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Madison Affordable Housing Committee Looks to Launch Survey as Issues Come into Focus

In just under a year, Madison will be required to adopt an affordable housing plan. Before then, the town’s Affordable Housing Committee is aiming to study, understand, and increase affordable housing developments in the town.

The committee is planning to put out a survey in the coming months, and has been interviewing community and town leaders as it has already begun identifying wide-spread and urgent issues with a lack of housing in the area related to businesses, senior living, and equity.

Earlier this year, First Selectman Peggy Lyons named a committee to begin working on the plan, and with 12 months to go, some of the major issues and questions around the always-controversial issue of housing are starting to crystallize. The South Central Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG) is providing consultants and helping put together a survey for towns to assess how residents feel about affordable housing and the issues they have encountered.

Peter Roos, a member of the committee who also serves on the Planning & Zoning Commission, said there was “disappointment” when members saw SCRCOG’s draft of the survey.

“I don’t think it got the whys and the wheres,” Roos said. “Those kinds of base-level questions that you really need to find out and understand.”

Just getting an idea of what people know or care about affordable housing, and whether they can afford housing in Madison were priorities for the committee to learn, according to Roos, but were not the kinds of questions used on this document.

Heather Noblin, who works with Madison Senior Services and is a liaison on the committee, said that they are in “a holding pattern” waiting to see how SCRCOG reacts to feedback.

The committee is considering writing its own survey, Roos said, while still hoping to use other SCRCOG resources. It also plans to use focus groups, and is working with the E.C. Scranton Library to provide spaces for talks by experts or other initiatives, potentially even setting up a temporary kiosk for residents to chat with a committee member.

“The support the library is offering us is substantial in terms of time and manpower,” Roos said. “We have a very, very helpful partner in the library.”

The issues with a lack of affordable housing, though, are obvious and are causing alarm across sectors and demographics, with committee members saying everyone from local business owners to seniors have encountered problems related to a tremendous lack of diverse housing options in town.

Committee member Andrea Aron said she had spoken to representatives of senior living spaces in town including Concord Meadows, who had said they have people who have been on wait lists for more than a decade and applications from all over the country as seniors search desperately to downsize to something more affordable.

“They all felt very strongly about the need for affordable housing, multiple-unit dwellings,” she said.

Currently, 198 people are on the waiting list for an apartment, according to Aron, with some people having put their names down in 2007.

Noblin said that in her work with seniors in town, there is a tremendous and diverse need for housing from seniors, with some looking to downsize and purchase a house, others looking for an apartment or an assisted living community, and everything in between.

“It’s incredibly difficult, not just in Madison but across the state,” she said. “Some senior housing or affordable housing locations don’t even have their waiting lists open...they get so long, they have to close their waiting list.”

Seniors who come to her often have to call every individual town or agency and get on as many waiting lists as possible, according to Noblin, and she has proactively encouraged people to get on as many lists as possible if they even think they might need or qualify for affordable housing.

Aron also spoke to a manager at Stop & Shop in Madison, she said, who blamed a lack of affordable housing at least partially for difficulties in hiring and maintaining staff. Employees who live in town would be more of a consistent group to be able to hold onto these jobs, the manager told her, as he struggles to find workers.

Roos said he had spoken to a fellow Planning & Zoning Commission member, John Mathers, who manages the Madison Beach Hotel andexpressed similar complaints, saying that his business had canceled meals or events due to a lack of staffing.

“That’s a different issue than affordable housing, but the two kind of go hand in hand. You’re never going to get the people here [in Madison] if you don’t have affordable housing,” Roos said. “If you want people to work in your hotel, they have to be able to live close by.”

Another committee member, Rosalyn Fahey, said Madison Sea House had a similar problem, unable to be open more than four days a week. Employees are actually shuttled back and forth between the Sea House and South Line Bistro to fill in staffing gaps, which has the same owner, according to Fahey.

The pandemic is certainly part of the equation, committee members agreed, but for towns without affordable housing, labor problems seem to be exacerbated.

“It’s a tough time right now,” Fahey said.