Sudbury, MA

Next roundtable: Monday, October 6. Questions for the housing entities can be sent to pcd@sudbury.ma.us.

The short version:

• The town’s first Housing Roundtable convened days after Select Board member Dan Carty publicly urged residents to attend, and explained his vote against the Housing Production Plan: Sudbury already ranks high in the state on affordable housing, he argued, and the issue is regional, not local.
• The meeting put numbers on both sides. Sudbury’s 11.88% on the state’s subsidized housing inventory includes nearly 300 unrestricted market-rate apartments; actually price-restricted units come to about 7%, and the 2030 census is projected to pull the official figure to about 10.6%, near the 10% line that shields the town from unwanted 40B development.
• The sharpest exchange: a resident pressed officials on whether the Housing Authority will honor Article 39, the town-meeting vote that put $500,000 toward preserving its single-family homes, and was told the Authority is a state-chartered entity that doesn’t answer to town meeting.
• Land notes: Housing Trust chair Carmine Gentile – also Sudbury’s state representative – announced the state broke ground that morning on the Marlboro crime lab, and floated the soon-to-be-vacant Sudbury lab site on Horse Pond Road as a possible spot for affordable housing. Separately, a resident flagged that deed restrictions on roughly six acres at Fairbank Circle expired in 2020.

The Sudbury Housing Trust convened the town’s first Housing Roundtable on June 9 at the Goodnow Library, featuring presentations and open discussion among the Trust, the Housing Authority, the Regional Housing Services Office, planning staff, and residents. The stated purpose: affordable housing as a concept, not specific projects. It got specific anyway.

The question on the table. Writing on his campaign page two days earlier, Carty had urged residents to attend and laid out his case: Sudbury ranks 26th of 351 Massachusetts municipalities by his count, has met its 40B threshold and MBTA Communities obligation, built a 40R development, adopted inclusionary zoning — and the Housing Production Plan’s math implies roughly 200 more affordable units, which he opposes pursuing while neighboring towns lag. “Affordable housing is not a local issue,” he wrote.

The roundtable had data ready on that question. Presenting the local-preference numbers, the regional housing office’s director flagged one figure for Carty’s benefit, stressing she didn’t mean to make light of it: 41 percent of the town’s affordable units went to households with a Sudbury connection. Both sides can claim that figure: a substantial local benefit under preference rules that legally apply only to initial sales and leases, or a majority of units going to households with no prior tie to town. Carty, attending in person, kept his own comments brief and fiscal: Community Preservation Act purchases aren’t free money, and the CPC borrows too, “left pocket, right pocket.” When a resident put the underlying question to the room – if 10 percent isn’t a ceiling, what is? – officials offered no number. “Maybe that’s what this roundtable is for,” one said.

The numbers. Sudbury sits at 11.88% on the state’s inventory, up from about 4% in 1990, and officials said plainly that one of the big projects behind the climb, Cold Brook Crossing, was a deliberate strategy to stay above the 10% “safe harbor” through the 2030 census. But of the 775 inventory units, 297 are unrestricted market-rate apartments counted under a state rule crediting whole developments when a quarter of their units are affordable; actually restricted units are 478, about 7% of the town’s housing. The 2030 census is expected to pull the official figure to roughly 10.6%. The Housing Production Plan’s 200-unit goal is what it would take to make actual affordable housing 10%; the planning director called it aspirational, with nothing of that scale proposed in a septic-only town. On the ground: the Trust’s first new ownership units in a decade are coming (two or three, capped near $357,000 for income-qualified buyers), the Housing Authority’s waitlists run to the thousands, and about a quarter of Sudbury households spend more than 30% of income on housing.

Town meeting versus the Authority. A resident raised this spring’s Article 39, a citizen petition, passed at annual town meeting, directing $500,000 toward preserving the Housing Authority’s single-family houses as single-family; and asked how that squares with the Authority converting its last single-family units into duplexes. The planning director’s answer was structural: the Authority is a separate, state-chartered entity whose board answers to the state, not town meeting. A resident replied that an entity that takes town money (specifically CPA funds, and Article 39’s appropriation) can’t claim full independence from the town’s voice. The exchange grew tense before the room was steered back. The Authority’s own account: it can’t afford land at Sudbury prices, conversions are the only path it has, and thousands are waiting.

Water, repeatedly. Residents returned again and again to supply: the region is in drought, Maynard has effectively run out of water, and Wayland was denied a Quabbin connection it is now spending heavily to pursue. Sudbury’s water district is a separate entity and wasn’t in the room; organizers committed to inviting it to future roundtables.

Two parcels to watch. Trust chair Carmine Gentile, who also represents Sudbury in the state House, opened the meeting by noting that the state had broken ground that very morning on a $200 million crime lab in Marlboro. When it opens in about two years, the state’s Sudbury lab site on Horse Pond Road becomes a candidate for purchase and redevelopment, and Gentile floated one possibility: “maybe there will be a mix of affordable senior and or family housing” built there, at “nominal cost to the town” through a state program. No proposal exists; the site does not appear in the town’s Housing Production Plan. And in the evening’s final comment, a resident pointed to Fairbank Circle, where he said deed restrictions on six-plus acres expired in 2020 – an opportunity, he suggested, for entities saying they’re looking for land.

The second Housing Roundtable is scheduled for October 6.