Overlay District Aims To Encourage Affordable Housing In Falmouth
Plans for the Mixed-Use Residential Commercial Overlay District have been finalized and the proposal is ready for Town Meeting on November 15, Falmouth Town Planner Thomas Bott said.
Mr. Bott briefed the zoning board of appeals on the plans for the overlay district at the board’s meeting last Thursday, September 23, summarizing its main features and function and also answering questions from the board in order to clarify the proposal prior to Town Meeting.
“This was an effort by a subcommittee of the planning board to create a bylaw to essentially create apartments in the Town of Falmouth,” Mr. Bott said. “But you can’t zone by ownership, you can’t do zoning that says ‘we want to build apartments.’ You have to build multifamily, and the option is [for] the developer [to choose] whether they’re going to do homeownership or rental.”
The difference between the choices is the affordable housing requirements attached: If a builder is constructing rental units, 25 percent must be affordable. If building for homeownership, 50 percent of the homes must be affordable. Mr. Bott explained that the onus behind this incentive was to underwrite the market costs of those affordable units.
“The dollars and cents typically involved in an affordable unit, the market doesn’t meet those. You typically see more 40Bs—and this is not a 40B, this is local development—but you typically see more 40Bs, as we’re seeing, when the market’s high, because in order to underwrite the cost of those affordable units, you’ve got to have a pretty robust market rate.”
As an overlay district, its implementation would not change the actual zoning in any of the Business-1, Business-2, or Business Redevelopment districts that it is over. It would, however, provide incentives for residential/commercial mixed-use developments by allowing for up to 20 units per acre by right. Allowing these types of developments by right would expedite the approval process and help further the goal of creating more affordable rental units as quickly as possible.
“As you can imagine, some of the parcels that are in B1, B2, and B3 aren’t very large parcels, so someone has to be particularly creative,” Mr. Bott said. “You’re not going to be seeing three-bedroom units and things like that, we anticipate they’re going to be smaller units. That was the genesis of the idea.”
Mr. Bott also warned against aiming strictly for the 10 percent subsidized housing goal, reminding the board that that target number is changing constantly.
“It’s a laudable goal, but that goal changes each time the census comes out and there’s a new count for how many housing units there are,” he said. “Our goal should be to try to create as many affordable units as we can, as quickly as we can because we need them.”
In fulfilling its mission to get these kinds of developments in the works as soon as possible, the planning board committee charged with laying out the overlay district plans also created design guidelines. Mr. Bott clarified that those guidelines are intended to be simply suggestions, not standards, but the board does have the authority to reject developments that go beyond the suggested guidelines. The guidelines, he said, are there to help make things quicker and easier for developers when it comes to the approval process.
The institution of the overlay district would apply to 12 different areas around Falmouth, with the exclusion of certain districts that were deemed unfit for the overlay due to factors such as an already high population density, lack of transportation, or distance to commercial areas. For these reasons, the village of Woods Hole is not being considered for the overlay; certain parcels along Nathan Ellis Highway have also been deemed unfit.
The overlay district would have the greatest effect on Falmouth’s Main Street area, through Davis Straits and east toward Teaticket Highway. As mixed-use developments, most of the buildings would have nonresidential/commercial space on the bottom, with apartment units up above. Developments would be required to have one parking spot per residential dwelling, with the option to be granted a reduction in parking, should developers implement a car-share program for residents.
Among other developmental requirements for the overlay district, the planning board has instituted the following in its proposal: a 300-foot notice for abutters as opposed to the previous requirement of notification for abutters within 100 feet; a minimum lot size of 10,000 square feet; a maximum front yard setback of 20 feet; and a maximum building height of 35 feet, or 2.75 stories.
Two questions arose during the ZBA’s discussion of the overlay district. The first is the problem of monitoring residents in affordable units.
“The difficulty with rental versus ownership is that with ownership, that person qualifies at the closing and then never has to qualify again,” Mr. Bott said. “With a rental, that person has to qualify every year. So that is where the monitoring agency comes in, and monitoring has been problematic in affordable housing throughout Massachusetts. But as that person who gets a lease, they have to qualify for that initial lease through the lottery and have that income requirement. If you happen to get a raise, a new job, or something happens in that year, when you come back and it’s time to renew your lease and they do that income check, if you’ve priced out of that unit, then you’re obliged to move out, and the landlord has to say, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t renew your lease because you don’t qualify for this affordable unit.’”
This sort of eviction would pose a problem. If getting a raise at work also raises the potential of losing your home, then people might be inclined to not accept a higher-paying job when the offer comes, he said.
A second problem is the appeals process. Mr. Bott said that because these overlay district developments are submitted for site plan review to the planning board, the only thing abutters would be able to appeal would be the building permit issued.
Board member Robert Dugan asked Mr. Bott what exactly about the building permit that abutters on the 300-foot notification list would be able to appeal, considering that developments that do follow the guidelines will be entirely by right.
“When we do 40Bs, all we hear from is abutters,” Mr. Dugan said. “And all the abutters want to have the right to appeal, or they want to have certain items placed in, maybe buffering the project. We’ve dealt with cases before where just the building permit is appealed versus a project, and I guess my only concern is it seems like an abutter to this project—if there was something that affected them directly, even though they may now be on the 300-foot abutter’s list—doesn’t really have any teeth to appeal something, because if the plan and the style and the layout are approved, you can’t really appeal that. I don’t know what else you could appeal with the building permit.”
Mr. Bott said that because of his lack of experience in the realm of building permit appeals, he does not have a definitive answer on that right now. His emphasized to the board that the overlay district will greatly assist and expedite the planning board’s goal to create more affordable rental units in Falmouth.
Maps and documents relating to the proposed Mixed-Use Residential Commercial Overlay District can be found on the planning board’s page on the Falmouth town website.