Share This Article
After approximately a year of working its way through town boards and committees, the Sudbury Select Board voted to approve a new Housing Production Plan on June 10. (Page 139)
The Housing Production Plan describes itself as a fairly straightforward planning document “A Housing Production Plan is a planning document that helps local decision-makers respond to local housing needs and can help communities shape the location and type of future housing development. It also influences the location, type, and pace of affordable housing development. This plan emphasizes increasing Sudbury’s year-round market rate and affordable housing options to meet local and regional needs.”
The four five-year goals in the plan include:
- Meet Mixed Housing Needs
- Promote Housing in Mixed-Use Locations, Preserve Affordable Homes, and Ensure Transportation Access
- Greening Homes
- Increase the number of income qualified units to ten percent of the Town’s year-round housing stock
The plan goes on to outline strategies for achieving those goals, and provides other data pertaining to the state of Sudbury’s housing inventory.
The Sudbury Planning Board has already voted unanimously to approve the Housing Production Plan, though it shared some reservations about facets of the plan. A memo from Adam Burney, Sudbury’s Director of Planning and Community Development, told the Select Board:
“During its review the Planning Board expressed that there are parts of the HPP that it has reservations about, that need to be carefully thought out in implementation, and/or that may require significant public involvement to fine tune the approach and ensure that the final outcome has broad public support. Even having these feelings, the Planning Board felt that having an additional document that buttresses the Master Plan and provides a menu of strategies for consideration, as the Town continues to move forward in its efforts to expand the availability of affordable housing in Sudbury, is an important step. This position is informed by the fact that, similar to the Master Plan, the HPP is a nonbinding guidance document that can be used for the support of grant applications, a starting point for policy discussions, a basis to propose/refine projects or any combination.”
The Select Board discussed the Housing Production Plan at length in a prior meeting, but held off on a vote to allow new member Radha Gargeya to catch up on meeting recordings and do a deeper dive into the plan. The board opted to have further deliberation on June 10, which largely covered the same ground as prior discussions.
The final vote was 4-1 in favor, which concluded an exhaustive process that engaged multiple boards and committees, gathered community feedback, and went through multiple revisions based on specific feedback provided along the way.
