The Everett City Council on Monday night voted to create a Committee of the Whole to study a proposal to adopt the Everett Housing Production Plan, which was produced for the city by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), in an effort to comply with the state’s affordable housing law, Chapter 40B.
The Everett Housing Production Plan, according to information provided by Everett’s Executive Director of Housing and Community Development Jamie Errickson, was developed to help guide the city’s approach to approving and planning for new housing development in the city.
The plans sets eight (8) goals and dozens of strategies for helping Everett to meet the housing need of the Greater Boston area of the next decade or more and also establishes goals for providing additional affordable and medium income housing stock in the city.
Since Everett does not meet the threshold of having ten-percent of the city’s housing stock be accessible to low-income families. As such the city, the city is potentially open to having a 40B development proposed, which would limit the city’s permitting authority over the potential development.
The Everett Housing Production Plan (EHPP) does call for creating more affordable housing within the city to help it meet the state mandate.
Among the goals that are proposed in the EHPP are goals to direct funding and programs to address unmet housing need; minimize displacement of lower-income Everett families; promote healthy housing and living; ensure adequate zoning and policies to advance housing development strategies; build community awareness of housing issues and activities; and leverage new funding sources for affordable housing development strategies.
The plan does not propose specific numbers of new units for affordable or medium-income housing, but instead proposes meeting state regulations and aligning with regional goals for providing new housing in the Greater Boston region.
No meeting date for the Committee of the Whole was set to address this plan.