Brookline Housing Production Plan
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brookline housing production plan july 2016 brookline housing production plan july 2016 Prepared for: Brookline Housing Production Plan Working Group Roger Blood, Chair, Housing Advisory Board Linda Hamlin, Chair, Planning Board William Madsen Hardy, Housing Advisory Board Steven Heikin, Planning Board Alison Steinfeld, Director, Department of Planning and Community Development Joseph Viola, Assistant Director for Community Planning Virginia Bullock, Senior Housing Planner Prepared by: RKG Associates, Inc. Boston, Massachusetts In association with JM Goldson Metropolitan Area Planning Council Approved by the Board of Selectmen: September 27, 2016 Approved by the Planning Board: September 21, 2016 Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background .................................................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Why a Housing Production Plan? ............................................................................................................ 2 1.3 Community Participation .......................................................................................................................... 4 1.4 About the Use of Census Data .................................................................................................................. 8 1.5 Geographic Units ........................................................................................................................................ 9 2 HOUSING NEEDS ........................................................................................................................... 15 2.1 Key Findings .............................................................................................................................................. 15 2.2 Brookline Population Characteristics and Trends ................................................................................ 18 2.3 Households ................................................................................................................................................ 23 2.4 Housing Characteristics and Trends ...................................................................................................... 27 2.5 Housing Production in Brookline ........................................................................................................... 35 2.6 Housing Affordability .............................................................................................................................. 39 2.7 Issues Affecting Affordable Housing Production in Brookline .......................................................... 48 3 HOUSING GOALS .......................................................................................................................... 81 3.1 Qualitative Goals ...................................................................................................................................... 81 3.2 Numerical Goals ....................................................................................................................................... 83 4 HOUSING STRATEGIES ............................................................................................................... 85 4.1 Regulatory Strategies ................................................................................................................................ 86 4.2 Resource Allocation Strategies ................................................................................................................ 87 4.3 Education and Advocacy Strategies ....................................................................................................... 87 4.4 Local Policy and Planning Strategies ..................................................................................................... 88 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................................. 89 Appendix A. Glossary ............................................................................................................................................. 89 Appendix B. HUD/Chapter 40B Income Limits (2016) ....................................................................................... 95 Appendix C. Affirmative Fair Housing Marketing Plan Key Review Points .................................................. 97 Appendix D. Focus Group Participants .............................................................................................................. 103 Appendix E. Onsite Housing Production under Brookline’s Inclusionary Zoning Bylaw .......................... 105 Appendix F. FY 2017 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Budget ............................................ 107 INTRODUCTION 1 1 Introduction 1.1 Background When Brookline completed a ten-year Comprehensive Plan update in 2005, community leaders anticipated that by 2015, the Town would have increased its supply of affordable housing at a rate of about 25 units per year. The preferred strategy for doing so called for converting existing market-rate units when possible, thereby minimizing the impact of new growth on Brookline’s well-established, largely built-out neighborhoods. At the time, Brookline had 2,062 low- and moderate-income housing units on the Subsidized Housing Inventory (SHI), or 7.6 percent of the town’s Census 2000 year-round housing stock. The “deficit,” or number of units needed to reach the Chapter 40B 10 percent statutory minimum, was 560 units. In 2005, most of the low- and moderate-income housing in Brookline was over fifteen years old, for very few affordable units had been created since 1980. Today, Brookline has 2,254 low- and moderate-income housing units on the SHI. The 10 percent shortfall has narrowed to 367 units. Despite all of the political tension about housing in Brookline, the Town has moved forward with creating more affordable housing since the Comprehensive Plan was adopted by the Planning Board and Board of Selectmen in 2004- 2005. Some examples of post-Comprehensive Plan housing production in Brookline include: St. Aidan’s, a mixed rental and homeownership development with thirty-five low- and moderate-income housing units at the former St. Aidan’s Catholic Church property. Olmsted Hill, a development with twelve Chapter 40B-eligible affordable units on land formerly owned by the Town. 86 Dummer Street, with thirty-two affordable units developed, owned, and managed by the Brookline Housing Authority (BHA). In addition, the Brookline Board of Selectmen just agreed (June 28, 2016) to support a plan for sixty-four affordable units of senior housing on the Kehillath Israel (KI) property at 384 Harvard Street. The developer is Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly (JCHE). The KI project would be JCHE’s first development in Brookline. Remarkably, about the same number of low- and moderate-income households live in Brookline today as the town had ten years ago. However, despite Brookline’s gain of 353 affordable units, the town remains unaffordable to most of its lower-income residents as well 2 BROOKLINE HOUSING PRODUCTION PLAN 2016 as many with higher incomes, too. In fact, the percentage of unaffordably housed residents – those spending more of their income on housing than they can really afford – has increased. The gap between Brookline’s market-rate housing and the prices that lower-income residents can afford has widened considerably. Middle-income households are hard-pressed to find housing they can afford, too. Brookline is a prestigious, distinctive, and very pretty town, defined by a THE CONTINUED EROSION OF rolling landscape that encompasses HOUSING AFFORDABILITY seven drumlin hills. It offers close-in THREATENS THE ATTAINMENT OF access to Boston and Cambridge, excellent public schools, great services, BROOKLINE’S COMPREHENSIVE PLAN walkable urban villages, private GOALS, NOTABLY MAINTAINING THE estates, and open space. People want to TOWN’S COMMITMENT TO live there, and they will spend as much POPULATION DIVERSITY. as they possibly can to find a home or an apartment within reach. For families, the local schools appear to be a significant factor in relocation to Brookline. Since the town’s housing supply falls far short of demand, the price of entry into Brookline’s housing market has skyrocketed. The continued erosion of housing affordability threatens the attainment of the most basic Comprehensive Plan goals, notably maintaining the town’s commitment to population diversity. Brookline’s very expensive land and building costs present significant challenges to creating affordably priced housing. While the Town has a significant amount of land that is currently zoned for multifamily housing and an abundant multifamily housing stock, there are few remaining undeveloped sites to accommodate new mixed-income housing. For the developable land that remains, existing zoning often does not provide enough incentive to encourage housing production. As a result, several developers have pursued Chapter 40B comprehensive permits in order to bypass town requirements, take advantage of Brookline’s strong housing market, and create enough units to withstand a lengthy appeals process and still have a financeable project. The proposals of some Chapter 40B developers greatly exceed what’s allowable under zoning.