The Southbury Planning Commission and Land Use Department, with assistance from SLR International Corporation, have planned a virtual workshop to provide the public with educational information on affordable housing, gather feedback, and gain input from participants regarding the creation of Southbury’s Affordable Housing Plan (AHP).
The virtual workshop will be held on February 24th, 2022 from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm. The link to register for the workshop is posted on the Town website at https://www.southbury-ct.org/AffordableHousing. Pre-registration for this event is required. Once registered, you will receive an invitation to your email address on the day of the event.
This virtual event will provide background and educational information on housing affordability concepts, an overview of relevant Southbury demographics and housing data, an analysis of current affordable housing, and housing needs in Southbury. Next, the workshop will highlight key themes and responses of the online community survey held from January 18 to February 8. From there, an interactive, live polling exercise will take place that will present various, local strategies for creating affordable housing which will become the Strategies and Recommendations section of the plan. The strategy options will be presented and explained, with case studies provided. Live polling will invite workshop participants to give input on preferred strategies for how Southbury should approach adding new affordable housing. The event will end with a Question and Answer Session.
Planning Commission Chairman, Richard Teardo explained, “We are striving to obtain input from as many Southbury residents as possible and anticipate a virtual event encouraging community engagement. This is a method that has had proven results in other communities.”
In addition to the virtual workshop, you can learn more about Southbury’s affordable housing topics via a StoryMap on the Town of Southbury’s website by using this link: https://www.southbury-ct.org/AffordableHousing.
A StoryMap is an interactive web-based tool from the platform ESRI that SLR utilizes to provide education and present key issues on housing affordability through narrative and graphics. It consists of background information, project presentations, data, maps, and updates on the AHP timelines as well as key dates for the process of creating the plan. The StoryMap will be updated regularly throughout the Planning process as new material becomes available.