developer to come in [with a Chapter 40B project] and protest that than it is to get a vote [allowing an affordable housing project] at Town Meeting,” he said. Still, Engler said that doesn’t mean that communities with less affordable housing are any more resistant to such housing than towns and cities with higher percentages of affordable housing.
Gary Ruping, a Billerica-based homebuilder who is president of the Builders Association of Greater Boston, concurs with Engler that it’s politically tough for municipal officials to stand up and support a mixed-income housing development in the face of neighborhood opposition.
“We get the wrath as the developers, but we may not be living in that town,” he said, noting that local officials must be sensitive to their constituents.
In many of the more affluent suburbs, there are wealthy residents who have the resources to fight developers who have proposed projects, explained Ruping. That only lengthens the entire development process and ultimately makes the housing development more expensive, he said.
Complicating matters is that some towns don’t have full-time planning staffs to develop housing plans and implement strategies for desirable housing production. Some communities inside Route 128 and Interstate 495 with full-time hired staff have started to examine ways to advance affordable housing agendas. But many of the smaller communities beyond Interstate 495 that don’t have the full-time planners are often “overwhelmed with the concept of mixed-income housing,” Ruping explained.
Some town officials blame soaring land costs and the lack of infrastructure and municipal services, including water and sewer systems, for the scarcity of affordable housing.
In Dover, a suburb 16 miles southwest of Boston, less than 1 percent of the town’s 1,874 housing units were certified by the state Department of Housing and Community Development as affordable to those earning 80 percent or less of the area median income. In fact, the town’s affordable housing supply slipped from 1 percent in 1997 to 0.9 percent during the latest count by DHCD.
Cindy Amara, town planner for Dover, said most of the town relies on private wells and septic systems. “That makes higher-density projects more difficult,” she said.
The median selling price for a single-family home in Dover soared to $884,000 last year, according to The Warren Group, parent company of Banker & Tradesman, which tracks property sales through the state’s registries of deeds. Builders and other experts say that housing costs in suburbs like Dover are largely the result of high land costs combined with zoning and building restrictions that make it very difficult, and less profitable, for developers to construct smaller, lower-cost homes.
Most of the Dover, for example, is designated for either one-acre or two-acre zoning, although a small area in the town center allows housing to be built on half-acre lots. Town zoning also includes a multifamily district, but according to Amara it hasn’t been used.
The town is in the process of revising its master plan. “We’re looking at revamping it and looking at some affordable housing options,” said Amara.
When pressed to elaborate, Amara said the town was just beginning to explore its options and was in the “process of looking at everything.”
A big problem has been identifying areas in Dover where it “makes sense” to develop affordable housing, said Amara, who emphasized that preserving open space and protecting the town’s water supply have been critical areas of concern.
“The big question is how do you balance everything – protect land and groundwater and meet affordable housing goals,” she said.
Marc Draisen, executive director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, a regional planning agency for 101 municipalities in Greater Boston, said “fear of the unknown” is also at play in towns and cities that have made very little progress in producing affordable housing. “If you’re in a community with little affordable housing there’s a tendency for them to say ‘leave things the way they are,'” said Draisen.
Yet in some cases, land costs are so exorbitant that even providing local incentives and favorable zoning isn’t enough, Draisen said: “It’s just too expensive to buy it for affordable housing.”
The affordable housing count in Acton, a town located 25 miles north of Boston along Route 2, crept up from 2.1 percent in 2001 to 2.3 percent this year. Town officials say they have actively tried in the past to increase the affordable housing count. In 1990, the town established an affordable housing overlay district where developers of affordable housing could receive density bonuses.
The effort wasn’t successful, however, and produced only about three or four residential units. Richard Bartl, the town’s planner, explained that the formula for determining how many bonus units a developer would receive in exchange for building the lower-cost housing units was based on the economics of the booming late 1980s, and because economic conditions quickly changed, the formula no longer worked.
The town has been more successful in negotiating the inclusion of affordable housing units with the developers of market-rate housing, Bartl said.
“It’s hard catching up with the rate of construction in regular market-rate housing that’s been going on and not lose ground,” said Bartl. “We’ve basically held our ground.”
Bartl pointed out that Acton recently established an affordable housing plan. “That gave us another some momentum to take another look at what we can do locally,” he said.
Although nothing has been formally proposed, the town will be examining possible changes to its zoning to require developers to include affordable units as part of their projects and trying to come up with a strategy to determine where and how the town might be able to embrace dense mixed-income housing projects proposed under Chapter 40B.
