Beacon Hill impasse needs Hager-style vision

The lack of affordable housing in this state has caused a ripple effect throughout virtually every house-hunting demographic, from aspiring first-time homebuyers to senior citizens seeking to downsize.

The continued age acceleration of the post-World War II baby-boom generation compounds that shortage of affordable inventory, which manifests itself in discouraging waiting lists for a municipality’s short supply of designated senior housing units or construction of 55-and-over residential communities.

That sad reality makes it much more likely many seniors will end up in a funeral home before ever finding a suitable home in which to live out their lives.

But the necessity to produce more senior-housing alternatives can spawn some mothers of inventive answers, like the one that’s about to break ground in Littleton.

Hager Homestead, a 55plus cohousing community, recently received approval from the town of Littleton to start construction.

Located on King Street in downtown, Hager Homestead will sit on 12 acres of wetlands and meadow that will eventually be crisscrossed with walking trails. The housing will consist of 24 moderately sized units.

It will include a 4,000square-foot common house equipped with a gym, large kitchen and dining area available for all residents to use — a key feature of the Danishinspired housing arrangement.

Although popular in northern Europe, there are just over 100 cohousing communities in the U.S., and few are explicitly designated for seniors. Hager Homestead will be the first such cohousing development in New England.

Twelve units already have been presold, and those future residents have already become friends. Since the pandemic started, they have kept up their socialization via Zoom gatherings and occasional socially distanced outdoor get-togethers and hikes.

A shared commitment constitutes a key cohousing component.

Rather than a condo association run by a board of directors, this cohousing arrangement employs a unique style of self-governance, called sociocracy. With sociocracy, there’s no hierarchy, with decisions made only after hearing each resident’s opinion.

Luckily for Hager Homestead, Littleton already had enacted a senior residential zoning bylaw that aligned with this project.

But residents still found the regulatory process, including securing the necessary permits, a daunting task.

“There are so many institutional obstacles in the way of building this kind of housing. Zoning laws in most communities make it very difficult to do multifamily housing,” said Mayhew Seavey, a future resident who originally conceived of the project.

One of the contingencies to obtaining the permits stipulated that 10 of the 24 units had to be affordable at varying price points, which

Seavey said residents are happy to support, financially and otherwise.

He added that he plans to advocate for government financial assistance and an easier regulatory process for future senior development projects upon his retirement.

It says something about the state of Massachusetts’ housing-approval process that even this specific zoning-allowed project still encountered several procedural hurdles along the way.

Though this idealized housing development won’t appeal to every senior citizen, it does show what lengths it can take to fill this critical need.

Gov. Charlie Baker thought he’d removed some major housing-construction obstacles in the $626 million jobs bill he signed last week, which lowered a community’s zoning-change threshold from two-thirds to a simple majority. But the Legislature’s subsequent passage of climate-change legislation included construction-killing language that would allow municipalities to update their building codes to require new construction be “net-zero,” meaning the total amount of energy used by a building on an annual basis must equal the amount of renewable energy created on the site.

That’s a costly requirement that will curb — not create — desperately needed residential development.

We urge lawmakers in the new legislative session to work with the governor to find an inventive compromise solution to this constructionclimate conundrum.