40B unsuccessful at affordable housing

To the Editor:

In the Nov. 16 issue of The Community Journal in a Letter to the Editor, Colin Balogh laments that, "Once again the opponents of 40B are marshaling their forces." These forces amount to a group of concerned citizens banding together in an attempt to provide affordable housing in their communities while maintaining their quality of life. Without the impediments caused by 40B, these goals will become attainable. Developers and their well-funded lobbyists have been marshaling their forces and expanding the 40B law almost since its inception 38 years ago.

Mr. Balogh thinks that opponents of 40B do not understand that this law was designed primarily to address the housing needs of those earning 80 percent or less of the median income in the town where the development is targeted. Most of them do understand, and also know that if there is any benefit it falls mostly to those in the high end of the seventy to eighty percent bracket. Below that loan approval gets impossible and other programs must be used.

He regards 40B's achievement of this goal as modestly successful. Dismal is a more accurate assessment. After 38 years, 40B has failed to effectively produce affordable housing. Out of 50 states we now rank 49th in our stock of affordable housing. The Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD) has produced 38,000 affordable units in the past 38 years and not all of them through 40B.

Even if you use the 38,000 number and divide them by the 38-year history of 40B, you end up with 1,000 units per year in 351 communities. This means that 40B has produced fewer than three units of affordable housing per town per year. This is because 40B allows three-quarters to four-fifths of the units to be built as high-end market rate, thereby adding a staggering burden of infrastructure cost to the targeted town. Most towns can subsidize three units per year for less money than subsidizing all these high-end units.

To make matters worse, more than 20,000 affordable units will soon revert back to market rate, because the deed restrictions that make them affordable will expire. We simply do not need to subsidize high-end market rate housing in order to keep productive well-educated workers. If we combine the building of a vibrant local economy with proper planning for our legitimate housing needs; we will provide a much better outcome for everyone involved.

Josh Schonborg,

Westminster