Tax Subsidy, 'Need' Shadow Sowams Affordable-Housing Development

A tax abatement for the proposed Sowams affordable-housing development in Barrington is expected to be on the Town Council agenda for Monday night, June 3.

That tax abatement is a missing piece of the application for “Palmer Pointe,” said Gary Morse of Barrington to the Planning Board at the continued hearing on the master plan for the 48-unit rental development Thursday night.

“This application is not complete and is, therefore, deficient,” Morse said even before the hearing on technical details of the development – sewers, roadways, storm water runoff, traffic impact  -- got underway in the Council Chamber in Town Hall.

“Why are we having this without this? The developer has said this project would not be feasible without the tax abatement,” Morse said. “It needs to be a resubmission” with this type of financial information.

“We should not even be here tonight,” he said.

Morse’s argument that the application is “being manipulated to push this forward” fell on deaf ears.

Both attorney Nancy Letendre, Barrington’s legal counsel for this development, and Town Planner Phil Hervery, disagreed with Morse.

“It is an eligible application,” Letendre said. “It meets state and local ordinances. Subsidies will be dealt with at the final approval stage.”

Hervey echoed the attorney’s comments. He is the town official who approved the application from the nonprofit East Bay Community Development Corporation to go forward because it met all of the submission criteria.

Planning Board chairman Mike McCormick said: “Remember, this is the first step. What if the Town Council approves the abatement Monday night?”

McCormick said also that there are many other options that exist elsewhere for financing the project that could be introduced by the developer down the road before the Planning Board deadline of Aug. 22.

The hearing continued at that point with professional engineers and consultants for EBCDC spending almost the next three hours talking about storm water and the environmental buffer zone -- "a site from hell" -- and traffic with scores of property owners from the Sowams neighborhood looking on.

They also heard EBCDC consultant Frank Spinella talk about the financing of the project and the need for another affordable-housing development in Barrington.

“There are some who feel Barrington doesn’t have a need for this project,” Spinella said. “Our mission is to serve people and the needs of a town.”

“And we know the need,” he said.

Spinella said 22 percent of Barrington residents – more than 1 out of 5 – qualify based on their incomes for the Palmer Pointe rents of $778 to $922 per month for the 1- to 3- bedroom units. Typical rents for homes in Barrington based on current listings are at least twice those amounts, he said, and typical apartments rent for an average of almost $1,200.

He also said there are 71 people on the waiting list to get into Sweetbriar – EBCDC’s project in Bay Spring – with 25 of them from Barrington.

Of the 47 people who rent units in Sweetbriar, Spinella said several times to emphasize the point, “41 were living in Barrington” before that development was built. And they are not people without jobs -- a popular misconception, he said.

The Sweetbriar renters include caregivers and CNAs and hairdressers and custodians and teachers’ assistants and even business owners, Spinella said, to name a few. 

“This is not transitional housing for them,” he said. “This is their home.”

The hearing was continued until next Tuesday’s regular Planning Board meeting after another hour or so of questions and complaints and concerns from members of the audience. Public concerns will be the focus of the hearing on Tuesday, said McCormick.