Updated March 27th.
Local boards across the Vineyard are starting to create a town-by-town plan to address housing issues and their next step is hearing from the Island community directly.
Planning and select boards, along with affordable housing committees, have been meeting jointly this week, including in Edgartown on Tuesday, March 25th, where members outlined goals for the creation of what has been referred to as a Housing Production Plan. The idea is to formulate a more in-depth look at the specific housing needs of the Island, which will include a five-year action plan.
The effort will include a series of meetings in each town beginning in early April.
Planners with Higham-based Barrett Planning Group, who are helping to spearhead the initiative along with the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, say the production plan is a holistic approach to addressing housing, which they acknowledge will take time, municipal effort, and extensive community input.
“Planning for housing needs… [gives] the opportunity to have a process to be able to discuss and document what you think the range of needs are in your community — not only the needs that perhaps the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities cares about — but the needs of people you care about,” owner and managing director of Barrett Planning Group, Judi Barrett said.
“You all live somewhere. You all live in a home. And I think you can probably appreciate how much housing influences the sense of community in a place,” Barrett said.
This new iteration will be a jump off from the MVC’s 2024 Housing Needs Assessment, which outlined various obstacles the community is facing on its housing goals, and more specifically detailed ways updating zoning could make a difference.
According to that assessment, about 40 percent of Islanders are experiencing cost burdens due to high housing and utility costs, referring to a data collection from 2022. The housing assessment highlighted a need for more reputable employee housing, more affordable homes and units for rent, apt intervention for the rising unhoused population, and better zoning to facilitate these changes.
Counties that have completed production plans have been more likely to receive grant funding from state or federal agencies in the past, according to Alexis Lanzillotta, principal planner for the Barrett Planning Group, who presented at the Edgartown meeting this past Tuesday.
“A housing production plan is a process that allows you to understand — through the needs assessment — the kinds of homes that your town needs to meet the housing needs of the people who live there and the people who want to live there,” Lanzillotta said. “It is also a process for determining what stands in the way of addressing those needs.”
The MVC, Barrett Planning Group, and select boards from each town will be holding meetings in April to hear from the community. Locals are encouraged by the groups to discuss the areas where affordable housing may benefit them and their experience with housing on the Island.
The meeting dates are as follows:
Tisbury: April 10th, from 5:00-6:30pm
Edgartown: April 16th, from 5:30-7:00pm
Chilmark: April 16th, from 6:00-7:30pm
West Tisbury: April 17th, from 5:00-6:30pm
Aquinnah: April 17th, from 4:00-5:30pm
Oak Bluffs: April 30th, from 6:00-7:30pm
More details about the meetings can be found here.
Updated to reflect it is the planning and select boards, and affordable housing committees, in addition to the Barrett Planning Group, meeting to create the housing production plan.
