BRPC Committee Mulls Input on State Housing Plan
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Berkshire Regional Planning Commission's Regional Issues Committee brainstormed representation for the county in upcoming housing listening sessions.
"The administration is coming up with what they like to tout is their first housing plan that's been done for Massachusetts, and this is one of a number of various initiatives that they've done over the last several months," Executive Director Thomas Matuszko said.
"But it seems like they are intent upon doing something and taking comments from the different regions across the state and then turning that into policy so here is our chance to really speak up on that."
The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities and members of the Housing Advisory Council will host multiple listening sessions around the Commonwealth to hear input on the Healey-Driscoll administration's five-year strategic statewide housing plan.
One will be held at Berkshire Community College on May 15 at 2 p.m.
One of Matuszko's biggest concerns is the overall age of the housing stock in Berkshire County.
"And that the various rehab programs that are out there are inadequate and they are too cumbersome to manipulate through," he explained.
"And so I think that there needs to be a greater emphasis not on new housing development only but housing retention and how we can do that in a meaningful way. It's going to be pretty important."
Non-commission member Andrew Groff, Williamstown's community developer director, added that the bureaucracies need to coordinate themselves and "stop creating well-intended policies like the new energy code that actually work against all of this other stuff."
Kent Lew, also a non-commission member and outgoing chair of the Washington Select Board, said the opportunities for rural communities like Washington are not so much for new growth and housing but for preserving the current stock.
"There's a lot of aging families and no money to go into fixing them so all we have is deteriorating housing stock and nobody wants to see it all just torn down and try to start over," he said.
"We need to invest in what we have. I think that will help rejuvenate our communities as well, which leads to new growth as well because when you have a community that doesn't look like it's in decline, you do find that new growth comes in. People are inclined to move in and do some new construction."
Chair and Stockbridge alternate Christine Rasmussen added that if homes could be made more weather-tight, there would be less of a problem with heating and cooling costs and would reduce emissions.
"I think that if we can tie those things into their plans for addressing climate change it could be helpful," she said.
Matuszko recommended that the committee advocate for Berkshire County to be included in the season community designation. He supports two levels of designation: a broader countywide one and a designation and the option for communities to opt in if they meet criteria.
Seasonal communities depend on seasonally-based tourism and experience wide fluctuations in population and employment at different times of the year. The designation would create a framework for designating communities with substantial seasonal variations in employment and housing needs.
"It seems to me that we don't typically think of a place like Pittsfield as a seasonal designation yet but it's so important to and has some of the impacts that are being faced in South County," he said.
"A lot of the labor for the hospitality industry lives in Pittsfield and so it seems that that that connection has to be recognized somehow, in some way and that's what my thinking is with these two levels of designation."
Community Planning Program Manager CJ Hoss said that it makes sense to get the designation for the entire county realizing that certain areas are impacted. He pointed out that some communities may not have the infrastructure to create a lot of new homes so places like Pittsfield and Great Barrington should be involved.
"The couple of things that I see that are missing here that I've had some discussions with some of our colleagues in the county is it needs to have some type of a broader consideration, not specifically related necessarily to housing only but things like transit," Matuszko said.
"In fact, our employees that are serving the cultural institutions or the hospitality institutions are living in Pittsfield but they can't get down to Great Barrington or Stockbridge to work. That's not good either and that's the problem that we have in Berkshire County."
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