Select Board requests chat with CPC chair over affordable housing

The Select Board is asking CPC Chair John Stephens to come before the board to discuss an email he sent to his committee members campaigning against affordable housing at 25 Worcester Street.

The request was the result of a letter sent by Affordable Housing Trust member Ed Prisby, who called for Stephens’ resignation from the Grafton Community Preservation Committee.

“Because the CPC is responsible for Affordable Housing Trust funding, this is a serious breach of his duties,” Prisby wrote.

What concerned Prisby was several inaccuracies in the letter and an attached flyer, which was addressing the Affordable Housing Trust’s 2021 fall Town Meeting article. Back in 2020 Prisby, through a citizens’ petition, managed to get spring Town Meeting to transfer the deed for 25 Worcester Street to the Affordable Housing Trust for the development of affordable senior housing. Upon discovering that affordable housing directed at seniors would not be counted toward the town’s subsidized housing inventory, the Trust decided to request a removal of the senior housing edict.

Neighborhood residents, many of whom had already spoken out against the project, were just as opposed to affordable housing without the senior restriction. The Trust ultimately asked that the article be passed over.

Stephens’ letter suggested that the Trust should transfer the deed back to the town, while the attached flier, not created by Stephens, implied that the Trust would build high-rise luxury housing units on the site or sell the land for another use.

Discussing the letter, Select Board member Mathew Often said he was concerned about Stephens’ statements, given that the CPC is charged with funding affordable housing requests as well as historical and open space preservation.

But he also believed Stephens had a First Amendment right to express his opinion and worried discussing this would be a “slippery slope” to quelling discussion of town concerns.

Select Board member Ray Mead had an issue with Stephens spreading false information, Select Board member Colleen Roy worried that he utilized CPC resources for political purposes, and Select Board member Doreen DeFazio saw a conflict of interest given Stephens’ position as CPC chair.

Town Administrator Evan Brassard was unwilling to have discussion continue without Stephens’ presence, and Prisby and CPC member Justin Wood were both requesting to speak via Zoom.

The board is requesting that Stephens join them at their November 16 meeting.

Reached via email, Stephens said he did not see the Select Board meeting.

“A few weeks ago I received an email expressing concern about the warrant article (which was passed over) and drafted my own email,” he wrote. “I deleted almost every line from the original email, but failed to delete the imbedded document before sending it. It was a cut-and-paste mistake; I  should have re-read my email before I pressed send. I made a mistake. I certainly don’t believe all the exaggerated claims that were in the document.”

John Stephens’ letter

Friends-

Unfortunately, Town Meeting is inside at the Grafton High School auditorium tonight, Monday, October 18, at 7:30 p.m., so my apologies to those of you not able to attend an in-person gathering during this Delta-variant COVID surge.

The property at 25 Worcester Street was transferred to the Affordable Housing Trust by Town Meeting in 2019 to develop affordable senior housing. It seems that not all the “due diligence” was undertaken at that time, because it now has been determined that if this property were to be developed, the units will not qualify as “affordable” to the powers-that-be in Boston for Grafton’s “official” affordable housing inventory.

I am encouraging you to attend Town Meeting tonight and vote NO to remove the “affordable senior housing” restriction from 25 Worcester Street. This is not was was promised to the Town when the transfer was proposed two years ago. If the Affordable Housing Trust cannot build the affordable senior housing as promised at 25 Worcester Street, then I believe that the AHT should transfer the property back to the Town.

John Stephens, Citizen, Town of Grafton

Ed Prisby’s letter to the Select Board

I am writing to you strictly in my individual capacity as a Grafton resident. 

Today, John Stephens, the Chair of the Grafton Community Preservation Committee, sent out to some Grafton residents the attached email and flyer containing misinformation concerning the Affordable Housing Trust’s 25 Worcester Street project in an effort to weaken public support for this project and affordable housing activities. Because the CPC is responsible for Affordable Housing Trust funding, this is a serious breach of his duties. I am calling for his resignation from the CPC. 

In his email, Stephens claims that the Trust fell short in its “due diligence” and that as a result units built at 25 Worcester St. would not qualify as “affordable” to the “powers that be.” Not true since the Trust did not actually effort the transfer of this land. Because the Department of Housing and Urban prefers that Trusts build all-age inclusive housing in Massachusetts, the units while still being affordable may not count toward Grafton’s “subsidized housing inventory” unless we can demonstrate a need in our area for senior housing. While I believe we can demonstrate that need, the Trust contemplated bringing a warrant article to remove the age restriction to avoid having to make the argument to DHCD. 

In the next paragraph, Stephens encourages Grafton residents to vote against removing the age restriction despite his claim in the previous paragraph that the units would not be “affordable.” He then calls for the Trust to return 25 Worcester Street to the town. 

It should be noted that Stephens voted against giving the Trust to the Town at the June 2020 Town Meeting to begin with. That would be fine insofar as it goes, but then Stephens included a “flyer” in his email making wildly inaccurate claims about the project. 

First, he claims that the Trust asked the town for 25 Worcester Street. Not true. A citizens petition asked the town to transfer the land, and that petition came from someone (me) not on the Trust at the time. Second, the flyer claims that Habitat for Humanity “would have” build 3 to 4 units at the property. Habitat for Humanity has made no such proposal to the Trust. In fact, the Town Planner has reached out to them and confirmed that the most they could possibly ever commit to would be one or two units per year. 

Grafton presently needs over 400 units to meet is subsidized unit requirement, and even if that weren’t true, the Trust would have to make an enormous financial commitment to produce only 3 or 4 units over a period of many years – a losing proposition that would waste Trust resources and be wildly inadequate to meet community housing needs. So, Stephens’ claim that it would cost the Town “no money” another misleading claim – it would cost the Trust hundreds of thousands of dollars. Stephens then claims that the Trust should be prevented from building “luxury condos” at the site. I’m not sure where Stephens is getting this, but anyone who misunderstands affordable housing that badly, and is so obviously hostile to the concept, should have no say in its funding. John Stephens must resign from CPC.

Edward Prisby

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