Swampscott Still Faces Affordable Housing Crunch, 40B Challenges

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — Even as the pending Elm Place Project next to the commuter rail station is set to add 114 units toward what Swampscott can count as its "affordable housing" inventory, there remains a significant gap for the town to get to the 10 percent threshold necessary to avoid similar developments from using the state's 40B exceptions to bypass many local zoning bylaws and town control over where and when they can be built.

While WynnCompanies worked diligently with the town for 18 months in an extended zoning process on Elm Place, and made enough alterations to the original development proposal to ultimately gain a somewhat-reluctant acceptance of the project form the Zoning Board of Appeals and other town leaders in June, the town will remain open to far less amenable bids until it reaches that 10 percent affordable housing threshold.

Forty-two percent of the Elm Place units will be rented at "affordable" market rates with all 114 units counting toward the town's inventory of affordable housing. At 3.7 percent prior to the project, the town will still below the state's 10 percent threshold at about 6 percent.

"I think we've got to get busy," Swampscott Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald said at Wednesday's Select Board meeting. "We've talked a lot about affordable housing. We need to start building and we need to start driving some of the projects.

"We work with too many adverse developers. And we're going to continue to work with too many adverse developers unless we get a handle on how we become leaders in driving the friendly affordable housing projects that make sense for Swampscott."

In January, the Select Board incredulously sat through a proposal where a developer looked to push forward an audacious 160-unit complex on property on a rocky, 4.5-acre parcel on Archer Streetm, which would have taken up about 25 percent of the town's remaining undeveloped land.

MassHousing denied that bid from moving forward under the 40B statute, and the Select Board this week signed a deed to buy land around the Archer Street site and keep it undeveloped as conservancy land.

The ongoing affordable housing inventory gap once again renewed calls for a long-discussed "land-use summit" to determine a clear pathway to that 10 percent mark.

"What are our values as a community?" Fitzgerald said at Wednesday night's Select Board meeting. "Let's think about ways that we get beyond the rhetoric with affordable housing. Put some of these financial resources toward the priorities that I believe we all share.

"It's called putting your money where your mouth is," Select Board member David Grishman responded.

Select Board member MaryEllen Fletcher called for more education on what, exactly, affordable housing means in a town like Swampscott and why it's so important.

"We need that land-use board summit to really kind of think about where does it make most sense," Fitzgerald said. "Where does an affordable housing investment make sense for a number of neighborhoods that have yet to share in the responsibility for building a more inclusive and more affordable housing option for Swampscott?

"It can't just be a neighborhood that's behind the tracks. Or neighborhoods that chronically and historically have had to bear the burden of some of these developments."

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