Although pandemic-related disruptions caused Peterborough’s Community Task Force for Affordable Housing to disband, its members can transfer their knowledge and passion for affordable housing solutions to the town’s Master Plan Steering Committee and the Economic Development Authority’s ad-hoc affordable housing committee as those two organizations prepare to take up the cause.
The Task Force started meeting in October 2019 to engage opposing sides of the town’s zoning conflict, learn about housing solutions, and ultimately deliver recommendations for updating the town’s Master Plan housing chapter, a process initially scheduled to take 18 months. Although the nearly 30 Task Force members made lots of progress in their first two goals, the switch to virtual meetings at the start of the pandemic proved untenable, founder Karen Hatcher said, and ultimately, the mounting Master Plan deadlines encouraged the town administration to reassign the Task Force’s community outreach work to the Master Plan Steering Committee.
The Master Plan Steering Committee is already receiving recommendations and public feedback about housing, Town Planner Danica Melone said. The housing chapter’s most recent version was written in 2013. “It’s actually very old at this point,” she said.
The Steering Committee is currently prioritizing the land use and vision chapters of the plan, since, unlike housing, they’re required sections with looming deadlines, Melone said.
“We imagine that we’ll be moving into the housing chapter either by the very end of 2021 or the start of 2022,” she said, at which point they’ll likely form a housing chapter subcommittee and gather widespread community feedback during at least two outreach activities, she said. Former Task Force members will be tapped to participate, although any member of the public can join in on the public Steering Committee meetings regardless of previous participation, Melone said. Residents can also submit ideas and feedback for the housing chapter by emailing dmelone@peterboroughnh.gov.
Meanwhile, the ad-hoc affordable housing subcommittee of Peterborough’s Economic Development Authority is resuming meetings after somewhat of a hiatus during the pandemic, subcommittee chair Pelagia Vincent said. The subcommittee is recruiting more members, as they’re looking to expand their numbers and fill some recent vacancies, she said. “Our goal is to just regain that momentum that we had, and keep going even stronger,” she said.
The subcommittee is primarily focused on affordable rental housing right now, Vincent said. They’re also working with several of the region’s business owners who have begun looking into building workforce housing nearby, she said. “That’s one option we’re absolutely investigating and pursuing,” she said, among many potential solutions.
“We want people to know that the town is not just putting this on a back burner,” Vincent said. “It isn’t just housing, the lack of housing is so pivotal to what’s happening in our economy here and elsewhere. Not having affordable housing leads to not having enough staff, leads to not having a company [or] a business able to be open… therefore people can’t come and purchase things, or can’t go to a restaurant because its not open,” she said. The next subcommittee meeting is on July 9 at 8 a.m. in the Select Board meeting room at the Peterborough Town House.
“I think that there’s a lot of support for affordable housing, but when we talk about what affordable housing looks like, it gets very scattered,” Melone said, speaking about the housing-related feedback the Master Plan Steering Committee has received so far. Residents have called for tiny houses, manufactured housing, trailer parks, and boarding houses, Melone said. “Boarding houses was a huge one,” she said, although there aren’t any in town anymore. Housing suitable for aging in place has also come up, Melone said. Certain objectively affordable housing options can be divisive, Melone said, such as trailer parks, which are currently not allowed in Peterborough. Others would require changes to local or state regulations in order to implement, but that’s all part of the upcoming discussions, she said.