Affordable Swarthmore:
Housing, Zoning, and Community
Photo: Andy Shelter
About Affordable Swarthmore: What This Blog Is and Is Not
Last summer, startled by the alarming rise of housing prices in Swarthmore, a group of neighbors started meeting to talk about the problem. Of course, it isn’t just our problem. Housing affordability (or lack of affordability) is a nationwide crisis. But once you start to think about that, you can get dizzy and want to go back to bed.
One advantage of living in a small town is that it seems possible to solve local problems—or at least to have a fighting chance of solving them. So we decided not to hide our heads under our pillows but instead to go out into the community and see what we could do.
In October, we circulated a petition. It read in part:
As residents of Swarthmore, we are concerned about the future of development and the issue of affordability. We believe now is the time to take stock of our town’s values and ensure that our planning, zoning, and land-use ordinances align with those values….We ask Borough Council to take steps to maintain a diversity of housing and retail space in Swarthmore, and to seek ways to keep the borough affordable and welcoming to a wide range of people.
Within a couple of weeks, over 300 people had signed. We presented the petition to our borough council, and in December they authorized a task force with the mission of recommending strategies to “preserve and expand reasonably priced housing in Swarthmore.”
I don’t know how to do that, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot for the last eight months. I’ve read books and articles, had coffee with many neighbors, gone to webinars, and called up strangers on the phone. Lots of ideas are swirling in my head. I’m a writer by profession, and my instinct when it comes to swirling thoughts is to try to make sense of them by organizing them into sentences and paragraphs, then sharing them with others.
The affordability task force started meeting in March. I am its chair, but this blog is not its mouthpiece. Rather, it is a record of my explorations, wonderings, and ponderings.
This is a chronicle of one woman’s effort to learn more about housing affordability and to contemplate what we might change to make our community more affordable and welcoming.
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-April 1, 2022
A Different Kind of College Town
The town planner from Mansfield, Connecticut, told me that professors at the University of Connecticut tend not to live in their college town because the houses are so run down.
I was surprised. Here in Swarthmore, when college professors don’t live in town, it’s often because the houses are so expensive.
I’d called the Mansfield planner, Linda Painter, because I wanted to hear about the town’s Affordable Housing Plan, passed last year. What kind of response did they get from residents? How did the plan’s proponents persuade the town to support it? How did the town council respond to the kinds of concerns I’ve heard in Swarthmore, for instance that permitting single-family houses to be converted to duplexes, or legalizing garage apartments (i.e., accessory dwelling units, or ADUs), might hurt property values or cause unwelcome noise or congestion?
But Linda reported that the residents of Mansfield didn’t have many objections. Their questions tended to be less about money than about logistics. “Sometimes people would call and ask how a project would affect their getting in and out of their driveway, if they lived opposite a building,” Linda said. “Technical things like that.”
She must have seen my startled look through the Zoom screen. “We’re a very progressive community,” she explained.
Campus of the University of Connecticut in Mansfield
I got Linda’s name from DesegregateCT, an organization that campaigns for zoning reform across Connecticut in order to “make communities more equitable, affordable, and environmentally sustainable.” They have created a zoning atlas of their state and an easy-to-understand playbook for advocates of zoning reform anywhere.
Hearing that I was interested in learning from a community that was addressing the affordability crisis, the staff at DesegregateCT recommended Mansfield because it’s also a college town. That’s true, but what a different kind of college town! Unlike Swarthmore with its modest population of 1,400 undergraduates, Mansfield’s UConn has 12,000 students and Division I sports.
Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)
Still, the concern of some Swarthmoreans that permitting, for example, ADUs would spread noisy, disorderly college students throughout the town is a very real worry in Mansfield. To address this concern, Linda told me, the town requires that either the main dwelling or the ADU be occupied by the owner. This owner-occupancy requirement helps ensure that the renters won’t be too noisy or make too much of a mess.
The bottom line about ADUs in Mansfield, according to Linda? “They allow people to stay in their homes.”
For townspeople having trouble paying their mortgage or taxes—possibly because of an illness, job loss, or retirement—the rental income makes it possible for them to remain where they are.
Beyond Zoning Changes
Mansfield also has an Affordable Housing Trust, created last November. Money from the trust will help income-eligible residents with down payments, make repairs that will allow them to stay in their houses, and create accessible homes for people with disabilities. Although the money from the trust isn’t available yet, the town’s new Affordable Housing Committee is tossing around ideas to fund it. These include small fees for building permit fees and proceeds from the payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) the town gets from the university. (As a non-profit, the university is tax exempt, so it makes non-tax payments to its home municipality instead.)
Swarthmore College, too, pays a PILOT, largely to support the police, fire, and ambulance services the borough provides. These days, the amount of the PILOT is about $350,000. The college also pays property taxes on the hundred-plus houses and apartments it rents to faculty and staff.
That’s a substantial contribution. Still, I find myself wondering whether the college board and administration might consider some further creative partnership to help keep the borough more equitable, affordable, and environmentally sustainable—what it would be worth to them.
I wonder what it’s worth to all of us.