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Salem Affordable Housing Trust Board Meeting

Posted on
September 20th at 2:57pm.

The Salem Affordable Housing Trust held a Board Meeting on September 13th to discuss the Board’s priorities to address the need for more affordable housing in Salem. The priorities were broken into 4 categories: Higher Urgency-Higher Impact, Lower Urgency-Higher Impact, Higher Urgency-Lower Impact, and Lower Urgency-Lower Impact. Please see a summary of each priority (by category) below:

Higher Urgency-Higher Impact

  • Adopt an Urban Center Housing Tax Increment Financing (UCH-TIF) or another tax incentive program to promote affordable and mixed-income housing development.
  • Consider purchasing right of first refusal from current owners.
  • Support Condominium Conversion ordinance (home-rule petition filed in 2022).
  • Consider rent stabilization or anti-gauging programs for renters.
  • Incentivize property owners to keep rents affordable by offering property tax abatements to owners who rent to low-and moderate-income households.

Lower Urgency-Higher Impact

  • Consider rezoning options in transitional areas with accompanying considerations for transit to support denser development.
  • Adopt zoning amendments to promote small efficiency units including Single Room Occupancy (SRO) housing.
  • Investigate programs for displacement compensation for renters and homeowners.
  • Investigate metrics to create Salem-specific capping of rent increases for local action units.

Higher Urgency-Lower Impact

  • Study residential parking minimums.
  • Study potential benefits of revising residential dimensional standards to better match development patterns.

Lower Impact-Lower Urgency

  • Consider creating a permanent Housing Stabilization Office.
  • Consider issuing municipal bonds and/or bonding Community Preservation Act funds for affordable housing production.

Priorities identified in the Salem Housing Roadmap to begin in 2023 include: Rent Stabilization programs, property tax abatements to owners who rent to low-and moderate-income households, rezoning in transitional neighborhoods, zoning amendments to support SROs, and bonding for affordable housing production.

Updates will be posted on the NSR blog.