Living in Somersworth: a Housing Plan for the City

Project Overview

The City of Somersworth applied for and received Housing Opportunity Planning (HOP) funding for the purpose of updating the Housing Chapter of the Master Plan and a conducting a regulatory audit to identify areas for improvement in the city’s land use regulation, primarily its zoning ordinance and map. SRPC staff received input from both the chapter drafting and audit preparation processes throughout 2023 and 2024 to guide efforts, resulting in four audit themes:

• Zoning Ordinance Organization & Zoning Map Changes
• Infill Development & Conversion of Existing Structures
• Diversification of Housing Types (“Missing Middle”)
• Site Plan & Subdivision Regulations and Best Practices

Next, SRPC provided detailed recommendations for some of the highest-priority findings identified by the city’s land use boards and newly-formed Mayor’s Housing Task Force. Lastly, SRPC conducted a second buildout analysis similar to the one conducted for the Housing Chapter. SRPC staff hope this will make the city of Somersworth competitive in applying for a final HOP grant later this year.

The Audit was presented to Somersworth’s Planning Board on Wednesday, July 17, 2024.

Outreach Summary

Both the chapter and audit are complete. Questions or comments regarding the audit can be directed to Mark Davie (right) through the remainder of July 2024.

There was much overlap in outreach for both the Housing Chapter and Zoning Audit throughout 2023 and 2024. A survey was held over summer 2023, leading to a community workshop in September of that year. The forum featured presentations from the Seacoast Workforce Housing Coalition, Strafford CAP, the city’s Historic District Commission, and SRPC staff. Activities included breakout discussion about housing types needed for older and younger adults, workforce housing, and a visual preference tool for different types of housing. The presentations from the event are available in the document section below.

This set the stage for the broad master plan housing goals, themselves a framework for the audit and for SRPC staff to use in formulating an auditing strategy. At the same time, SRPC staff conducted interviews with local developers to identify opportunities and challenges in Somersworth, relative to other Seacoast communities.

SRPC staff then presented initial findings to the Planning Board in April 2024. City staff decided this was a rather overwhelming amount of information, and was only being presented to one land use board. SRPC pivoted strategies and conducted a digital ranking and prioritization exercise with all land use boards, City Council, and the newly-formed Mayor’s Housing Task Force. With this ranking, SPRC met with the Task Force to determine which findings needed to be addressed the most urgently. This implementation guide would become the Priority Actions of the audit. The final draft was presented to the Planning Board on July 17, 2024.

All efforts were supplemented with regular coordination with City staff. We thank them for their time and expertise.