Salisbury info session airs affordable housing plan

SALISBURY – The Salisbury Housing Committee (SHC) held the first of two public information meetings Thursday, June 30, at the Salisbury Congregational Church on plans for 18 to 20 affordable housing units near the village proposed to be built on a 5.3-acre parcel of donated land.

More than 50 residents attended the meeting, asking questions about the plan and right-of-way access to the site over the old railroad corridor adjacent to the Railroad Ramble trail, also known as the Rail Trail. The land has been given to the nonprofit SHC by adjoining property owner Jim Dresser.

Jocelyn Ayer, vice president of the SHC, opened the meeting with a slide presentation and explained that before the planning can move forward with design work and Planning and Zoning permitting, SHC must first obtain access to the land over the railroad corridor.

A second information session is scheduled Saturday, July 16, at 11 a.m. at the  church and a town meeting vote is scheduled for Thursday, July 28, at 7:30 p.m., also at the church.

Ayer gave an overview of affordable housing status in the town, noting that 39 units at three sites in the town are fully occupied and have a long waiting list. She noted that housing costs have been rising faster than incomes over the past 30 years, and after the impact of the pandemic that led to a real-estate boom, housing options in town are scarce, whether to rent or own.

The town has a goal to build 75 new dwellings over a 10-year period, lifting the percentage of affordable housing from the current 2% to 5%.

“A single person earning $55,000 or less annually would qualify to live in affordable housing,” she said. “And a family of four earning $80,000 or less also would qualify.”

A slide show depicted how access to the proposed development site would straddle the rail trail and also showed the land on a map. The required access distance is approximately 150 feet from the end of the pavement on East Railroad Street. Town water and sewer, which run under the railroad corridor, would serve the proposed development. It also would be withing walking distance to the center of Salisbury Village.

Renderings showed three landscaping options that would provide a barrier between the rail trail and a proposed two-lane drive to the development. They included boulders, fencing and a stone wall.

Residents wanted to know what would happen to the trees on the acreage, which is partially wetland. The answer was that the buildable area of the land was about 2.7 acres of the 5.3 total, and that there was no plan to strip the location of its natural state. Another resident expressed concern about traffic volume to and from the development.

A question hung over the audience that wanted to know if the access was granted via a town vote, but the development didn’t materialize, would the granted access convey to a future owner. The committee answered that it could ensure that the vote question itself would rule out such a potential conveyance option.

Sally Spillane, a homeowner who lives adjacent to the rail trail, supported the idea of guaranteeing that the granted access apply only to this development, and further called for the creation of an advisory board of residents most immediately impacted by it.

“Get the people who it’s going to impact the most on an advisory board,” Spillane said. “I think if this project happens it could work for everybody. It could work for our neighborhood. It could work for our town.” She cited other possible benefits such as a playground open to the public. But Spillane reiterated what she saw as the need for the advisory board.

Sean White, an SHC board member, said the committee would need time to respond to the idea of an advisory board.

Dresser noted for the audience that he and Peter Halle, SHC co-president, have been meeting with people about the planning, and reaching out to Spillane, for six months.

The town’s need for affordable housing wasn’t in dispute, and the meeting’s tone alternated between applause for the work of the committee and a sense of agitated concern that it seemed to be happening at a sudden pace.

Some expressed concern about comments that if the land wasn’t used for this purpose that the SHC could sell it to raise funds to build affordable housing elsewhere. There was mention of Connecticut General Statute 8-30g that allows developers leeway around local zoning denials if a community’s affordable housing stock is less than 10% of its total stock, a category that fits Salisbury’s situation.

About seven years ago,  residents voted down a proposal by the Women’s Institute for Housing and Economic Development for a 30-unit housing complex on the site, due to fears about a significant encroachment on the Rail Trail. The current plan is scaled down.

As the hour-plus long meeting came to a conclusion, one resident asked everyone to see the bigger picture, appealing for them to look at the impact of a lack of affordable housing on an aging community because young people can’t afford to live in Salisbury.