Unlike other towns that have complained about being bombarded with Chapter 40B projects, Acton has had very few. Recently, however, a developer has proposed building about 300 apartments near an office park on the Acton and Westford town line. If the project, known as The Woodlands at Laurel Hill, moves forward, Acton’s affordable housing count could jump from 2.3 percent to a little over 6 percent.
Novelties and Negotiation
Like Acton, Boxboro’s affordable housing inventory has grown – from 0.6 percent in 2001 to 1.2 percent in 2005. Boxboro officials, who’ve seen several Chapter 40B proposals in recent years, have taken steps to boost affordable housing.
About five years ago, a committee was formed to study town’s housing needs, and later the Boxboro Housing Board was formed. In 2001, the board presented a long-range affordable housing plan. An element of the plan was the creation of a condo exchange program, which would enable the board to acquire condos at market-rate prices and then sell them to qualified buyers at a discounted price.
The Housing Board has been able to purchase five condos with the help of $200,000 in funding from the town and a matching grant through the Federal Home Loan Bank, said Channing Wagg, a member of the board.
The condos are deed restricted, so that if they are resold they must be sold to lower-income homebuyers, ensuring the units remain affordable.
But the condo exchange program has had its challenges. In an e-mail, the board’s Chairman Al Murphy explained, “The program is novel and has proven difficult to administer. The delays involved in acquiring approval for the buyers have been unacceptable to many sellers and have diminished the rate at which we can turn over units. We have modified our procedures and hope to increase the rate of condo conversion in the future. However, the continued increase in condo prices may limit the number we can convert.”
In addition to the condo exchange program, the town wants to use money that it’s slated to receive from a $1.2 million settlement it reached with a developer last year to increase its affordable housing supply.
The settlement was reached after the town filed a lawsuit against the developers of Boxborough Meadows, a 48-unit project built under Chapter 40B, in a dispute over the profits generated from the development. Under Chapter 40B, developers receiving comprehensive permits must agree that if their profits exceed 20 percent, the excess must be returned to the community.
Elizabeth Hughes, who was hired as Boxboro’s planner in late December, said because of the high land costs, it’s very difficult for a town to compete with developers to acquire land and build affordable housing.
A vacant lot, roughly an acre in size, sells for about $300,000 in the community, according to Hughes.
Another challenge that Boxboro faces is that it lacks town water and sewer. Hughes pointed out that the town has no water lines or fire hydrants, which poses a fire safety issue, especially with denser developments such as those often necessary to make affordable housing projects economically feasible.
“Other communities that have that specific type of infrastructure can better deal with housing development,” she said.
In recent years, town officials have tried to work with, rather than fight, developers of housing projects proposed under Chapter 40B, a process sometimes referred to as a “friendly 40B.” The town is anticipating a proposal for an eight-unit project and a 60-unit project under the comprehensive permitting law.
“In every case, any town is going to want to work with a developer upfront. Unfortunately, that’s not always the option provided,” she said.
The developer of the eight-unit project has not filed for a permit yet, but he is meeting with the Housing Board this week to discuss the project and any issues that may need to be addressed. “That’s probably the best situation you can be in – for the town and the developer” to open a dialogue, she said. Some developers, assuming they will meet with community resistance, begin the permitting process under Chapter 40B prior to meeting with town officals.
Currently, the Housing Board also is considering developing an affordable housing action plan that it can present to the state. If the plan is approved by the state, the town would be able to increase its affordable housing incrementally, and if it reaches a certain annual percentage and demonstrates progress, the Zoning Board of Appeals would be given the option for a certain period of time to deny projects proposed under Chapter 40B. Communities that reach the 10 affordability threshold cannot have local permitting decisions overturned for as long as they stay above that state-set goal.
Asked how likely it was that Boxboro would reach the state-set goal of 10 percent affordable housing, Hughes replied, “unlikely.”
“There’s approximately 1,900 housing units in this community; 190 affordable units is a significant hurdle.”
Murphy, the Housing Board chairman, agrees that it does not seem likely that Boxboro will reach 10 percent in the near future.
“Independent of any state-mandated goals, we believe that affordable housing is good for Boxboro,” Murphy said. “Absent affordable housing, many town personnel, such as teachers and police officers, and many long-term older residents cannot afford to remain in Boxboro. We strongly feel that the community will be well served if such people can stay.”
Aglaia Pikounis may be reached at apikounis@thewarrengroup.com.
