Great Barrington — During a special joint meeting of the Selectboard and the Planning Board on Monday, February 13, members of both boards discussed two potential programs brought forth by the town’s Housing Subcommittee. Over the past few months, the subcommittee has been developing potential ideas to help develop affordable housing.
The subcommittee is made up of several Selectboard and Planning Board members, including Selectboard Vice Chair Leigh Davis, who is also the Chair of the subcommittee. “Great Barrington is grappling with a housing crisis that adversely affects the community sustainability, workforce, and quality of life,” Davis said at the February 13 meeting. “Increased housing costs are displacing longtime residents, and demand for affordable housing far outstrips supply.”
The first potential program for the town Davis presented is a tax exemption for owners of affordable year-round housing. According to documents Davis presented at the meeting, the exemption would be for property owners who rent out a portion of their property at affordable rates to income-eligible households year-round. The exemption would be granted year-to-year by the town assessor, and it would incentivize property owners to offer affordable housing to the local workforce.
For the town to implement the program, it would need to have approval from residents at a town meeting. If it is approved at a town meeting, a Home Rule Petition would be filed in the state legislature. If the Home Rule Petition is approved by the state legislature, it would need to be signed by Gov. Maura Healey (D), then it would have to be approved by residents at a town meeting all over again.
When Planning Board member Jonathan Hankin asked who would pay for the program, Davis said “I don’t know.” She explained, “We have to weigh out the pros and cons. You have to realize that there is a need for affordable housing so everything can be budgeted. It’s going to come from somewhere. We’re going to have to weigh the pros and cons of where that money will come from. The nice thing is that there is a way to project it to a point that we can either put a cap on it with a dollar number and say that—maybe for the first year—see what the takeups are like and start slowly.”
Davis said that the program has proven to be successful in Provincetown. “We might want to look at the [town’s] tax rate to see if we are prepared to have that loss of revenue,” Davis said. “And to Jonathan’s point: You know, how important is it to tackle this housing crisis? Are we prepared to dip our toes in and start down this path? There’s a lot of questions.”
Davis said she was not looking for both boards to approve the proposed program, but to direct town staff to look further study the possibility of having it for the town.
“Do we have the staff capacity to do the research?” Hakin asked. “Do we have the capacity to follow this through after it’s voted on and it goes through 15 months, and is it going to cost the town $45,000 for a part-time staffer to research this program?”
Davis said that it is possible that the Housing Subcommittee would be the ones who would do the “deeper dive.” “The beauty of the Housing Subcommittee is that we’re dedicated to doing a deeper dive,” Davis said. “So before this was just on a piece of paper, we started going and doing the homework. So you know whether we continue down this path and do the deeper dive, we would take the pressure off the staff.”
After some discussion, however, a motion was made by Planning Board Chairman Brandee Nelson to advance the exemption program to town staff for research. The motion was unanimously approved by members of both boards.
The next program Davis proposed was a program for the town for a real estate transfer fee to support affordable and workforce housing. In the document presented by Davis at the meeting, she proposes a transfer fee between 0.5 and two percent for certain real estate transactions “involving property sold above the median sale price for a single-family home.”
The fee-generated revenue would be deposited annually in the town’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund to replenish it, and “the money would provide affordable rental and homeownership opportunities to low and moderate-income households.” Under the program, the fee would either be split between the buyer and seller or paid for by one of the two parties. To determine the fee, “public input, local prices, and market conditions can help determine if a transfer fee is suitable for the community and what exemptions, terms, and conditions are appropriate.”
The implementation of the program would be the same process as the implementation of the tax exemption program. “The money would then be used to provide affordable rental and homeownership opportunities to low and moderate-income households and Great Barrington,” Davis said. “Assessor data, local prices, and market conditions would help shape the exemptions, terms, and conditions of the transfer.”
As an example, Davis gave a scenario where a property would be sold for $1 million. If the town levied a two percent transfer fee, the town’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund would net $20,000.
“This is a very complex program and proposal,” Davis said. “There’s a lot of data to look at, and there’s a lot of ways of slicing and dicing.”
Planning Board member Malcolm Fick made a motion to advance the transfer fee program to town staff for research, with both boards voting unanimously to approve the motion.
Selectboard member Eric Gabriel was absent from the February 13 meeting.
