Various town functions address pieces of the affordable housing issue, but almost all of the proposals require a major development effort, hard to obtain at today’s interest rates. The state’s strategies to drive down prices and increase supply fall broadly into two categories: reduce the local zoning barriers to multifamily housing that created the shortage in the first place and subsidize housing that’s restricted to low-income people.
A third strategy would be using mobile homes and pre-manufactured homes. We would need zoning changes and a plan, but the town could be the developer. The following information comes from a Boston Globe editorial of December 30, 2023, A manufactured solution to a manufactured problem (link provides access for subscribers only.)
Trailer parks have a bad reputation. But they could help the state overcome the housing shortage that has resulted from the Commonwealth’s long history of exclusionary local zoning. Mike Zupkofska, a former Rockland selectman, is very much aware of the stigma associated with mobile or manufactured homes. Most people would imagine a shady, dirty trailer park. In reality, his mobile home in Leisurewoods in Rockland, MA, is one of the roughly 250 mobile home parks in the state is nothing like that. It’s an age 55-and-older community that looks like a regular suburban gated development. Massachusetts could use more of those communities. The state needs housing — a lot more housing, traditional and nontraditional. And it needs housing that people can afford.
The prices for homes in mobile home communities in Massachusetts are breathtaking — in a good way. At Leisurewoods, a 980-square-foot, 2-bed, 1-bath home is on the market for $249,900. Maybe Acton can have timely appealing, accessible, and affordable housing by creating a mobile home park like Leisurewoods.
David A. Manalan