Southborough adopts 2025–2030 housing production plan; select board reappoints two trust members

Southborough's Affordable Housing Trust presented a draft 2025'to'2030 housing production plan Monday night and both the town's Planning Board and Select Board voted to approve and adopt the plan.

The plan, prepared with consultant CommunityScale, recommends a numerical target of 255 homes over five years (51 per year), including 28 units that would count on the state Subsidized Housing Inventory. The plan highlights large increases in typical home prices since 2010 and details nine goals with aligned implementation strategies, the trust said.

Why it matters: an approved and state'endorsed housing production plan can produce a temporary "safe harbor" that gives local permitting boards legal support to deny new Chapter 40B comprehensive permit projects for a limited period if the town is making demonstrable progress toward production goals.

Doug Mann, chair of the Affordable Housing Trust, opened the presentation and introduced Ellen Myra and CommunityScale consultant Sarah Brent McCoy, who led the briefing. "This is a state process ... to have a proactive strategy" and to set both qualitative goals and a numerical production target, Myra said.

CommunityScale'provided a needs assessment that projects housing demand and affordability gaps over five years and showed the typical Southborough home price now about $200,000 above what a median household can afford. The firm calculated the 255'unit target by summing the town's projected needs across ownership and rental segments and accounting for expected production already in the pipeline.

The plan lists nine goals and aligned strategies that range from encouraging development in recently rezoned downtown and MBTA-overlap districts to tracking outcomes from recent bylaw changes such as ADU reform. The trust also plans to pursue Housing Choice designation (the state program long run by DHCD, referenced in the presentation as EOHLC) to access specific grant pools and scoring benefits on other funding applications.

The trust asked the boards to collaborate on a separate item: removing the town's 7% cap on housing units limited to residents 55 and older, currently set at 213 units. The trust said the town presently has 208 such units and that the cap constrains production needed to match changing demographics. Ellen Myra told the boards the cap is embedded in the special permit rules for multifamily elderly housing (zoning section 1.74-9, paragraph h) and recommended placing a bylaw article on the fall warrant.

Select Board member Kathy Cook called the housing cost numbers on page 16 "shocking," noting 976 households spend more than 30% of income on housing. The panel discussed how maintaining certification and safe harbor depends in part on progress of projects already approved: the presenter and staff noted that continued safe harbor through 2026 hinges on progress (including building-permit pulls) for 120 Turnpike Road.

Planning Board and Select Board actions: the Planning Board voted to approve and adopt the 2025 housing production plan and forward the adopted plan for state review; the Select Board likewise voted to "approve and adopt" the plan. During the meeting the Select Board also moved and approved reappointments of Jesse Stein and Al Hamilton to the Affordable Housing Trust for terms through June 30, 2027.

What comes next: the Affordable Housing Trust will continue working with the planning board and town staff on implementation tasks identified in the plan, including monitoring outcomes of recent zoning changes, pursuing Housing Choice designation and running technical-assistance grant searches. The trust asked to meet jointly with the planning board on the 55+ cap and expects to bring draft warrant language for fall town meeting; board members suggested including an affordability component in any 55+ amendment to avoid producing only high-price condominium units.

Speakers quoted in this article are members or staff who spoke at the meeting and are included in the meeting transcript.