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Select Board adopts five‑year Housing Production Plan aimed at enabling infrastructure‑backed growth
Summary
After a year‑and‑a‑half stakeholder process, the Select Board voted to adopt Dartmouth's five‑year Housing Production Plan, which prioritizes infrastructure upgrades, zoning changes and programs to produce and preserve housing, and will be submitted for final state approval.
The Dartmouth Select Board voted July 13 to adopt a five‑year Housing Production Plan developed by the regional planning agency and a local stakeholder committee.
Taylor Perez, director of housing and research at the regional planning agency, said the plan resulted from a year‑and‑a‑half process that included a stakeholder committee and a public survey with 411 responses. "We produced four goals and eight strategies," Perez said, listing priorities such as supporting infrastructure upgrades to enable development, implementing zoning changes to allow missing‑middle housing and creating programs to preserve and produce affordable units.
The plan sets strategies the town can pursue over five years: upgrading infrastructure, establishing mixed‑use overlays, evaluating aquifer‑zone rules, pursuing funding for the housing trust and community preservation programs, pursuing starter‑home zoning including 40Y where appropriate, and negotiating expiring deed restrictions to preserve affordability.
Members asked how the plan interacts with pending 40B/40R projects and stressed infrastructure capacity is a gating issue. Perez said the plan is a proactive tool that can be used to prioritize MassWorks and other grant applications and to frame where the town would prefer new units. "It is proactive in nature and it does do a lot more than just that," she said, noting the plan also helps maintain a stable SHI (Subsidized Housing Inventory) count.
Following discussion, the board voted to adopt the Housing Production Plan and instructed staff to transmit adoption documentation to the state housing office to begin the five‑year plan period.
