Town Planning Director Tony Fields briefed the Housing Partnership at a recent meeting on a range of ongoing and proposed projects and policies that could expand Bedford’s inventory of affordable housing.
Fields cited efforts to realize goals identified in a 2019 townwide housing study. These include “diversifying the housing stock to better serve the various types of households that have been identified.”
He outlined current efforts by the Planning Board “to ease the restrictions on two-family dwellings,” explaining, “At some point the town decided it wanted to slow its pace of growth, so it adopted a variety of zoning measures that made it harder to build – and eliminated two-family dwellings altogether.”
The proposed zoning amendment “will give the choice of a two-family house effectively the same size” as a new single-family house on the same parcel. “The goal is to provide more middle-housing types that become more affordable to a broader range of people,” he said.
Among the other housing study areas Fields addressed were:
Accessory units. A recent zoning change provides a homeowner “a chance to build an accessory apartment in your house or as a freestanding detached unit.”
“Co-living and congregate housing,” now “effectively prohibited almost throughout Massachusetts.” Fields said a wide-ranging housing proposal for land off Carlisle Road dropped a co-housing component because it didn’t fit into the state law that would allow the project to bypass zoning. “You can create special rules that don’t bypass zoning. At the moment, that’s the only way you can do co-housing.”
Mixed-use housing. The latest example is targeted for Plank Street, off Middlesex Turnpike: 52 one-bedroom units plus 6,000 square feet of office space.
Fields also addressed the continuing practice of teardown-and-rebuild.
“We have quite a number of 1950s ranches and capes that are comparatively affordable when they hit the market,” he described. “Builders are going to pay $600,000 for that house regardless of its condition because their intent is to knock it down and build something bigger in its place. That’s very difficult to overcome. We are examining, in case there are some strategies we can put forward.”
Fields also outlined the challenges faced by the town to comply with a new state multi-family housing mandate that applies to cities and towns served by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
Required are at least 50 acres zoned for housing by right with a density of at least 15 units per acre, he explained.
Bedford’s mixed-use zoning promotes housing above or behind commercial uses, and these regulations are sufficient to comply with the state density requirement. “But the state has now said you can’t require the units to be part of a mixed-use project,” he said. “The multi-family must be allowed to build on its own.”
“That means we have to think about some other strategies,” Fields told the partnership. “We don’t want to put this on farmland or forest land on the edge of town where there are no services.”
Middlesex Turnpike, which is served not only by the MBTA but also by a bus of the Lowell Regional Transit Authority, has some potential, he said. “The Planning Board is going to revisit that. There are other properties along that corridor.”
The penalty for non-compliance is loss of eligibility for various funding sources, he noted.
In answer to a question from Jeff King, the town’s Housing and Economic Development Director, Fields said Housing Partnership advocacy would be especially helpful in support of zoning amendments at Annual Town Meeting next spring.
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