LYNN — The city is developing a five-year plan to increase its affordable housing stock.
Coined Lynn Housing for All: A plan for Inclusive Growth, the document would meet all of the requirements of a Housing Production Plan (HPP), a proactive strategy for planning and developing affordable housing that would have to be approved by the state Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD).
A housing production plan is typically undertaken by communities that have less than 10 percent of its units designated as affordable, which is used to develop strategies for housing production aimed at meeting that state requirement under Chapter 40B.
Since the city has met that threshold, with 12.5 percent of its units considered affordable by the state’s Subsidized Housing Inventory, the plan being developed by Lynn Housing Authority & Neighborhood Development (LHAND) and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) is not a requirement.
“We’ve never had to be concerned over an official housing production plan (before),” said Jeff Weeden, LHAND’s planning and development manager. “We felt as though with the new development coming, we wanted to be proactive and make sure we’re keeping pace with both the market-rate and affordable units. We wanted to make sure we’re fulfilling the needs of the community.”
According to the MAPC website, housing production plans don’t only strategize ways to produce affordable housing. They also help municipalities better understand local housing need and demand, along with development constraints and opportunities.
Although the city doesn’t have a housing production plan, a comprehensive market analysis, the Lynn Housing Study, was completed by LHAND in 2016. But much of that report, based on data from 2015 numbers or collected from the 2010 census is outdated, prompting the need for new research, Weeden said.
City officials also recognized that housing and affordable housing needs in Lynn are unmet, according to a one-page summary of the scope of work provided by Weeden.
The plan would include data on how many people in the city are cost-burdened, or those who pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent, along with strategies on how to combat that trend, Weeden said.
For instance, data collected at the City Summit last Saturday, which served as a kickoff for the community planning process, showed that many people can’t afford available housing options in Lynn. Even with new developments, rents are steadily rising, Weeden said.
Although there’s been significant data collection already, the official “community-driven” planning process will kick off in January. It will consist of three public forums next year, along with advisory committee and stakeholder conversations. The first public forum is scheduled for Jan. 28.
“As the city continues to grow and develop along the waterfront and in the downtown, we want to make sure we have the right plan that captures the broad range of housing needs facing the city,” said Mayor Thomas M. McGee in a statement.
“There are many residents that are passionate about the city’s future developments because they are already burdened by the rising housing costs and we need to hear from them. We need an inclusive process for a strategy to develop without displacement, and we now have the resources and expertise to do just that,” he said.
Along with seeking community input, meetings will be focused on taking a deep dive into the city’s zoning bylaws, by conducting a zoning audit to see what’s in place that may hinder growth and development, Weeden said.
Weeden said the goal is to determine what the city’s housing production needs are. Available data shows there’s a need for both market-rate and affordable housing units. Inclusionary zoning and the development of an affordable housing trust fund are some tools aimed at producing more low-income housing that the plan could recommend to city officials.
“There’s always a need for affordable,” Weeden said. “We understand the advocates loud and clear. We understand the problem, but we don’t know the exact numbers, what we’re shooting for or looking for. We think this plan is going to give us a good idea of what’s needed. We don’t want to take anything off the table. That being said, we don’t want to stymie any development either, (or) make it infeasible for a developer to come in and develop. We want to make sure we do it right.”
The Housing Production Plan, which could cost up to $70,000, is being paid for by a two-year, $45,000 grant from the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs; $5,000 from a leftover grant from another LHAND initiative with the MAPC; and technical assistance funding from the MAPC.
The planning process is expected to take about a year to complete. The final document has to be adopted by the City Council and Planning Board before it can be approved by the state.