SOUTHAMPTON – A community meeting is scheduled for Sept. 22 to go over baseline data with Southampton residents involving the town’s desired Housing Production Plan.

The meeting, which will be on Zoom from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., will be one of two community meetings that plan on discussing and presenting the full master plan for affordable housing production in Southampton. The goal of the first meeting is to capture some initial sentiment from the community. The second community meeting, which does not have a date yet, will go over specific strategies for the production plan.

A work group has been created to initiate this housing production plan with the hope that the group will meet six times before the end of the year to figure out specific strategies for the plan. The group includes Southampton Planning Board members Dan LaValley and Sarah Stine, Housing Authority Chair Jim Seney, Housing Authority members Sierra Simmons and Janet Cain, Ted Harvey – the deputy director of community development at the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC) – and Ken Comia, the senior land use planner in the Land Use and Environment section at the PVPC. The goal of this group is to create a full housing production plan for the town by December.

Comia explained during a June 23 meeting that Southampton should develop a five-year plan to create affordable housing in town based on Massachusetts General Law. Included in that plan would be a comprehensive housing needs assessment, goals and implementation strategies. Needs assessment specifically will involve looking at the town’s zoning bylaws to see what type of housing is allowed, while constraints could include something like environmental impacts.

The group will consider Southampton’s Open Space & Recreation Plan, the Master Plan Implementation Status Report that was updated from the 2013 version, community meeting input, and survey results from the town’s Community Engagement Survey to inform how the group approaches this in the near future.

“What we’re going to be doing in these initial meetings is talking about [Southampton’s] current baseline,” said Comia. The group will also be working with the most current set of census data they have available until the 2020 data comes out officially. According to Comia, those updated numbers may come out in September.

The working group meetings will be used to discuss drafts, specifically regarding needs assessment and constraints identified. Later along the way, the group will start discussing specific goals for the plan.

“This will hopefully allow [Southampton] to address housing in a way that will be mindful of developing housing in that is both affordable and you’re not going to create too much housing,” said Comia, who added that a 40B project is something the town should avoid since that method would mainly be out of the town’s hands.

“The housing production plan is pretty prescribed,” said Harvey. “There are certain things that have to be included…for the needs assessment, it’s basically the most up-to-date as possible.”

According to Comia, a master plan for housing was originally implemented in 2013. There was an updated implementation status report completed in 2020-2021 by the Master Plan Implementation Committee based on prioritization and a collection of community discussions.

The plans highlight mid-term and long-term goals for more affordable housing in Southampton. A long-term example included supporting the creation of a local land trust to assist with acquiring land for future affordable housing. Other long-term goals included establishing a local historic preservation trust fund and/or a municipal preservation plan. Other chapters like housing, economic development, historic and cultural resources, open space and natural resources, mobility, public services and facilities, energy, and land use were also adopted within the 2013 plan.

A community engagement survey was also conducted between June and September of 2020 to identify town needs. Eight hundred ninety-six residents between the ages of 19 and 80-plus responded to the survey. When asked what residents believe Southampton should look like by 2040, the majority said a rural residential community with minimal commercial development. Eighty-three percent said there was already sufficient housing options in Southampton.

Despite this, the respondents felt that there could be more options for senior-assisted living and low to moderate income housing. 37.4 percent of respondents said that owning a house in the future would meet their housing needs, while 36 percent said that they do not require different housing in the future. The full results regarding housing can be found on the town’s website.

“I think what will be new to this particular process in mine working with the community is looking at environmental constraints and presenting a map of that, and also discussing with this committee of possible sightings for affordable housing,” said Comia.

Comia told Reminder Publishing that there were no changes to the master plan during their second meeting as a working group. A media release will be sent out in the coming weeks to encourage more participation in the community meeting.