A draft of Wellesley’s long-awaited Strategic Housing Plan got its first public airing on June 3 at a joint Select Board-Planning Board meeting, and as is the case with anything having to do with housing in town, it had its supporters and critics. Close to 50 members of the public attended in person to take in the roughly 2-hour session during the meeting at Wellesley’s Town Hall.

Select Board Chair Colette Aufranc stated from the outset that this would be a presentation and discussion session, and that no actions would be taken by the Boards.

Comments on the plan can be submitted to housingplan@wellesleyma.gov until 5:00 p.m. on July 3.

Barrett Planning Group last summer kicked off a public input process to create what’s now a 94-page document, which also relies heavily on Census and other such data to paint a picture of Wellesley’s current and possible future housing situation. Many of the stats are familiar—expensive housing, above average household income, an aging population. Among the newer eye-opening figures are those for median prices of condos, which have spiked to the point where they’re approaching the $2M-plus stratosphere of single-family homes. And while we often hear of the median price of single-family homes, Barrett Planning pointed to the high rent costs in town too, with $6,000 monthly rent for two bedrooms at The Nines, for example, being way outside the affordability zone for many.

Barrett Planning reps presented a summary of their findings at the June 3 meeting and answered questions (see Wellesley Media recording). Select Board and Planning Board members weighed in, followed by members of the public.

The document is a follow-on to Wellesley’s now expired Housing Production Plan, which helped the town meet the state’s 10% affordable housing threshold and gain more control over how housing is developed here (Barrett Consulting also worked on that Housing Production Plan). It also follows numerous other efforts in town to address housing, including Wellesley’s compliance with state-mandated MBTA Communities zoning rules designed to encourage multifamily housing development near public transportation. Wellesley’s Housing Development Corp., now being converted into a more flexible trust, conducted a housing market analysis, and Wellesley Executive Director Meghan Jop leads a Housing Task Force that coordinates efforts by staff as well as elected and appointed town bodies. The town’s 20-year Unified Plan, approved in 2019, also includes a chapter on housing and was referenced throughout the Strategic Housing Plan process.

Despite adhering to state rules and attempting to follow the town’s own rules, town leaders acknowledge Wellesley still has work to do in providing more diverse housing, addressing the needs of young families, local employees, downsizers, and more. That’s where the Strategic Housing Plan comes in.

The town gave its consultant a broad set of things to look at, from housing diversity to land use and zoning to environmental sustainability. While the state’s housing shortage still means there’s a need for more near-term action, Wellesley is also addressing this topic against a backdrop of broad economic uncertainty as well as other needed investments in town, including in various buildings and to ensure clean drinking water.

The questions for Wellesley on housing shift now that the town has more control over its destiny by having met certain state requirements, Barrett Planning’s Judy Barrett said. “So that raises a whole lot of issues for communities trying to explain to the public why are we doing this when in fact on some level we don’t have to…,” said Barrett, who emphasized that the report includes analysis and recommendations but leaves it to the town to make decisions.

The plan boils down to six goals and 48 strategies, some of which the town already has in the works. The goals:

Empower the Wellesley Affordable Housing Trust (WAHT) to create, support, preserve, and improve affordable housing for the benefit of the community. (Note: Wellesley Town Meeting has approved the transition of the town’s Housing Development Corp. into a trust, but is awaiting state approval, expected by fall.)
Prioritize public outreach and engagement for housing and planning initiatives; foster continued, responsive community-wide dialogue about housing in Wellesley.

Align housing and land use planning with the principles of the United Plan and other relevant local or regional planning efforts as appropriate.
Pursue strategies to create, support, and sustain a diverse housing stock that addresses identified needs and supports other community-wide priorities. Redeveloping the Barton Road (off Cedar Street) and Morton Circle (behind police station) would be among the targets here. This could also include conversion of non-residential property into residential, and possibly conversion of single-family homes into multifamily developments.
Prevent displacement of Wellesley residents.
Strengthen the Town’s capacity for advancing its housing and land use goals, policies, and planning. This could include considering the hiring of a housing coordinator, an issue Wellesley has discussed.

To achieve these goals, the town needs to undergo regulatory/zoning reform, invest capital, and develop policy, Barrett said.

“I don’t think anything really happens in local government without leadership, and what I think we’ve seen here is some fractured leadership in your town that I think you’re really going to have to look at hard and fast to figure out is how we unify ourselves better… so we can accomplish good things for everybody here,” she said.

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On public engagement, Barrett Planning’s Alexis Lanzilotta said the group “often heard sentiments that people were not opposed to the idea of more housing, different housing… but it sometimes felt like… they didn’t understand the process by which the town might make decisions about zoning changes.”

