An enterprising town employee has discovered that there are hundreds more units of affordable housing in Plymouth than previously reported.
Town Manager Derek Brindisi told the Select Board this week that the employee’s audit of the town’s housing stock identified 588 affordable housing units that were never submitted to the state for consideration. That’s nearly 50 percent more than previously reported. It’s unclear why they were not already accounted for.
The finding matters because if a community’s stock of housing considered affordable – meaning it falls within certain income guidelines – is below 10 percent, it is subject to the Chapter 40b law. That allows developers to bypass most local zoning rules if at least 25 percent of units in a project are categorized as affordable.
Currently, the state’s inventory of subsidized housing shows that just 4.88 percent of Plymouth’s housing meets the criteria for affordable.
Brindisi said the town has submitted the 588 units for consideration. If the state signs off on the number, that will bring Plymouth’s total count of affordable housing units to 1,842, or 6.56 percent of the total housing stock. A decision is expected within several weeks.
With hundreds of units of affordable housing planned or under construction, that puts the 10 percent goal within reach, he said.
“Everybody kind of thought it was elusive,” Ed Bradley, chair of the Community Preservation Committee, said of the 10 percent threshold. The committee makes recommendations on many of the town’s affordable housing projects.
If Claremont Companies builds 300 affordable units at Colony Place as planned and Pulte Homes builds 38 affordable units on Hedges Road, Plymouth’s count of affordable housing units would rise to 2,180, increasing the percentage of affordable housing units to 7.8 percent, Brindisi told the Select Board.
The Redbrook development in South Plymouth is planning another 144 units of affordable housing, Brindisi said. That would bring the total to 2,324 or 8.3 percent of the total housing stock.
And with the addition of approximately 375 affordable housing units planned for Cordage Park, Brindisi said, the town would get even closer to the 10 percent mark.
“The silver lining in all this is that we are getting very close to the 10 percent goal and once that is achieved, we can be very targeted as to the types of affordable housing projects we want here in town,” he said.
Select Board members appeared surprised by the discovery, and Brindisi did not explain why nearly 600 homes were not accounted for until now.
“The individual who discovered that is obviously worth their weight in gold,” Select Board member John Mahoney told Brindisi on Tuesday night.
That individual is Kristin Ford, recently hired coordinator for the Community Preservation Committee. With the assistance of the town’s planning department, she conducted an audit of Plymouth’s subsidized housing.
Describing Ford as a self-starter, Mahoney told the Independent she took the initiative to cross-reference Plymouth’s inventory of affordable housing units with the state’s database.
“This was just a complete unacceptable breakdown that has to be rectified and not allowed to occur again,” Mahoney said of the oversight.
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org.