GREAT BARRINGTON — Over the last eight years, the town of Great Barrington and nonprofits within its borders have created more than 100 workforce rental units, with more on the way. Still, officials say the town has miles to go and promises to keep.
The town’s Strategic Sustainability and Livability Committee held a meeting Wednesday featuring three people associated with the subject of affordable housing: Jane Ralph, executive director of Construct, Inc.; Vivian Orlowski, chair of the town Agricultural Commission; and Chris Rembold, the assistant town manager who also leads the Great Barrington planning department.
There was a broad consensus among the speakers and members of the committee that not only is there a lack of affordable housing, which all acknowledged is at “crisis” level, but that the shortage has been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting run on the town’s available properties in a hot real estate market.
See Edge video of last night’s meeting of the Strategic Sustainability and Livability Committee:
Ralph said Construct has been providing affordable housing and support services in southern Berkshire County for more than 50 years. Construct also offers transitional housing, emergency funds, rental assistance and so-called “microloans” that cover security deposits, fuel bills, utility bills and other housing-related costs.
“The pandemic took a situation that was already tight in affordable and workforce housing and just exacerbated all of that: economic challenges, sustainability for not only tenants and people who pay mortgages, but also landlords,” Ralph said.
Ralph and others pointed to the most recent market watch report from the Berkshire County Board of Realtors. The report indicated that the first-quarter 2022 market has slowed somewhat from the red-hot sales pace of 2021.
“It’s really stunning how much has been sold: multi-family, single family, land, condominiums,” Ralph said. “All of it is really flying off the shelves.”
Sales slowed slightly from the first quarter of last year in southern and northern portions of Berkshire County but stilled increased in central portions of the county, including Pittsfield and Dalton. Since 2016, first-quarter sales countywide rose from more than $65 million to nearly $158 million this year.
Rembold cited similarly rising statistics in the town of Great Barrington. He called them “horrifying numbers.” To afford a $300,000 home, a family of four would need an income of about $90,000 per year. To live “pretty well,” the income would need to be approximately $140,000 per year.
“Needless to say, most of us don’t approach that,” Rembold said.
In 2019, according to the Berkshire County Board of Realtors, the average sale price of a single-family home in Great Barrington was $411,000. The following year, it jumped to almost S600,000 without a commensurate rise in incomes.
“So we’re already in the hole,” Rembold said. “In 2021, that gap went up again. It worsened. It deepened.”
Orlowski, who has lived in Great Barrington for 32 years and also served on both the town’s master-plan and economic development committees, explained how agriculture and food are connected to affordability.
She also emphasized the importance of Growing Better Great Barrington, a recently released report and action plan to strengthen the town’s local food system.
“Growing Better Great Barrington was based on community forums where many emphasized how the housing crisis impacts those who work in the food system — from farming to processing to retail,” Orlowski said. “With food prices and transportation costs rising rapidly, it makes sense to grow more food locally. But how can we do that if people who work in the food system can’t afford to live here?”
That led to the inevitable question of precisely what the town has been doing to address the affordable housing shortfall. Rembold said the town, through its Affordable Housing Trust, and the town nonprofit partners such as Construct and the Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire (CDCSB) have added more than 100 new affordable units over the last several years.
Construct and CDCSB partnered to add 11 units at Forest Springs in 2018. CDCSB had added 45 units at the recently completed Bentley Apartments at 100 Bridge Street and 10 affordable units at Hillside Avenue. CDCSB has recently broken ground for Windrush Commons, which will contain 44 affordable units and four workforce apartments on South Main Street.
The Great Barrington Affordable Housing Trust is partnering with Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity to build 20 units of affordable housing on North Plain Road near the Housatonic section of town. Construct will use part of the former Eagleton School property to create eight more affordable and workforce units, to be known as the Eagle Cliff Apartments. And plans are in the works for the CDCSB to create 30 new units, to be known as the Berkshire Cottages, on the same site as the Bentley Apartments at 100 Bridge Street.
The Affordable Housing Trust and others have received funding from the town’s Community Preservation Committee. Last year alone the CPC awarded a record total of $1.1 million to eight organizations, including $200,000 to the Affordable Housing Trust, $50,000 to Construct for Eagle Cliff and $350,000 to CDCSB for the pre-development phase of the Berkshire Cottages.
The two most common terms that come up in these discussions are “affordable housing” and “workforce housing.” They are not the same. As defined by the state, affordable housing is targeted to — and considered affordable by — households that meet specific income eligibility levels, typically households earning below 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), which last year was in the neighborhood of $64,000 per year for a family of two.
Workforce housing is typically for those earning closer to 100 percent of the AMI. Rembold has said Great Barrington is at or near the 10-percent-affordable goal set by the state. Still, as the business and retail hub of South County, Great Barrington needs far more than its share.
Rembold said there are restaurant workers in Great Barrington who commute from the Hudson Valley and the Pioneer Valley — a phenomenon he characterized as “not the basis of a workforce.”
“Folks ought to be able to live close to where their kids go to school, close to where they work,” Ralph said. “Communities thrive when folks can live in the communities they work in, go to school in, have access to the arts, and that includes folks who are vulnerable and working families and individuals.”
Growing Better Great Barrington will be the subject of discussion on May 4 at the next Coffee with the Town Manager session. Click here for more information.
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