I want to thank Mary Sirum for her recent column on affordable housing (“Beware the Impact of More Affordable Housing,” August 3). We haven’t had a real discussion on this topic in Greenfield. What we have had are comments on zoning and assumptions about what impact different types of housing would have on different parts of the city.
As far as I know, we have never had a plan for residential development, but have left it to the market to determine the type and location of the apartments.
I agree that we need a strong planning process and am happy to say we will have that opportunity soon. The City of Greenfield will present the results of a housing study on September 12 (meeting details not yet available) which I hope will lead to a comprehensive discussion of this issue.
Greenfield needs about 600 more housing units. This is according to a study by the UMass Donahue Institute, which says Franklin County needs about 2,500 units. Since Greenfield is home to about a quarter of the county’s population, about a quarter of the needed units should be built here.
A significant portion of that housing should be “affordable,” according to an annual study conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that scales to household size. A household of five people needs more income than a household of one or two people. The department’s information provides insight into the level of income a household must have to afford a reasonable lifestyle in our region.
A key assumption is that households should not spend more than 30% of their income on rent/mortgage and utilities such as heating and electricity. If you spend more than 30% of your income on these things, you are “cost burdened.”
High-cost-of-living households have a roof over their heads, but often pay 50% or more of their monthly income for housing. They often don’t have enough money for clothing, food, or healthcare, let alone eating out. This hurts our local businesses. It drives up healthcare costs because people wait until an illness gets very bad before seeking treatment. And of course, they could become homeless.
The people who are cost-burdened include, as you would expect, the very poor and those on low fixed incomes. They also include city workers, teachers, firefighters, store clerks, and other people you see on the street. They worry about gas prices and heating costs in the winter, food prices, and the cost of living. They are us.
We need to consider the infrastructure that new homes require. Our water and sewer lines are old and need to be upgraded to today’s standards. The parking study that the columnist mentioned is also critical. That study, which did not consider the Hope Street parking lot or the skate park because those were not available parking spaces, found that during peak times, 45% of parking spaces in Greenfield are unused.
45 percent of parking spaces are unused! Let’s look at the housing study and the parking study together and think about where we could build new housing. We could remove asphalt, but not trees. We could increase the number of housing units without removing a blade of grass.
People live in Greenfield for its rural and small-town qualities, but there are more than 100 private, taxable, vacant lots that are not zoned for farmland, pasture or forest. Could these be used for new homes – rentals, owner-occupied homes, co-ops and condos, some affordable under HUD guidelines, some market rate? We need all of it.
We need a thoughtful response to the housing crisis in Greenfield. Real estate prices are rising, both for rentals and for owner-occupied homes. Compared to Eastern Massachusetts, our expensive homes seem inexpensive.
There are speculators offering cash to sell them our homes so they can keep the homes off the market and wait for prices to rise. We have abandoned properties that should be renovated and put back on the market. We need to create housing that wasn’t there before, like the Wilsons project (now called Putnam).
We need it all, and sooner rather than later. Please bring your ideas to the discussion. And if you own one of those vacant lots or parking spaces, consider what options you have and how they fit into a housing plan that would benefit us all. All voices are needed to create a plan that works for all of us.
Susan Worgaftik lives in Greenfield and is the coordinator of Housing Greenfield, Greenfield’s housing organization.
