Survey seeks feelings on affordable housing

WATERFORD — Town officials are developing a survey to gathering information and gauge residents’ feelings on affordable housing.

Abby Piersall, the town’s planning director, said the survey comes after prolonged discussions about the need for more housing options and equity in Waterford and statewide.

“This is sort of an extension of some of the conversations that have happened around those issues,” she said. “From a procedural perspective, it is the beginning of Waterford’s response to state requirements — that the town took to create policy to address affordable housing issues.”

Piersall said the survey goes beyond 8-30g, a state statue that allows developers to bypass local zoning laws if the municipality does not have a certain amount of housing that is considered affordable.

“This is meant to be a proactive look at what threshold Waterford has for talking about the issue, for integrating housing options that may be different from what we’ve traditionally seen into our neighborhoods, into mixed-use areas,” she said. “How do we support a range of options for folks going forward?”

Piersall said the Planning and Zoning Commission began the effort more than a year ago, but has been stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic and some larger development applications. She said the commission hired a consulting firm for guidance on the type of questions to include in the survey.

According to the survey, which is still being developed, questions will range from residency to the cost of housing and the participants’ thoughts on how and if affordability should be addressed by the town.

Piersall said the survey will gather insight from residents on how to develop future housing policy.

During a meeting last week, Piersall said members of the Planning and Zoning commission provided feedback on the survey before it’s sent to the public in the coming weeks.

“We wanted to make sure they were good with the content before it goes out,” she said, noting the consultant and others have also provided feedback along the way.

Piersall said Waterford has not been inundated with 8-30g applications, like other towns have been , but did receive an application where a developer wanted to convert a former nursing home on Rope Ferry Road into apartments — which was approved and is now under construction.

“We hear conversation about it, periodically, from developers who are interested and sort of floating ideas,” she said. “They’re looking for that kind of density. Certainly, developers have approached us on it, but we’ve only had the one application in the five years that I’ve been here.”

Piersall said about 4.8 percent of Waterford’s housing falls under the definition of affordable. Municipalities need 10 percent of housing qualify as affordable to be exempt from 8-30g, but can get moratoriums if enough housing development occurs within a certain period of time.

Piersall said the survey is also intended to let residents know “affordable housing is so much more than a single state requirement or 8-30g.”

“This is about our community and who gets access and who can stay and who can afford to grow up here and then stay here,” she said. “It’s really meant to be a conversation about how we can accommodate choice in housing, not how can we meet the threshold.”

Based on the survey feedback, Piersall said the commission and other agencies will develop a plan to address housing.

“(I) look at this as an equity and choice issues, and as a proactive attempt to address what very real challenges folks are having and will continue to have, I think, for some time to come,” she said. “We’re really just trying to put the supports in place to enable that conversation to happen so that the development will take place in a welcoming and proactive manner.”