Itty Bitty Developments Suck Municipalities Dry

Like every summer, driving around town I’ve noticed a startling increase in building projects. One project, not yet in the build stage, will gain more visibility over the next few weeks and months as the developer, The Hanover Company, appears before various boards in town working on due diligence.

The Lodge at Ames Pond is coming to Tewksbury, and planning to bring 364 rental units in a three phase building process. Of those 364 units, plans designate 25% of the units as affordable with 49% of the units as 1 bedroom, 40% as 2 bedrooms and 11% as 3 bedrooms.

The project, still in relative early stages of approval, scares the heck out of lots of residents, particularly parents worried about the already overburdened school system. I had to take a closer look at Tewksbury’s 40B situation to sort out whether or not this enormous rental housing project makes sense.

Surprisingly, it does.

I’m no fan of Chapter 40B, which effectively hogties communities trying to manage growth, when the community possesses a housing base less than ten percent of which is categorized as “affordable.”

With 498 units of affordable housing in Tewksbury, the town stands at about 4.9%. Surrounding towns fare better than we do with Billerica at 6.1%, Chelmsford at 5.8%, Dracut at 5.5%, and Wilmington near 9%. Andover has already met its 10% commitment.

And yet, residents surely know that the Town has a “higher percentage of condominiums and apartments than can be found in most towns nearby,” as the Tewksbury Affordable Housing Plan cites in the Comprehensive Needs Assessment portion.

So, why the contradiction? Poor planning seems like the easy, and obvious, answer. The town has allowed many smaller sized developments offering few affordable housing units compared to the number of units being built. Over the next 1-2 years, according to the Affordable Housing Plan, the town will see eight projects built ranging in size from one to 60 units including the first phase of the Lodge at Ames Hill (again, these are projections). These eight projects will build 222 units but only give the town 76 units designated affordable contributing to the 10% required by 40B.

The town needs 77 units in order to have the right to refuse dubious developments for one year, a provision available to towns not yet at the 10% requirement. When a Zoning Board of Appeals rejects a developer’s project the developer may appeal that decision to the State Housing Appeals Committee (HAC). Of the 415 appeals that board heard from 1970 -2002 , 45% of the cases were withdrawn, dismissed or settled, 24% of the cases were negotiated between the town and the developer and 31% were decided by the HAC. Of that 31%, 84% ruled in favor of the developer and only 16% for the town. Clearly, towns are at a disadvantage with developers under the 40B law.

But, back to those eight near term projects. Almost all of them are ownership, or condominium, developments requiring up to 25% of affordable housing units as part of the development. When building small 16 unit projects that means only four count toward Tewksbury’s 10%.

The problem is that the projects, and affordable units, are coming piecemeal. And it gets worse.

“As Tewksbury continues to approve market rate homes in conventional subdivisions and cluster developments, the town accrues an unmet liability for 40B units,” states the Affordable Housing Plan mentioned earlier. Current estimates indicate that the town needs an additional 690 affordable units. According to a Northern Middlesex Council of Governments study Tewksbury would have to create a whopping 2761 additional homes to obtain 690 units under the 25% allotment.

However, all rental units count toward the elusive 10% of total housing stock. Thus, a large development like that planned for Ames Hill, offers 364 units, a big dent in that 690 unit goal, and perhaps presents less stress for our schools.

Renter occupied housing in Tewksbury averages 2.08 people per household versus the owner occupied households which average 2.9 people. Ames’ projections on the saturation level of children that would move into the Lodge seem grossly underestimated with only 49 children in the entire 364 complex. The developer contends that fifty percent of those children will be high school aged and the other 50 percent will be elementary and middle school aged.

That said, the project currently plans for a three phase managed building process over three years, with the first year only opening 34 units. Thus, the pain of a sudden influx of students will take a little longer to feel, and perhaps give the town more time to repair school budgets and hire teachers.

Keep an eye out for 40B developments as you drive around town. Accepting a development like the Lodge at Ames Hill, ignoring for the moment the legitimate cries of “Not In My Backyard” allows Tewksbury to claim a chunk of that 10% and returns some autonomy to town going forward in the near term.