Exhibit highlights history of low-cost housing in Salisbury

SALISBURY — An intimate portrayal of Salisbury’s affordable housing efforts—past, present and future—is now on view at the home of the Salisbury Association, in the historic Academy Building on Main Street.

The Association organized the exhibit in concert with the Salisbury Affordable Housing Commission and the town’s two housing nonprofits, the Salisbury Housing Trust and the Salisbury Housing Committee.

In this way, the exhibit represents a subtle shift for the Salisbury Association: a move away from a purely historic interest in the town, to an active interest in creating awareness and change around the problems confronting the Salisbury community today—in this case, the urgent need for the creation of affordable housing.

And they’re making that shift in a Salisbury Association-style. The show is not a depressing litany of statistics, nor a sermon, nor a call to action; It simply tells a Salisbury story, and it begins at the beginning.

In 1829, the Salisbury Asylum was established on Farnum Road as a “town farm,” or a place where residents in need could live in a self-sufficient community.

The local churches’ founding of Faith House in the 1970s made Salisbury one of the first towns in the county to establish what we now call affordable housing, offering apartments at below-market rates to community members who couldn’t afford market rates. (The Salisbury Housing Committee still manages the eight apartments in the barn-red, peak-roofed building on Indian Cave Road.) 

Sarum Village, a development of single-family homes for rent, was established in the following decade; in the early aughts, the Dunham Drive property on East Main Street became the town’s first project of the Salisbury Housing Trust, the affordable home ownership organization. Since then, several more properties have been developed or refurbished for affordable rentals and ownership, managed by the Committee and the Trust respectively; there are now 56 affordable housing units in use in Salisbury. 

However, as the exhibition makes clear, more affordable real estate is desperately needed by Salisbury residents today. There are more than 100 families on waitlists for affordable rentals, and nearly 300 households in Salisbury currently spend more than 50% of their income on housing.

But the exhibition does not get bogged down in statistics. Rather, guests were introduced to a handful of the beneficiaries of the affordable housing that the town does have, including such community staples as Kendra Chapman, owner of the Black Rabbit Bar & Grill in Lakeville, and Luis Vargas, longtime cook at LaBonne’s Market. 

Jeanette Weber, president of the Salisbury Association, explained, “We’re trying to show [the impact of affordable housing] from a personal standpoint. It puts faces to it—it’s not ‘them’ or ‘these people—’”

“It’s us,” finished Chris Abeel, the Association’s new Executive Director. “Exactly!” said Weber. “It’s us.”

The exhibit is on view Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. until Nov. 30.

From left, David Rich, Jim Dresser, and Jocelyn Ayer attended the opening reception of the affordable housing exhibit at Academy Building. Photo by Sarah Morrison