Many Goshen residents received a card in the mail recently announcing a meeting about affordable housing in our town.
Please note that this meeting is being called by neither the Goshen Housing Trust, nor the Town of Goshen.
The Goshen Housing Trust (GHT) does not yet have plans that are sufficiently developed to be worth calling a public discussion meeting and feel such a meeting is premature.
GHT is working to address the high priority housing needs of our Town as described in the 2016 Town Plan of Conservation and Development and in compliance with State housing mandates. Addressing these housing issues is also central to our Town's economic development initiatives.
We are being careful in planning any project so that it will be successful and we won't bring it forward until we are sure it can be.
When we have developed our plans, we will present them to the neighbors and the community. We think you will be impressed with what we propose, but we will be sensitive to the community's feedback.
To be sure you hear from us when this happens, be sure to join our email list,
here
.
We will then apply for any required approvals of our plans. We intend to
work cooperatively with our Town Inland Wetlands, and Planning and Zoning Commissions on those plans. We will listen and respond to their suggestions for making our plans better. We want what we do to be in the best interests of the Town, as a whole, and see working with these representative community commissions as very important.
We think that some of what will be talked about at the May 18th meeting will be based on a study that was done of a potential Incentive Housing Zone (IHZ) for Goshen back in 2009.
If you are interested, you can read the IHZ report by clicking
here
.
An IHZ is one method for defining alternate zoning in an area to accommodate affordable housing. This report, done by professional planners in 2009 before Goshen Housing Trust was even formed, discussed the development of the very same Beach Street site that we are currently looking at, as well as some other locations in Town.
However, these are ten-year old conceptual plans and the GHT is still working on its current assessment of the site. You will not learn about our plans at the May 18th meeting.
We are glad to see housing is a hot topic of discussion. We hope that those who have the best interests of the Town in mind will understand why it takes us time to do this right and will support our careful, community-centric approach to addressing this important need for our Town.
We look forward to presenting our plans to all in the future.
We ask you to be patient.
Good work takes time.
Thanks
