It can help your town do the best possible job of creating homes that qualify as affordable under Chapter 40B. At the same time, it can help your town be the best it can be for people of all ages, incomes, and abilities to find a home they can afford.

All six towns on Martha’s Vineyard participated in a planning process that was intended to produce HPPs in 2016-2017. However, most towns never completed their plans. and in the communities that eventually adopted their HPP, the plans have expired. The communities on Martha’s Vineyard have varied, complex housing needs encompassing all income levels, from extremely low incomes to those with year-round jobs who cannot find a home they can afford anywhere on the island. These needs have intensified and become more complicated since the last HPP process, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Zoning has much to do with the inability of towns to produce the housing they need, but it is not the only impediment to housing growth and housing preservation.

A Housing Production Plan will identify existing housing barriers and recommend strategies to meet local and island-wide needs.

EHOLC sets the requirements for a Housing Production Plan. The requirements are part of the Chapter 40B regulations.

It is the Commonwealth’s regional planning law. Over 50 years ago, the legislature changed the law by adding a requirement for every city and town to have a minimum supply of housing for low- or moderate-income people. The minimum supply is 10 percent of each community’s total year-round housing stock as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Your town can use the Housing Production Plan process to identify and set goals for housing to meet many needs in addition to low- or moderate-income housing needs.

• In Massachusetts, cities and towns have used the Housing Production Plan process to plan for disability housing, housing for frail elders, or “below-market” housing, meaning homes affordable to regional workers whose wages may be high enough for economic stability but not enough for housing stability in very high-cost markets.
• In the Cape and Islands region, a unique need exists for homes affordable to year-round residents. They cannot compete with the spending power of seasonal homebuyers or the profitability of short-term rentals. The Vineyard has too many markets competing for the same inadequate supply.

In 2024, the MVC published Martha's Vineyard Housing Needs Assessment, which identifies and documents island-wide housing affordability problems. The Needs Assessment provides a tiered framework for describing needs on Martha’s Vineyard. This framework is the foundation for each Housing Production Plan’s needs analysis.

• Affordable Housing
• Community Housing
• Attainable Housing
• Workforce Housing

In addition, the MVC commissioned an analysis of each town’s zoning bylaw to understand how local land use policies contribute to problems identified in the Needs Assessment. The 2024 Zoning Analysis for Housing Solutions provides a source for understanding local housing development constraints.