Pepperell Affordable Housing Trust Backs 10,000-Square-Foot Lot Zoning
Affordable Housing Trust · Meeting of August 20, 2026
Pepperell Affordable Housing Trust backs 10,000-square-foot minimum lots for denser infill housing. Trustees Tony Beattie, April Babbit, Peter March and Amanda Huntington voted unanimously to support the Planning Board's proposal to shrink Urban Residential district lot sizes from one acre to 10,000 square feet, conditioned on further review of setbacks and impervious surface. A regional housing consultant, identified only as Andrew, told the trust the town's roughly 130 to 142 certified affordable units fall well short of what's needed, projecting a future target of 500 to 600 units as new construction outpaces the state's 10 percent safe-harbor threshold.
The trust also weighed a stalled Nashua Road senior-housing proposal, where a developer sought $1 million from the town against a hoped-for $100,000, and roughly $37,000 in unspent Community Preservation Committee funds tied to a Pepperell Meadows feasibility study. "To me, the reason to support this is really quite simple," Planning Board Chair Al said of the zoning change. The trust set its next meeting for September 24.
In the full story:
- Who Was There
- Organizations And Documents Referenced
- The complete report — 2,716 words
Source: the Affordable Housing Trust meeting of August 20, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.
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