Housing Production Plan Underway
Submitted by Maureen George, Westford Resident
Westford has begun preparing its Housing Production Plan (HPP) for 2027 – 2031. The goal of the HPP is to assess Westford’s present and anticipated affordable housing needs across a wide range of incomes. The HPP seeks to establish practical strategies for three district tracks: housing stabilization and emergency assistance, affordable rental housing, and affordable homeownership.
Among these three tracks, affordable homeownership offers a distinctive opportunity. It provides secure shelter, greater control over one’s surroundings, residential stability, a lasting stake in the community, and the opportunity to build some measure of financial security.
The affordable homeowner makes a down payment, assumes a mortgage, pays taxes and insurance, and maintinas the property. But here’s the flaw. For market-rate homeowners, money spent on maintenance helps preserve the property’s market value, and imporvements may increase it. Affordable homeowners bear similar costs, but the resale formula limits the value they can realize, leaving them far from financially whole at resale.
In 1994, while leading a Wharton School cultural-immersion program in Brazil, I accompanied students studying how inflation, political institutions, and poverty affected the country’s economy. We met a young physician working among families in a favela—an impoverished community of settlers who had built homes from scrap materials. They had no legal title, no public oversight, and no dependable basic services. Believing that insecure housing perpetuated poverty, the physician brought a proposal to the state to grant the settlers legal ownership of the homes they had built.
After the settlers received legal ownership, the physician reported improved family health, reduced crime, lower birth rates, and striking changes in how they cared for and improved their properties. The physician was right. Homeownership can influence not only individual well-bing, but the social, economic, ad civic health of an entire community.
Westford’s circumstances are, of course, far different, but the lesson is relevant. If affordable homeownership is to remain a meaningful part of Westford’s housing strategy, the HPP must consider not only how affordable homes are created, but how their affordability can be preserved without unfairly burdening present owners or placing the homes beyond the reach of future income-eligible buyers.
Comment on The Westford Villager
Submitted by Judith Culver
The Westford Villager’s editions are giving residents much-needed, clear information about many of the Town activities, projects, problems, and initiatives. Town and School issues have not been reported by daily or weekly newspapers for many years, reducing the amount of factual knowledge a resident can access.
Recent articles about the Town Manager’s exit, the School’s K-8 configurations, Planning Board hearings, and other local issues provide the facts that will be the basis for many of the future decisions to be made by Westford’s boards, committees and residents. This return to live press reporting by WestfordCAT is welcomed. Thank you.
