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12/17/2018 11:00 PMThere have been years of discussions and studies, but now town officials are ready to put the vision for a new affordable housing development on paper and out to bid. At the Nov. 19 Board of Selectman (BOS) meeting, the board authorized that a request for proposals (RFP) be drafted and released early in the New Year.
Guilford began looking into developing more affordable housing in town a few years ago after a survey showed a lack of affordable housing for all ages was a big concern among residents. The local Housing for Economic Development Planning (HEDP) Committee began to look at possible solutions.
The definition of affordable can vary. For Guilford, where the median household income hovers in the $98,000 to $99,000 range, a home is considered affordable if a household with an annual income of approximately $76,000 can pay up to 30 percent of its monthly income for monthly housing costs; according to state guidelines, that household could afford $1,980 monthly.
Two grants from the state allowed the committee to identify several properties in Guilford that could be used for affordable development and then conduct a feasibility study. Of the eight sites identified, the committee moved forward with a parcel known as the Woodruff or Drive Way property located near the train station across from the Town Garage.
To conduct the feasibility study, the town hired Patriquin Architects to take a closer look at the Woodruff/Driveway property including looking at the physical capability of the project on the site in regard to things like sewage disposal, the potential number of units on the property, permitting needs, preliminary designs, and discussing the project with neighbors and the wider community. The town owns the property.
The finding is that the property is feasible for this kind of development. Town Planner George Kral said he and town counsel were approved by the BOS to draft the RFP for a potential development and developer. The plan is to send out the RFP right after the first of the year.
“Hopefully we will get some good proposals and we will give people probably a month or so to prepare them and so, come winter, hopefully we will have some good proposals to review and then move forward,” he said.
The RFP will include details like the land price as well as any other conditions that would govern the final development proposal. Since the property is town-owned land, the town has the power to decide how the land is sold or leased to keep the project affordable.
Kral said respondents to the RFP need to have experience with navigating federal/state tax credit and grant programs because it is an affordable project.
“We are looking for developers that have experience with this type of project because the developer is in all likelihood also going to be the owner and manager of the housing once it is built,” he said. “We are looking for experienced affordable housing developers who know how to go through the grant and tax credit programs because that will be key to making it viable.”
The property is about nine acres and bordered by Old Whitfield Street, Driveway, and Stone House Lane. The property is town-owned and currently has the nonprofit Guilford Day Care Center, the Guilford Food Bank, which is managed by volunteers, and a small park on the land, none of which would be affected by the potential development.
The middle of the property can handle the septic requirements. Kral said the consultant has three models that provide anywhere from 15 to 20 housing units across a potential maximum of five buildings at this time. The development would not be reserved or exclusive to a specific age demographic and the hope is to create some two-bedroom and even three-bedroom units that would be more suitable to households with children.
As this process continues to move forward, HEDP Chair and Selectman Sandy Ruoff said there are plenty of approval steps still to come and there will be lots of opportunity for the public to weigh in. She also previously said it’s important to remember what affordable means in the context of this development and Guilford.
“These are the people we want to keep in town—our beginning teachers, firefighters, single-parent families,” she said. “These are people who have the means to pay rent; they are just getting a little bit below market price on the rent. That is really the only break.”