House Committee on General & Housing hears regional planning director on housing targets, CHIP and ADUs

Catherine Dimitryk, executive director of the Northwest Regional Planning Commission, told the House Committee on General & Housing on May 6 that the region allocated 60% of its long-term housing targets to municipal centers and planned-growth areas with water and sewer infrastructure and spread the remaining 40% across rural areas.

"This is a planning tool," Dimitryk told the committee, describing how the regional plan — adopted in March and now before the land use review board — translates statewide targets into town-level goals and land-use mapping. She said the plan uses municipal plans as the starting point and that planned-growth areas must have the infrastructure to accommodate higher density.

The committee pressed several practical questions about how the targets were disaggregated. Dimitryk said the region used a 60/40 split for 2050 targets (60% in centers and planned-growth areas, 40% in the rest of the region) and applied finer adjustments for the nearer-term 2030 target to reflect recent…