Enfield Street residents are on the verge of setting the town's future

Planning and Zoning Commission capture from video on YouTube. Pastel effect added.

The Felician Sisters senior and workforce housing project prompted a backlash in Enfield. Enfield Street area residents organized effectively against it. They lined a long stretch of the street with signs in opposition and turned out at various Planning and Zoning Commission hearings to speak against it. They defeated the project and moved on to a new target: Enfield's future. 

The goal is to make building any type of multi-family housing difficult. Multi-family has become the key to the town's economic future. 

There is a fight in this community over something you need to be aware of, the Plan of Conversation and Development or POCD. This document will set the town's planning direction for the next ten years, and its recommendations are consequential. 

The Enfield I grew up in the 1960s is radically different today. We had many, many children back then. In the 1960s, only 13% of households were single people; today, it's 28%. Overall, 67% of our town is households of one or two people. Why is that important?

Households of one or two people want smaller multi-family housing. That's where the housing market demand has turned. But Enfield is overbuilt on single-family housing, and only 20% of our housing is multi-family. And many of those homes are older wood frame houses in Thompsonville. Only eight percent of our housing stock has been built in the last 30 years. 

In ten years, we have lost 6% of our population, 2,500 people. Our town is also aging, and our under-25 population is contracting. Our employment is falling, and we have lost all our non-retail marquee employers, Mass Mutual, Hallmark, and now Lego. 

These businesses closing isn't Enfield's fault, but creating a town that new employers want to locate in is our responsibility. 

Weakening retail demand

Population decline is part of why stores pulled out of the mall. The POCD notes: "The Enfield Square Mall suffers from contracting population, smaller households, less disposable income, and changing consumer behaviors—the result is weakening retail demand."

Facebook users often say they want to see Trader Joe's in Enfield. Why would Trader Joe's open a store here? Our population is declining, our town is getting older, and our school population has shrunk. Families with children spend more. 

The POCD report recommends increasing multi-family housing because that will appeal to young and older people who aren't in the market for a single-family. It will make this town more attractive, strengthen our labor pool, and help with the population decline.

What do the Enfield Street residents, and their fellow supporters, want? They want the PZC to remove from the POCD's paramount finding: "Enfield's housing stock is lacking diversity." The opponents believe the town has enough multi-family housing.

The goal seems to be to strip from the POCD anything that makes it easier to build multi-family, which are also tax generators for communities. In some towns, multi-family housing is among the biggest taxpayers. The PZC is now finalizing the POCD. 

Allowing more affordable housing also faces opposition. It was one reason the Felician Sisters project failed.  

The Felician Sisters, whose population has declined from 400 nuns to about 24, sought to convert some of their housing into a combination of senior and workforce housing. Workforce housing is a new concept in Enfield, but not nationally. 

A need for workforce housing

The Felician Sisters' project's minimum income for workforce housing tenants was $40,000. Special financing ensured tenants don't pay more than 30% of their income in rent. It was housing aimed at younger essential workers, like school teachers and retail store managers. 

But because it was affordable housing, it hit a wall of opposition. This project had no significant impact on traffic or the historic district, and the new construction was invisible from Enfield Street because it was built on a downward slope toward I-91. 

Opponents correctly note that Enfield already has about 12% affordable housing, but that's enough, they say. But this opposition makes no sense. Of that number, 25% to 30% are mortgages (it varies by year) counted as affordable housing, such as CHFA. Mortgages. Another large chunk of affordable housing is senior housing. 

The POCD recommends that new multi-family developments include "set aside" provisions. A set aside means that a certain percentage of units are reserved or set aside for people of a certain income. This is very common today and needed. Nearly 50% of renters in this town pay more than 30% of their income on housing. 

The POCD says: "The phrase, affordable housing, is often misinterpreted as low income or public housing, when in fact is housing affordable to working-class and middle-class households—workforce housing." 

This almost seems cruel 

Opposing affordable housing set-asides for workforce housing with minimum income ranges seems cruel. What do we gain as a community by making it harder for moderate-income people to afford to live in our town? Such as the people who kept our stores open during pre-vaccine Covid.

Multi-family in industrial zones is also getting some opposition. Why? I don't know, honestly. But it would cripple efforts to reuse empty or underutilized buildings and block efforts to build housing near the shopping area. Multi-family housing near our retail locations will strengthen those businesses. It's one of the plan's most important recommendations. 

Some town council members may be seeking changes to the POCD to appease opponents. I have not seen those changes. But the PZC is under pressure, and if they capitulate, remove and disavow some of the core recommendations in the planning document, they will put handcuffs on future planning commissions; such is the importance of the POCD. 

The PZC shouldn't give Enfield Street their way over the town. Wasn't the defeat of the Felician Sisters' plan enough? 

The right decision for Enfield is to face its problems squarely and recognize that multi-family housing will have substantial upside in terms of job creation and tax benefits. 

And we can also think big, working with developers to create hundreds of housing units in the mall area and then add restaurants, gyms, brew pubs, and an environment that becomes a regional attraction. The town is investigating this option, but the successful redevelopment of the Enfield Square area also means taking on the town's more significant challenges, namely its lack of housing diversity.