AFFORDABLE HOUSING DRAFT - Salisbury, CT

AFFORDABLE HOUSING ADVISORY COMMITTEEREPORT TO THE BOARD OF SELECTMENIntroductionIn November of 2008, the selectman of Salisbury, Connecticut, established an Affordable HousingAdvisory Committee (AHAC). Their charge to the committee states, in part:In 2007, a four-person Informal Task Force on Affordable Housing undertook to assist Towngovernment to develop policies and programs to improve access to affordable housing inSalisbury. The Informal Task Force on Affordable Housing has calculated that Salisbury needs toadd approximately 200 units in four categories of affordable housing (including both conversionsand new construction) to retain the Town’s character, economic health, and diversity.The primary objective of the Committee should be to recommend a plan to construct or convertthe needed 200 units by 2020. (The full charge to the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee isAppendix I to this report.)The charge went on to ask various questions the selectmen hoped would be answered by thecommittee.In 2007 the Informal Task Force had written:It is our hope that this report will stimulate at least two others in this series: first, a report onpossible solutions as well as impediments to meeting the demand for affordable housing andsecond, a report specifying detailed institutional and programmatic policies to implement theproposed solutions and to reduce the identified impediments. (The Task Force’s full report,Housing your Neighbors in Salisbury, 2020, is available on the Town of Salisbury website.)Taking our marching orders from these two documents, the committee concluded that, simplyput, what we were being asked to do, in addition to the other objectives, was to identify theimpediments to creating affordable housing and to design a plan to overcome those impediments.Our committee consists of sixteen citizens of the Town of Salisbury. None of us is an expert inthe field of affordable housing. The closest we get to that is an architect, a realtor, and an urbanplanner. We have a member from the Board of Selectmen and one from the Planning and ZoningCommission (P&Z). We have a firefighter and a member of the ambulance squad. We have present4