Housing Production Plan submitted to state

With just a few days before the deadline, the Select Board and Planning Board Tuesday evening sent the town’s Housing Production Plan to the state for review.

A housing production plan details to the state how Weston can address affordable housing opportunities through an assessment of the town’s needs, affordable housing goals to meet those needs and strategies toward achieving the goals over a five-year period. The Steering Committee worked alongside housing consultant CommunityScale to develop its plan.

If a town has an active Housing Production Plan, it can deny new 40B applications for two years through “safe harbor status.” Weston lost temporary safe harbor status in 2022.

The challenge in creating the 2026 plan was a time crunch to develop and send it to the state. Weston’s current housing production plan expires on Sept. 14 and it takes about a month for the state to review submitted plans, meaning the town needed to send its plan in by Aug. 14.

The Steering Committee was not seated until this spring, giving the board just a few months to create its plan. Member Leslie Glynn, who also serves on the Planning Board, noted the 2021 housing production plan was submitted in September 2020, allowing for much more time for development and review.

“We’re all running now, and the last time this was done in time, so there was plenty of time to do this…The committee have worked very earnestly on this,” she said. “We took the old HPP and went through it, and basically circled every area that required an update.”

Because the new members did not have time to review the plan in its entirety, members of both boards agreed to make possible amendments, which the state allows after submittal. Another joint meeting between the two bodies and the Housing Production Plan Steering Committee is planned in the next month.

“That would give us time to read through this and digest it,” Planning Board Chair Alex Selvig said. “The fact that we are able to modify this after the fact gives me a little comfort.”

Much has changed since the 2021 Housing Production Plan was issued; home prices have continued to rise, the MBTA Communities Act mandated zoning for housing around Massachusetts and the state has allowed accessory dwelling units by right (although none have been built in Weston).

What hasn’t changed, though, is a need for housing, especially affordable units to meet the state’s 10% Subsidized Housing Inventory (SHI) affordability requirement to achieve safe harbor status. If less than 10% of a town’s housing stock is designated as affordable, developers of Chapter 40B projects are able to bypass some town zoning restrictions to receive a comprehensive permit.

The town’s new plan includes two main goals: to ensure completed projects are added correctly to the state’s SHI – Glynn noted there have been some issues in the past that caused units to not be counted – and to expand the variety of housing options available. The plan states 88% of Weston’s housing units are detached single-family homes, one of the lowest levels among comparable communities, but pending 40B and 3A developments will change that.

It includes several recommendations to achieve those goals, including the consideration of a Historic Heritage Overlay District with affordability incentives, considering the possibility of expanding the Brook School and potentially adopting more flexible zoning tools.

The key, Glynn said, is the word “consider.” The town does not have to adopt these recommendations.

“This shows good movement toward housing of a variety and it doesn’t say that it will happen, it says we will consider,” she said.

Weston needs 248 affordable housing units to meet the state’s minimum. There are several affordable housing developments in the pipeline, with 751 Boston Post Road already marketing its units and 269 North Ave. under construction. Those developments, both expected to be complete by September 2027, would contribute 188 affordable housing units to the total.

Once those projects are completed, Weston could meet the 10% threshold when the multifamily units are built at the MBTA Communities Act zoning district at 133 Boston Post Road. The two 40B projects under litigation, 518 South Ave. and 104 Boston Post Road, could also contribute toward the inventory if the courts rule in the developers’ favor.