Rather than making a recommendation that you should do housing here or here or here, Barrett Planning urged the town to reconvene its departments, guided by the Unified Plan, and collect feedback on what locations would work best now and in the near future.

Once the public comment period is finished in early July, Barrett will return to the boards with a revised plan for approval.

Board feedback

Aufranc kicked off the feedback round, noting that the Board already has some efforts in the works that align with the strategies presented by Barrett Planning. These include those involved in supporting the Affordable Housing Trust as well as working with the Natural Resources Commission to advance housing and open space needs, including discussions around the town’s North 40 property along Weston and Turner Roads. “Those are really big projects and they will take up a lot of our bandwidth on housing for some time,” she said, adding that strategies in the report should be useful in updating board work plans on a regular basis. Those involving strategic investments could be challenging given the current economic uncertainty and other financial commitments involving union negotiations, etc.

Select Board Member Tom Ulfelder said that while he found the tools presented in the report interesting, his focus is more on how they apply to Wellesley. “What I find absent is an adequate reflection of public opinion as gathered through the survey and then politicallythrough recent decisions in town about various projects that were defeated,” he said. Ulfelder rejected that the greatest barrier to progress on housing in Wellesley is due to unresolved policy decisions on housing and land use, but rather “the inability for us to hear each other because the community doesn’t have confidence that its elected officials and professionals are hearing them…” This will need to start with real discussions on each housing proposal or zoning reform, where true compromise might be possible, he said.

The Select Board’s Beth Sullivan Woods also cited the lack of resident research. What’s more, she found the report lacking any definition of a community goal on housing given the ‘tsunami” of opportunities before Wellesley on housing, from office space in flux to the MBTA Communities zoning. “How much is right for this community? Every community has there ‘how much the vessel can hold,’ right?…” she said. “This plan could help us define what would be our best vision.”

Select Board member Kenny Largess said that while he appreciated the work that went into developing the plan, he was disappointed it doesn’t say how much more housing Wellesley needs and “never defines what success looks like” in improving housing affordability and diversity. “Without specific numbers or limits this could easily turn into a push for unlimited development regardless of the cost, the impact to town services, or how residents actually feel about it,” he said.

Planning’s Kathleen Woodward said a much more prescriptive approach wouldn’t go over well in town. “People in Wellesley like to direct their own decisions from the bottom up. They don’t react well to being told what they should do,” she said, adding that the ideas in the plan would give Wellesley something to work with through a consensus-building process

Also from the Planning Board, Jim Roberti urged Wellesley to take actions on housing itself or be subject to the state possibly making more decisions for it (see our recent post about MassBay property). “If we don’t get more flexible among ourselves and start to deal on certain things, it’s going to be to our detriment,” he said.

Planning’s Patty Mallett wondered about what things could look like if developers did build by right in areas where office building properties are on the market, without all the usual zoning restrictions.

Planning’s Marc Charney said addressing potential redevelopments of public property like Barton Road or Morton Circle might be most doable in the short term. Zoning reform is the only way to do something more substantively, and he acknowledged this will be hard and take work across numerous town bodies.

The Select Board’s Marjorie Freiman said she thought the draft is a good first step, and that it will be up to the town’s leaders to put in the work from here. Though she said she would have liked to have seen the consultants dig in more on what might be acceptable to residents (for example, if not this many units in Lower Falls, then how many?).

Public feedback

The Strategic Housing Plan session wrapped up with comments and questions from members of the public. Here’s a sampling:

Paul Criswell was curious about whether the consultants had ideas on how the town might obtain funds to encourage truly affordable housing in town, rather than a couple of units here or there.

Dr. Kathryn Donald Stanley spoke of the demand for housing for people with special needs, and her involvement in development of a nonprofit dedicated to building integrated work/life communities for young adults like her daughter. “We’d love it if we could do something like this in Wellesley so that [our daughter] is not a displaced person,” she said.

Another resident, Bob Ellis, proposed zoning reform based on socioeconomic class or neighborhoods, such as various school districts.

Amy Gottschalk, who recently was appointed a member of the new RIO Task Force, suggested that the Strategic Housing Plan be brought to Town Meeting for approval. “If we’re looking for unification of the town, I think Town Meeting members are a pretty good reflection of what their precincts are thinking, and they can reach out to their residents…,” she said.

Select Board Chair Aufranc said after the meeting that she was happy to have such a strong showing at Town Hall. “It was good to hear from as many people as we did… there were a lot of different things driving people’s desire to speak.” The Board’s emphasis now is to ensure the public stays informed on how this process is proceeding, and how housing plans will fit into a broad range of topics being addressed by the town.