On August 1, the legislature enacted a broad veterans’ benefit package. The Affordable Homes Act, enacted on the same day, includes two additional veterans’ support measures targeted to veterans in need.
Veterans’ supportive housing program
Section 5 of the act adds a new Section 35 to the general laws chapter that defines the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (“HLC”). New Section 35 directs the secretary of HLC to establish “a veterans supportive housing program to assist qualified nonprofit organizations to develop and preserve supportive housing for eligible veterans.” The legislation envisions that HLC would contract with private non-profits who would build or acquire housing for veterans and provide services to the veterans resident in the housing. The particular goal of the program is to end veteran homelessness, especially to support veterans with disabilities or life challenges.
Veterans eligible for housing would be:
New Section 35 of Chapter 23B
- (i) veterans and their families, or individual veterans, who are homeless and have an unmet housing need as determined by the secretary; and
- (ii) veterans who have 1 or more disabilities or other life challenges, including, but not limited to: (A) serious mental illness; (B) substance use disorder; (C) living with HIV or AIDS, or another chronic condition or affliction; (D) being a victim or survivor of domestic violence; and (E) post-traumatic stress disorder.
The final version of the bill did not add a dedicated funding source for this new supportive housing program. However, the bill includes general affordable housing production funding and also funding for disability housing production, which could be combined with service funding from other agencies to create supportive housing for veterans in need. The final version also included the creation of supportive housing pool fund, which subject to future funding, could be applied to veterans supportive housing as well as other supportive housing.
Veterans preference in inclusionary zoning
Section 14 of the act creates an option for municipalities to create preferences for low and moderate-income (“LMI”) veterans in affordable housing. The option does not apply universally to affordable housing which might be developed under the general zoning law (Chapter 40A) or the comprehensive permit law (Chapter 40B). Instead, municipalities may create a preference for LMI veterans when they adopt “inclusionary zoning, incentive zoning, a density bonus ordinance or by-law.” None of these terms are defined by statute, but they take meeting from common usage and in the regulations and program specifications of the Executive Office of Housing Livable Communities. In effect, the new language creates a special opportunity for municipalities to honor and care for veterans when they take zoning measures to encourage affordable housing. Once they take these measures, they can can negotiate with developers for a veterans preference in the resulting deed-restricted affordable housing developments on a project-by-project basis.
The preference may cover up to 10% of the affordable units in a particular project. If there is incomplete uptake for the units from veterans after 90 days in the initial marketing, the units may be made generally available, but veterans will continue to have a preference for vacancies in the project whenever the percentage of preference-occupied units is under 10%. The term “veteran” is defined as provided in General Laws Chapter 4, Section 7, Clause Forty-third. The fact that some units are preferred for veterans will not alter their ability to be counted towards the community’s subsidized housing inventory.