Gloucester adopts Housing Compass, a five year road map for housing

The Gloucester Planning Board and City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to adopt the Housing Compass, a five year plan for how the city protects renters and homeowners, keeps the housing it has and decides where new homes should go.

The Planning Board approved the plan on a roll call with every member voting yes. The City Council followed 7 to 0, with two councilors out sick. Councilors first changed the motion from "accept" to "adopt," also 7 to 0, so the city formally takes the plan as its own.

Adoption does not change any zoning or spend any money. "It is a roadmap for the city to look at and decide what to implement," Community Development Director Alex Koppelman said. Nearly every recommendation, he said, would go through its own public process before it happens.

What happens next

The plan now goes to the state for approval. It is written to state standards for a housing production plan, which Koppelman said gives the city more local control over Chapter 40B proposals and protects access to state grants. There is no deadline to file it. The state treats the plan as good for five years.

Councilor at Large Jason Grow pressed for action. "I'd like to see us do something over the next year rather than stick this on a shelf somewhere to gather dust," he said.

The Cape Ann Current is taking him up on that. Our new Housing Compass tracker lists all 24 actions in the plan in plain English, who has to act on each one and what has happened so far. We will update it every time a board, the council or the state takes a step.

Koppelman said some steps could happen right away, including a rule requiring notice to renters and a city web page listing state housing programs alongside the city's first time homebuyer program. Other pieces are already moving:

• Affordable Housing Trust: studying a "lease to locals" program that would pay owners to rent year round, a loan program for accessory apartments and other small homes, and a buy down program to make affordable units cheaper.
• Planning Board housing subcommittee: reviewing zoning changes, starting with cluster zoning, and would bring proposals to the council.
• Smart growth districts: Koppelman called new Chapter 40R overlay districts "the best impact" the city could make from the plan.

The numbers behind the plan

Koppelman laid out the findings from the plan's housing needs assessment:

• The median sale price of a single family home in Gloucester is $715,000.
• 56 percent of the city's roughly 13,000 homes are single family.
• About 8 percent, roughly 1,000 homes, are used seasonally.
• Half of the homes have three or more bedrooms, but the average household is about two people.
• 41 percent of households spend more than a third of their income on housing.
• For every six households that qualify for affordable housing, there is one affordable unit.

The city and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council spent about a year on the plan. Koppelman said the process reached more than 600 people through a survey, pop up tables at summer concerts and block parties, two forums of about 100 people each, and focus groups at the senior center, Gloucester High School, the Sawyer Free Library, with Brazilian residents and with major employers.

Railroad Avenue and the grocery store

The plan's lead downtown idea is a Chapter 40R smart growth overlay in the Railroad Avenue area, including the former Shaw's site, which has been empty for about a year. Koppelman said the market does not appear to support a large supermarket there, but a smaller grocery store with housing above it could work.

That drew the most comment from residents. A downtown resident who said a market stood there for about 45 years told the boards the grocery store "has to be set in stone." Several speakers in favor of the plan agreed.

Asked by the council president how the city could guarantee a store, Koppelman said the zoning could list the uses allowed on the ground floor and name only the ones the city wants. "It is a private property," he said. "We can't control everything that happens, but I think we've got a lot of tools to ensure that we get an outcome that the community wants."

Under a 40R district, a property owner can build under the existing zoning or the overlay, and a project that meets the overlay's rules is permitted by right. The state pays the city to adopt one. Koppelman's example: zoning that allows up to 20 more units would bring a one time payment of $10,000, plus $3,000 per unit when building permits are issued. The state's Chapter 40S program helps cover school costs for children who move in.

Ward 2 Councilor Dylan Benson said he wants a developer "committed to affordable housing, but also committed to a grocery store," noting many downtown residents and older adults do not have cars.

Neighborhoods: smaller homes, not big buildings

Most of Gloucester's outer neighborhoods have no sewer, and Koppelman said roughly three quarters of the city's land cannot be developed because of protected open space, wetlands and flood zones. The plan does not call for citywide zoning changes there. Instead it points to smaller homes: accessory apartments, cottage clusters and three family houses.

Accessory apartments are already allowed by right in every residential zone, Koppelman said, so the main barrier is cost. The plan suggests a Chapter 40Y "starter home" district, another state zoning template that comes with incentive payments, and promoting the state's new free technical help for owners who want to add an accessory apartment.

Planning Board member Shawn Henry, who served on the plan's advisory committee, said many existing homes sit on lots smaller than current zoning allows, and that "right size zoning" could add homes without using up open space.

Who spoke

Mayor Paul Lundberg, a former Planning Board member, urged both boards to adopt. "There's a hundred little things that all have to come together," he said.

Deanna Fay, chair of the Gloucester Affordable Housing Trust, said the trust voted unanimously Sept. 21 to support the plan. "Adoption of Housing Compass will not mean every strategy in the plan is automatically approved or funded," she said.

Peggy Hegarty-Steck, CEO of Action Inc., said housing is the top need every time the agency surveys the community. A Gloucester High School senior said he sees coworkers and soccer coaches, all Gloucester High graduates, being forced to leave the city. Lanesville resident Valerie Nelson said many older homeowners are already adding housing on their own land for their children and grandchildren, and asked the city to look at modular and manufactured homes to bring down the cost of accessory apartments.

Not everyone was convinced. Jane Fox, who said she sent 20 pages of comments on the 154 page plan, said it lacks a fiscal impact analysis, an infrastructure study, school enrollment projections and cost estimates. "A plan about affordability cannot ignore taxes," she said. She said she supports it but is "only hearing the good things."

By state figures, Gloucester's average single family tax bill this year is $9,502, up 36 percent from $6,973 in FY2017, at a residential rate of $9.31 per $1,000 of assessed value. Homes and other residential property pay 91 percent of the city's tax levy.

A Commonwealth Avenue resident asked the boards not to put new growth downtown "because we have the sewer," and said short term rentals should have been controlled long ago.

Koppelman said the planning team interviewed public works, the Board of Health and other staff, and concluded downtown can handle more development, with the upgrade to the city's wastewater treatment plant adding capacity. Each project would still get its own review, he said.

Other answers from the meeting

• Gateway City: Gloucester meets every state test except population and is about 5,000 residents short. The plan asks the state to consider the city for those grants anyway.
• Local preference: When affordable housing is permitted, the city can ask the state to reserve up to 70 percent of units for local residents, with priority for veterans and seniors.
• State money: A state bond bill last fall refunded the 40R and 40Y programs, Koppelman said, but the money is limited and could run down as more communities apply.
• Building code: The plan asks for a state commission to look at code costs for small apartment buildings without lowering health and safety standards.

Council President Tony Gross closed the discussion before the final vote. "It's going to require everyone to be willing to work towards this and not just say no," he said.

Update, Oct. 3, 2026: This story was updated to add the "Can I afford to live here?" calculator and a link to the Cape Ann Current's new Housing Compass tracker. Nothing reported in the original story changed.