Affordable housing within reason
Critics will tell you most people in Massachusetts favor affordable housing — just not in their neighborhood.
That NIMBYISM that paved the way for the passage of Chapter 40B, the state’s affordable housing law.
Enacted in 1969, 40B allows local zoning boards of appeals to approve affordable housing developments under flexible rules if at least 20-25% of the units have long-term affordability restrictions.
No other municipal authority, including select boards or city councils, can exert any direct influence in these cases beyond offering opinions on how such a project would impact their community.
That doesn’t mean affordable-housing developers simply get carte blanche to build whatever size project they want, or that a community has no say in a project’s ultimate approval or alteration.
Dracut currently faces an affordable-housing situation where the size of the development — and how it came to be — concerns town officials and residents alike.
Last week, before a packed house at Town Hall, both groups aired their misgivings over a proposed 300-unit Murphy’s Farm housing development in East Dracut.
The plan presented by Andover-based developer O’brien Homes includes 1,200 bedrooms — four bedrooms per unit — on 50 acres.
This wasn’t the developer’s initial plan for this parcel.
In 2017, O’brienhomes was granted a permit for a singlefamily home subdivision on the same property. As recently as 2019, an Engineering Department document shows the project was in progress. Apparently, though the land had been cleared, the project was abandoned.
Now, instead of about two dozen single-family homes spread over those 50 acres, the application for this revised development states that these 300, four-bedroom units, comprising 47 residential buildings, will be a mix of flats and townhouses, along with two clubhouses.
Of the 300 units, 75 — 25% — would be designated as affordable, which meets Chapter 40B requirements.
By comparison, Toll Brothers plans to build a 100-unit, high- end, age-restricted condominium development on 56 acres of the former Tyngsboro Country Club property.
Though admittedly apples and oranges, that density difference plays into Dracut’s concerns about this project’s scale and effect on town services, a factor addressed by Alison Manugian, the town’s economic development director.
In a letter responding to this affordable-housing application, Manugian stated: “All of the Dracut Public Schools are near their capacity currently,” she wrote. “The additional student enrollment anticipated from 1200 new bedrooms could drive the need for an additional elementary school or significant expansion of the Greenmont School. In addition to the tremendous cost for taxpayers, the timing of such work is of concern.”
Dracut’s in the early stages of working with the Massachusetts School Building Authority about plans for the Campbell Elementary School, and has just submitted a statement of interest for work on the Greenmont School. Working through the complex MSBA process can take years, and requires approval from both voters and Townmeeting to fund the project.
Manugian added the municipal side of town government would also feel the impact of such a development.
“Of greatest concern to the community is the need to rapidly and dramatically expand the capacity of many Town of Dracut services. Police and Fire capacity and response times should be considered in the context of this development. A large development on the very edge of town may be more difficult to serve than a similar one nearer to the headquarters.”
This proposed cluster of housing units lies on the Methuen line, in the same Wheeler Road/ Wheeler Street neighborhood where last year that city raised serious concerns about traffic coming from Brox Industries.
The goal of Chapter 40B — to encourage the production of affordable housing in all cities and towns throughout the state — is an admirable one.
And according to the Department of Housing and Community Development, as of December 2020, Dracut had just 5.2% in subsidized housing inventory, well below the state’s 10% threshold.
The commonwealth’s lack of affordable housing already weighs on businesses’ ability to fill job openings, as young workers especially opt to move elsewhere.
However, each affordable housing application should be judged on its own merits.
Dracut’s Zoning Board of Appeals can attach conditions relative to the impact a project of this scope would have on East Dracut in particular and the town as a whole.
As Selectman Tony Archinski stated during that Town Hall discussion, without affordable housing, the town’s younger residents will be forced to move away.
“Everyone wants to provide affordable housing,” he said. “The issue here is going from 22 single-family homes to 300 homes. “That math doesn’t work.” Just as that single-family housing plan didn’t work for O’brien Homes, neither does this 300-condominium village work for Dracut.
We urge both sides to find a compromise that works for both the town and developer.