I am all for more affordable housing in Framingham. It's necessary. But you have to address what the additional housing will cause the city to need. More services - like police officers, firefighters, a medical center that's not a hot mess all the time, social services for elderly residents, increased municipal staff - will be needed to be commensurate with the city's population. And you absolutely HAVE to address the need for better schools. Framingham High's student body is getting bigger and bigger - they need to either build a second high school and split the population in half or build a larger school and hire more teachers. We cannot keep adding people to the city and expecting people to get by with the same number of schools and city services - the math isn't mathing, as they say.
We need more housing, but we also need to be realistic about what more housing means. It means we need to build up the city infrastructure - sewer and water services, trash collection, public safety, SCHOOLING. We can't keep things at the same level while still adding residents.
Hi, quick but important edit needed: the MBTA Communities Law requires adjusting local zoning to allow more housing, it does not require Framingham to build nearly 4000 more units as you indicated above.
Thanks for sharing that piece from Commonwealth. Very interesting. The 4000 number came from Sarki at the Planning Board meeting in January. I’ll follow up with them to see where he got that number.
I am all for more affordable housing in Framingham. It's necessary. But you have to address what the additional housing will cause the city to need. More services - like police officers, firefighters, a medical center that's not a hot mess all the time, social services for elderly residents, increased municipal staff - will be needed to be commensurate with the city's population. And you absolutely HAVE to address the need for better schools. Framingham High's student body is getting bigger and bigger - they need to either build a second high school and split the population in half or build a larger school and hire more teachers. We cannot keep adding people to the city and expecting people to get by with the same number of schools and city services - the math isn't mathing, as they say.
We need more housing, but we also need to be realistic about what more housing means. It means we need to build up the city infrastructure - sewer and water services, trash collection, public safety, SCHOOLING. We can't keep things at the same level while still adding residents.
I attended a meeting last week in Sudbury where an official presented this subject matter
I left with the conclusion it was just a group of words that did not amount to anything.
I told the presenter that a city or town only has to designate a prescribe area fo POTENCIALY BUILD in that area.
But it is not mandated to build there.
A bunch of words. He in theory agreed with me!
Hi, quick but important edit needed: the MBTA Communities Law requires adjusting local zoning to allow more housing, it does not require Framingham to build nearly 4000 more units as you indicated above.
https://commonwealthbeacon.org/opinion/both-sides-overselling-mbta-communities-act/
Thanks for sharing that piece from Commonwealth. Very interesting. The 4000 number came from Sarki at the Planning Board meeting in January. I’ll follow up with them to see where he got that number.
Thank you. I had the same question re the 4000 more units.