Salem Revisits Inclusionary Zoning

Salem is revisiting the implementation of an inclusionary zoning ordinance, which was not passed by the City Council in 2019. The Salem Affordable Housing Trust will serve as the project advisory committee and will engage with the City Council and Planning Department beginning in September. The project goals include:

• Conduct a feasibility analysis to ensure the affordability requirements do not unduly disincentivize development
• Ensure the inclusionary zoning proposal is not in conflict with the MBTA Community Guidelines, also referred to as 3A
• Draft inclusionary zoning ordinance for consideration from the City Council

Salem has already begun the feasibility analysis, which will be documented for the purposes of the MBTA Community Guidelines. 3A allows a community to establish an affordability requirement of 10% of the number units built to be affordable at 80% AMI. The state does allow deeper affordability requirements if the economic feasibility study shows that development would be viable with deeper affordability requirements.

In 2019, the Salem City Council considered an inclusionary zoning ordinance which would have required 10% of the units in a new development to be affordable at 60% AMI. There was no in-lieu of payment option, and all affordable units would have had to of been built on site. Developers were offered a density bonus of 25% of the number of housing units that can be built on the property, and eased parking requirements.

There will be public outreach efforts beginning in August, with the goal of the Council voting on the inclusionary zoning ordinance by the end of the year.

Updates will be posted on the NSR blog.