Our Northwest Corner Towns Need To Keep Middle Class Around

Our neighbors to the west in New York state have been struggling with the balance of having a range of housing across economic lines and at the same time maintaining the rural character of small towns like Millerton, Pine Plains and Copake. Each of these communities has a proposal for multiple-unit housing, from 20 being considered in Millerton to well over 900 for Pine Plains.

In all of these towns, the housing under consideration is to be built by commercial companies looking for approvals from each of the towns and their agencies. These projects have received some resistance from town residents. Now, as reported in last week’s Lakeville Journal, at a Jan. 2 Salisbury Board of Selectmen meeting, a much smaller, single-unit home project in Connecticut has met with strong objections from its neighbors as well.

In Salisbury, a preliminary proposal (which will also need to go through town approvals once fully formed) is in the works from the Salisbury Housing Trust, an independent nonprofit agency in town, for five or six new homes which would accommodate middle-income residents. The housing trust has already found a way to build seven homes for people who would otherwise have had a very tough, if not impossible, time finding housing they could afford in Salisbury. While this number may seem small, in a town the size of Salisbury, which has a population of about 4,100, probably at least half of whom are part-time residents, it is meaningful.

At a time when, as seen in coverage in this paper over the past months, our towns’ new building is trending toward large weekend homes, the housing trust has provided a much-needed alternative. Those who have already applied to live in the homes currently in the planning stages by the trust include volunteers at the Lakeville Hose Company and the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance Service, both critical services to the town which could find its base of volunteers diminishing if steps aren’t taken to keep these folks around.

The members of the trust, including President Richard Dunham, have given countless volunteer hours to make these affordable homes a reality. If Northwest Corner towns are going to find a way to maintain their character, as the towns in New York are trying to do, they will need to provide homes for middle-class families, whose members are essential to the fabric of full and vibrant communities. The Salisbury Housing Trust has given our area towns a good model on which to base an approach to begin to achieve this goal.

The property on which to build these homes has not even been chosen, and it is extraordinary that strong objections have been raised to this project at this stage. In a town that has historically been at the forefront of Northwest Corner towns in taking measures to offer affordable housing to its residents, this is particularly disheartening.