NAHANT — The people of Nahant gathered at Town Hall Wednesday evening for the Nahant Housing Production Plan (HPP) Sub-Committee and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) public forum on affordable housing.
The forum included a presentation from John Cruz, senior housing and land use planner at MAPC, on what the housing production plan should look like in Nahant. After the presentation there was an interactive session where attendees could write their thoughts, ideas, and feedback.
“We’re here to kind of walk the town through this process of trying to comply with all the stuff that we need to and do all the things that we need to as a society that has room for different types of folks, and do it in a way that’s affordable for everyone,” Cruz said.
A housing production plan is for towns and cities in Massachusetts to “identify what their needs are as far as housing goes,” he said. Part of the housing production plan for Nahant is making sure the town complies with statewide Chapter 40B and Section 3A zoning requirements.
Another part of the plan is performing a “comprehensive housing needs assessment.”
“We took a really deep dive into all of the different things that are at the market level so we could have a conversation about them,” Cruz said.
The purpose of this forum, Cruz said, is for the Sub-Committee to align the goals of Nahanters with policy goals, while gathering feedback.
The housing needs assessment presentation from Cruz was split into three sections: community demographics, housing stock, and housing market plus affordability.
Cruz’s presentation divided affordable housing into two categories: “‘Lowercase a’ affordable housing” and “‘Uppercase A’ affordable housing.”
“Lowercase a” affordable housing tends to be affordable in the marketplace, meaning it costs 30 percent or less of household income, due to size, age, or other characteristics. This kind of affordable housing is not protected by deed restrictions or other mechanisms, so these homes may become unaffordable at any time depending on investment, the market, and other factors.
“Uppercase A” affordable housing is deed-restricted Affordable Housing, often spelled with a capital “A” and “H,” that is legally required to cost no more than 30 percent of a household’s income and only be made available to income-eligible households.
Since 2015, the amount of medium and high-income housing has grown, he said.
“What we’re watching is slowly, in real time … is that more and more disadvantaged communities, communities that are working class, middle class folks, that maybe would have been able to afford to buy here 30 or 40 years ago are likely not even going to be able to afford to live here,” Cruz said.
The average household size in Nahant is “roughly two people,” he said.
“There’s a lot of context here in regards to how are we utilizing this space, and are we actually putting ourselves in a position to provide housing for people that need it,” Cruz said of the average household size data.
The housing needs assessment data also found that there are significantly fewer families with children living in Nahant compared to neighboring communities.
“In Nahant we only have 292 households with children, which is not a lot,” Cruz said.
He added that 351 households in town have someone with a disability.
“This is another vulnerable population, in addition to children, that we need to consider when we are thinking about housing needs,” Cruz said.
A graph showing the data behind cost-burdened households in Nahant and neighboring communities was presented as well.
“We can see that in Nahant it’s pretty substantial,” Cruz said. “It’s close to 40 percent of households are spending at least 30 percent of their income before taxes get taken out on rent.”
After the presentation, attendees participated in the interactive part of the forum. They used sticky notes on boards that had prompts on how Nahant can meet the needs of the public and what kind of housing the town should have.
Michelle Capano, chair of the HPP Sub-Committee, said the end goal of this entire endeavor is to develop a plan that the sub-committee “can present to the board of selectmen and to town that says, ‘Here’s what our recommendations are for affordable housing.’”
This will include the number of units, proposed locations, visions of what the buildings should look like, and more.
“[We want to] get that endorsement from the town so we can move forward with a build potentially, or do some arrangement with a developer that wants to come in and buy a piece of land and develop it for affordable housing,” Capano said.
