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02/07/2018 08:38 AMDawn Parker learned the news the way people in the 21st century learn the latest: on the computer. An email informed her that the Housing Action Committee of the Shoreline Basic Needs Task Force, which she co-chairs along with Lauren Ashe, had won an award from the Connecticut Chapter of the American Planning Association for its work advocating for affordable housing. The planning association is made of town and regional planners from throughout the state.
“I didn’t even know we had been nominated,” Parker said. “But I am so excited that our work has been recognized.”
The Shoreline Basic Needs Task Force, of which the Housing Action Committee is a part, is a coalition of community groups focused on finding ways to increase self-sufficiency in at-risk segments of the local population. The task force operates in 10 communities: Chester, Deep River, Essex, Old Saybrook, Clinton, Westbrook, Madison, Killingworth, Lyme, and Old Lyme. Parker is a Chester resident and Ashe lives in Old Saybrook.
The Housing Advocacy Committee works with town planners to recognize the need for affordable housing in local plans of conservation and development. Affordable housing’s goal, Parker pointed out, is to provide livable housing for people who are already part of their communities, working in town but either unable to find housing within their means or living in substandard accommodations.
The acronym ALICE—for Assets Limited, Income Constrained, Employed—is one that is often used to describe the situation.
“There are more people living on the edge in our communities than many people realize,” she said.
What “affordable” actually means varies from community to community as it is calculated on a formula using local incomes, but in shoreline areas, the formula often means what is technically affordable is practically unaffordable for those who need the housing most.
The need for reasonably priced housing, Parker emphasized, is critical all along the age spectrum from young families to senior citizens, now living on retirement incomes, who would like to move out of the larger homes to smaller and more affordable premises.
“They would move if they could, but there is no place for them to move to,” Parker said.
She pointed out that local institutions like volunteer fire departments and ambulance services depend not only on longtime members, but also on recruiting new volunteers from among younger residents to keep their numbers at full strength.
Parker described the outlook that she advocated for towns as “planful.” Her definition includes looking at areas like zoning regulations to provide for denser housing and smaller residences efficiently built on smaller lots. In addition, zoning regulations could be changed so that it would be easier to rent apartments in private houses, sometimes called in-law apartments, since they were technically restricted to extended family members.
She pointed out that popular computer lodging services like Airbnb often remove suitable apartments from the long-term rental market to instead be used for short-term stays.
Over and over in town surveys, Parker noted, respondents indicate that the need for affordable housing should be a municipal priority. The benefits, she added, are not limited to those who need affordably priced housing. The community as a whole benefits.
“A healthy community needs to have affordable housing,” Parker said.
To find out more about the Housing Action Committee, contact Dawn Parker at dmparker@theconnectioninc.org.