The recent public objections to a 72-apartment condominium project for the over-55 set proposed at the foot of Mount Sugarloaf in South Deerfield have missed the mark.
There were the usual Not-In-My-Backyard arguments about runoff and drainage and traffic. But, as the Deerfield Planning Board chairman noted at a preliminary meeting this week, the town’s zoning bylaws don’t allow the board to reject the 36 duplexes out of hand.
Although the board does have the responsibility and authority to regulate the particulars of the development, like placement of roads and adequacy of drainage, the landowners have the right to use their land for housing, whether neighbors will like it or not.
Other residents argued against the project on other grounds, saying the condos, intended to be marketed as senior housing, but at market rates, will not provide needed affordable senior housing for long-time Deerfield residents living on modest means. Instead, the critique goes, the development will just attract newcomers with bigger budgets. But that’s a specious criticism.
It would be wonderful if developer Mark Wightman, a Deerfield resident himself, would build a project that could be sold to lower income, long-time residents, and earn him a return on investment. If it were possible to do so without government help, perhaps he would. But we haven’t seen any truly affordable, low-income housing built in recent times without local, state or federal support, in the form of in-kind help like free land or construction and rental subsidies.
Of course, those who back Wightman’s plan are looking into the opposite end of the fiscal telescope, seeing a development that generates tax dollars once it’s built, not one requiring tax dollars to be built.
So, to oppose a market-rate condo project because the town really needs a low-income seniors project isn’t fair. Perhaps that complaint should be directed at those who could bring affordable senior housing to, say, the town-owned land in the center of the village at the former Oxford Pickle factory site. Perhaps those who truly want cheap senior housing should help their local and regional officials find those subsidies or grants.
One critic, Steven Pistrich of South Deerfield, has also said the 22 acres between Mountain Road, Sugarloaf Street and the state’s Mount Sugarloaf Reservation, should be protected as conservation land because it abuts the mountain. Also not a bad idea. But also something that would require acquiring, at the least, the development rights to the land. Who’s volunteering to help local officials or regional land trusts make that happen?
As an old city planner once observed: if you want to control what a painting looks like, you need to own the canvas. And that takes money, too.