LOWELL — In June, the City Council debated whether Lowell can grow its way out of its housing crisis by building more affordable units. In a closely divided vote, the answer was “no” as the body rejected the administration’s housing production plan.
The fallout from that vote was discussed between The Sun’s editorial team and the administration of City Manager Tom Golden during a Sept. 3 meeting. The conversation was held after Lowell was recognized as the first Frontrunner City for Urban Transformation in the United States during a signing ceremony that took place at the United Nations Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland on Aug. 25.
Frontrunner status allows Lowell to harness public, private and philanthropic capital with the goal to create inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable and tech-enabled communities. Golden described it as “transformative for the future of the city.”
Lowell’s partnership with the U.N.-led organization, the Urban Economy Forum, has the potential to unlock significant monetary resources and talent for the city.
Six councilors voted against the housing production plan at the June 10 council meeting: Corey Belanger, John Descoteaux, Erik Gitschier, Rita Mercier, Corey Robinson and Kim Scott. Wayne Jenness, Vesna Nuon, Mayor Dan Rourke and Vice Mayor Paul Ratha Yem voted yes.
But Assistant City Manager and Director of Planning & Development Yovani Baez-Rose said the HPP process informed the time-sensitive and detailed work required to complete the city’s application profile for the Frontrunner City program, which will be presented before the UEF in October during the annual conference in Toronto.
“Lowell was never in a position where we were required to have a housing production plan because we exceeded the amount of affordable housing in the city,” she said.
Lowell’s HPP was approved by the city’s Planning Board last August, and referred out by the City Council Housing Subcommittee in March. The plan is a complementary component of Lowell Forward, a 20-year strategic roadmap of the community’s plan for the city’s growth and development.
“We felt like while we had the community conversations that were required of the Lowell Forward Plan that it made a lot of sense to gather information about housing-specific issues,” Baez-Rose said. “And that’s still valuable information.”
The housing production plan represented almost two years of discussions with the city’s land-use boards, 68 neighborhood focus groups, 850 survey responses and input from other community stakeholders such as the Northern Middlesex Council of Governments, a regional planning agency whose member communities include the towns of Billerica, Chelmsford, Dracut, Dunstable, Pepperell, Tewksbury and Westford.
Traditionally, the state focuses on affordable and subsidized housing in its funding decisions and NMCOG’s data showed a continuing need for that housing mix in Lowell.
“There’s a large number of people in Lowell who pay more than half their income on housing,” Housing & Economic Development Program Manager Chris Hayes told the Planning Board last August. “To meet that need would require additional subsidized housing.”
According to data in the HPP, Lowell’s housing costs don’t line up with the income of working people in the city. Residents who live in Lowell’s central neighborhoods wanted more ownership opportunities in those areas like what’s available in the Acre with Acre Crossing.
“They want an increase in the amount of opportunities to buy a house in their own neighborhood,” Hayes said.
The plan projected that by 2030 at least 3,150 more year-round housing units, and 800 or more net new subsidized housing units, would be constructed.
Housing is a key component of the Frontrunner City Initiative and city leaders said major investors have already been in touch to discuss development projects in parcels such as the Hamilton Canal Innovation District off Dutton Street, the Jackson-Appleton-Middlesex streets neighborhood, the former District and Superior courthouse properties, the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center parcel off Warren Street, and the Gallagher Transportation Center off Thorndike Street.
The neighborhood participation in developing both the Lowell Forward Plan and the housing production plan impressed the UEF and its global partners.
“The Lowell Forward Plan checked a lot of boxes of the U.N. goals — sustainability and resiliency, community engagement, economic development,” Baez-Rose said. We pushed a lot of information to them and what we were up to as we developed our profile. The tenets of the Lowell Forward Plan and the housing production plan are in that profile. It couldn’t have been better timing.”