Dracut Is An Affordable Place To Live
James O’Loughlin has insisted for many years that Dracut is an affordable place to live, even though the state says otherwise.
The state wants every community to make 10 percent of its housing stock affordable under state “40B” guidelines — and Dracut hasn’t met that threshold. As a selectman, O’Loughlin has urged lawmakers to give Dracut a break from the requirement because there are hundreds of homes already rented and sold for much less than what developers charge for 40B units, but are not counted toward the threshold under the state regulation.
Today, O’Loughlin feels vindicated.
“The bottom line is it’s a very affordable community, which I think validates a lot of things myself and other public officials have been saying all along,” O’Loughlin said about an affordability index released yesterday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which rates Dracut as the most affordable community in eastern Massachusetts. “Dracut has affordable housing stock.”
The study, by MIT’s Center for Real Estate, ranks some Merrimack Valley communities among the most affordable in the Boston area. Dracut comes in first, followed by Woburn, while Billerica scores fifth. Wilmington ranks 37th and Tewksbury 51th.
The index rates 142 Boston suburbs primarily by the percentage of the entire stock of apartments, condos and houses affordable to two-person and four-person households that earn 80 percent of median income in the Boston area. The 80 percent of median income is $57,000 for a two-person household and $79,000 for a four-person-household.
In addition to housing prices, the index also weighes accessibility to jobs, including driving distance and availability of commuter rail, as well as quality of school systems and the amount of open space. This is because affordability should reflect overall cost of living, according to Andrew Jakabovics, research chief of staff for the Housing Affordability Initiative at MIT’s Center for Real Estate.
The center also prepared another index that rates affordability for four-person households only. On that, Wilmington ranks second best behind Avon. Tewksbury is third, Billerica