Swampscott Looks To Tackle Daunting Affordable Housing Challenges

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — Rising property costs and high interest rates, low inventory and limited room for production in a 1.7-square-mile town, and an aging population were among the daunting challenges provided in the Swampscott Housing Production Plan presented to the Select Board on Wednesday night.

Director of Community and Economic Development Marzie Galazka presented the five-year strategic plan to the Select Board that calls for exploring the development of public property into affordable housing, partnerships with private developers on projects, supporting seniors to remain in their own homes and supporting all efforts to increase housing stock.

"We have a great need for rental housing," Galazka summarized, "obviously, affordable rental housing, for individuals that fall below 50 percent of area median income."

While Swampscott has gained some ground on the state's threshold of at least 10 percent affordable housing — below which the town is subject to 40B developments that are exempt from many zoning regulations — it still has a ways to go.

The Westcott (formerly Elm Place) development near the commuter rail station will count 114 units toward the stock — raising it from from 3.9 percent of all housing to 5.8 percent — even though only 40 of the units are technically considered "affordable," and the new veterans affordable housing planned for the recently acquired Pine Street location should boost the number to about 6.4 percent.

"It's not 10 percent — it's not above that — but is certainly a long way from where we started," Grishman noted. "And we are making considerable progress."

But Select Board member Doug Thompson said with the report suggesting that more than 30 percent of the town's population will be over 65 years old by 2030, there are ominous hurdles ahead.

"That just stopped me cold," he said. "That is just a massive, massive shift. ... It just adds emphasis to what we're doing for our over-65 crowd and what we're doing to meet that need.

"Talking about seriously subsidized housing, what we're doing on Pine Street, we need to be thinking about lot more of this to meet the needs of people who are here today. So we need Pine Street. We need the (redeveloped) Glover, maybe with even more affordable housing than we had slated there. Same thing with Vinnin (Square redevelopment). ... To inch up from 5.8 to 6.4, then to get to 10 (percent affordable housing), we're going to need to dig deep and really reconsider some things."

Swampscott did recently at the annual town meeting pass the MBTA zoning requirements for by-right multi-family housing near the train station — though those changes largely did not include the more residential sections of the town — and expanded accessory-dwelling unit housing allowances.

But Select Board member Katie Phelan said the town may need to get more aggressive in allowing, and even fostering, multi-family housing developments across the town to meet growing needs.

"We're already living on top of each other in a lot of parts of town," Phelan said. "But I think there are lots that could benefit from multi-family options that right now are just constrained from a zoning perspective."

The vote on accepting the plan was delayed until the next meeting so that Select Board members and the public could have additional time to review it and minor edits could be made before it is formally adopted.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached @Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)