At Monday night's Beverly City Council meeting, Planning Director Aaron Clausen shared a PowerPoint presentation with needs assessment facts and figures related to housing. The overwhelming conclusion the numbers pointed to was that many folks are in need of housing that's more affordable and will not leave them cost burdened.
"There's a need to mitigate the increasing housing costs in the entire commonwealth," Clausen pointed out. "There's also a concern from communities about development impacts of that new housing."
Clausen said the core recommendation that came out of the Beverly Homeless Task Force process is that, not only is there a regional need, but there's a strong regional need to develop and create new affordable housing for individuals and families who are currently homeless or are in danger of becoming homeless.
As such, a memorandum of understanding has been signed by officials from both Peabody and Salem to commit to meeting some targets in creating affordable housing regionally.
"It's not something the City of Beverly can address on its own," he said. "And, hopefully, the Town of Danvers, at one point, will be a part of this."
Each of the communities has committed to creating 25 units over the next five years for families that are homeless or in danger of becoming homeless, and another 15 for individuals.
"It's a small number when you look at what the need is, but it's a commitment that's unprecedented," he said. "There's nothing like this that's been done in a region within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And it's a commitment that we take with great seriousness."
Clausen explained the idea of a smart growth overlay district (40R) is to incentivize communities to develop housing units in locations where there's access to public transportation, infrastructure and facilities to support that growth.
State support is available for these types of projects, including funding for children entering the school systems, but that money is not guaranteed to be there for all eternity.
"There's always the potential that we could end up bearing more of the cost than we hope, and I couldn't stand here and tell you that that would never come to pass," said Mayor Michael P. Cahill. "Collectively, we'll work to make sure that the state does meet the 40S obligations that it committed to in principle in practice."
In Beverly, a five-acre parcel at 108 Sohier Road is being eyed as a location for the 40R designation. This would allow residential multi-family units to be built on the site.
"The core objective here was to support affordable housing development," he said. "This is one of those projects that we know will provide 75 needed housing units for families."
The site has good access to major highways, is along an MBTA bus route and is in close proximity to both commuter rail lines, as well as Beverly Hospital and both Beverly High and Beverly Middle School.
"It's a site that is not only well served by transit, but it's also walkable and provides access to both job centers and schools, which is an important component of this," Clausen explained.
Andrew DeFranza, executive director of Harborlight Community Partners, said the 75 units of family housing will include a mix of two- and three-bedroom units, 60 of which will be set aside for folks below 60 percent annual medium income. The other 15 would be for folks who were formerly homeless, like those who are in the Family Promise program.
"Different kinds of folks who would be in this building, that we would be targeting or focused on ... you'd expect a lot of workers or folks that are making less than $60,000 a year," he said. "So think about our burgeoning restaurant industry, people that are working educating our young children, people that are taking care of our seniors as that population grows, people that manage our property, pour our coffee and, most importantly, pour our beer."
DeFranza said he is hopeful this will be a locally-driven process that will create homes for a lot of folks who are local and who want to stay in the area.
"We need a lot of people to make that happen," he said.
Given the number of units and bedrooms proposed for this new development, Cahill said the projected number of children that are likely to move into the district is about 116.
Regardless of the potential and unknown impacts the development could bring, several folks expressed their full support for the project.
Sue Gabriel, executive director of Beverly Bootstraps, said she is looking forward to having more affordable housing made available in the community.
"I am so very much in support of this as a resident, and I am so very much in support of this as the director of Beverly Bootstraps," she said. "We consistently see the issue of housing being an enormous, enormous issue for the folks that come to Beverly Bootstraps for services ... Our numbers in our food pantry are up again and I believe it has to do with the fact that the budget numbers are not working for the folks that are trying to live in this community."
Gabriel said even her employees are finding the cost of living in Beverly to be burdensome.
"Their salaries are not covering their rent, and that's really hard as an employer who's trying to do good stuff," she said. "I cannot recommend enough that we get more affordable housing into this community."
James Matz, a Victor Avenue resident who shared some very personal stories about himself and his son, who has been able to excel due to his Beverly Public Schools education, said he is also very much in support of the plan.
"Opportunity," he said. "If there's any way that we can bring more families into this great city and get them the opportunity to attend this school system, by god, let's do it."
©2017 Wicked Local North, Danvers, Mass. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
