The Yarmouth Town Council voted Oct. 17 to amend the Affordable Housing Committee’s charter so that the body is less focused solely on creating affordable housing for households whose earnings fall between 50% and 80% of area median income.

That means the group’s work will support housing for a wider range of households. The charter amendments struck out a line noting that this income band was the initial focus of the Affordable Housing Committee.

The committee was motivated to make this change, in part, to align with programs like MaineHousing’s Affordable Homeownership Program, which is geared toward developing housing stock that would be accessible to households making up to 120% of area median income, according to Director of Planning and Development Erin Zwirko. (Current area median income for a family of four in the Greater Portland area is $127,500, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.)

The charter changes also direct the committee, which is advisory in nature, to work closely with the town’s Economic Development Advisory Board and the Local Development Corp. to leverage financial resources to create more affordable housing.

Zwirko said that, for example, these changes could empower the Affordable Housing Committee and the Economic Development Advisory Board to work on a rental assistance program for Yarmouth that could support households beyond those that make between 50% and 80% of AMI (which would be subject to Town Council approval).

At that same Oct. 17 meeting, the council also voted to increase the number of members who can serve on the committee from seven to nine. Zwirko said the group is seeking more people with expertise in housing issues to join the committee.

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The committee is currently chaired by Jay Waterman, and also includes Val Chamberlain, Amy Dresser, Leigh Kirchner, Eric Landry, Chris Slader, and one seat is vacant.

The Affordable Housing Committee was created by the Town Council back in 2020 to tackle issues related to housing affordability and supply. In 2022, the committee delivered an assessment of the town’s housing affordability situation to the Town Council.

“The past two comprehensive plans have put a strong emphasis on being a community where many types of households can afford to live. However, over time the range of housing options have become more limited, in part because of the zoning ordinance. Limited to no action has been made on the goals identified over nearly 30 years,” the Affordable Housing Committee wrote in the report.

The report offered data about Yarmouth’s housing market, highlighting, for example, that the price of a single-family home in Yarmouth jumped from $493,730 in 2018 to $691,204 in 2021, and that fewer than 10% of Yarmouth’s single-family homes were affordable to people making 40% of area median income or below in 2020 and 2021.

The report also outlined a number of management, financial and zoning recommendations. Some of those zoning recommendations were addressed by the passage of L.D. 2003, a 2022 state housing law that prompted municipalities to amend their zoning code to clear away barriers to housing production. Additionally, Yarmouth recently enacted a new comprehensive plan that recommends further amending the zoning code in this direction, Zwirko said.

“We could potentially look at reducing the minimum lot size in our medium-density residential district, which is the primarily residential district that’s in the core of the village,” she said. Amending the ordinance to reduce minimum lot size in the town’s growth area, of which that district is a part, is one of the comprehensive plan’s priority action items.

In March 2024, the Affordable Housing Committee put forward a production goal of building 431 units of affordable housing over the next 10 years, which the Town Council adopted earlier this year. That means approximately 43 units of housing need to be created each year.

Asked where the town is in achieving that goal for next year, Zwirko said that the town this fall put out a request for potential development partners to pursue an affordable housing project on town-owned land adjacent to the Town Hall and is likewise eyeing a town-owned property off Sligo Road for development. However, the projects are in very preliminary stages and won’t be before the Planning Board any time soon, she said.

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