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This summary is based on the May 6, 2026 Affordable Housing Trust Community Forum recording. Official minutes are pending town approval.
The Town Minute is an independent publication and is not affiliated with the Town of Sturbridge or any municipal office. While we strive for accuracy, errors or omissions may occur. This content is intended as a public-friendly summary, not an official record. For official and complete records, please refer to the Town's approved meeting minutes and official meeting recordings on the Town's website.
Table of Contents
Why This Meeting Happened
The state requires every town in Massachusetts to have something called a Housing Production Plan — basically a five-year written plan that explains how the town is going to address its housing needs. Sturbridge's last plan ran through 2024. The town is now writing the next one.
Before the plan gets drafted, the town wanted to hear from residents. That's what this forum was for. A housing consultant hired by the town — someone who has written more than 70 of these plans across Massachusetts over 35 years — walked everyone through the data first, then opened it up for residents to weigh in.
Also in the room: the town's housing coordinator, someone from the planning department, and several members of the Affordable Housing Trust.
Key Takeaways
🏠 Only 5.47% of Sturbridge's housing is considered "affordable" by the state. The goal is 10%. The town is less than halfway there.
🔴 Rental vacancy rate: 0%. There are essentially no rental units available in town right now.
💰 A family earning a middle income faces a $239,400 gap between what they can afford and what homes actually cost here.
👷 The average person who works in Sturbridge earns about $55,000 a year — but buying a median-priced home here requires an income of $134,000.
🧓 1 in 4 Sturbridge residents is now 65 or older — and there are no assisted living options anywhere in town.
📋 What residents said the town should prioritize: Change the zoning rules, extend water and sewer, find buildable land, and add more types of housing.
The Housing Picture in Sturbridge
The consultant presented a detailed snapshot of who lives in Sturbridge, what they earn, and what housing actually costs. Here's what it showed.
The Town Is Growing — and Getting Older
Sturbridge had about 9,867 residents in 2020. By 2040, that's projected to grow to around 12,092.
But who's living here is shifting. Younger residents are a smaller share of the population than they used to be. Residents under 20 dropped from 27% of the population in 2000 to 24% in 2023. Meanwhile, residents 65 and older went from 13% in 2000 to 19% in 2023 — and are projected to hit 25% as baby boomers continue to age.
The town is getting older, and the housing stock isn't keeping up with what older residents actually need.
Incomes Are Up, But Prices Are Up More
On paper, Sturbridge looks like a relatively wealthy town. The median household income is $129,606 — well above the county average of $94,000 and the state average of about $100,000.
But zoom in and the picture gets more complicated:
43% of households earn over $150,000. That group has grown a lot.
Nearly 7% of households earn less than $25,000. Many are probably struggling to stay in town.
The middle is shrinking — middle-income households are getting squeezed out.
Renters earn a median of $54,000. Homeowners earn a median of $148,750. Those are two very different Sturbridges.
And here's a number that stands out: the average wage for someone who actually works in Sturbridge — at a local business, hotel, or restaurant — is about $1,051 a week, or roughly $55,000 a year. That's 42% of the town's median household income. A lot of people who work here simply can't afford to live here.
The gap between incomes and home prices keeps widening:
In 2000: median income was $56,519, median home price was $164,950. Roughly a 3x gap.
By 2023: income had grown to $129,606, but the median home had jumped to $423,500.
By 2025: the median home hit $540,000 — requiring an income of about $134,000 to buy.
As of March 2026: the median had already climbed to $569,500 — up nearly $120,000 in just two years.
A two-bedroom rental, if you can find one, runs about $2,500 a month — which requires an income of around $111,000. The median renter in Sturbridge earns $54,000. That math doesn't work.
The affordability gap in plain numbers:
A family of three earning at the state's cutoff for affordable housing programs ($89,800 under 2025 guidelines) can afford to spend about $300,600 on a home. The median home costs $540,000. That's a $239,400 gap — money that would need to come from subsidies, grants, or programs to make it work. And as prices keep rising, that gap keeps growing.
How many households are already struggling:
24% of Sturbridge households spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs — which is the federal definition of being "cost-burdened."
12.5% spend more than half their income on housing. That's considered severe.
For lower-income households, those numbers jump to 58% cost-burdened and 28% severely cost-burdened.
There Are Almost No Rentals — and Almost No Affordable Units
Since 2010, Sturbridge has added over 1,000 new owner-occupied homes — but actually lost 123 rental units. The town is building, just not the kind of housing that most people need.
The result: 0% rental vacancy rate. There are essentially no apartments available in Sturbridge. A healthy market has a vacancy rate above 5%. Zero means people who want or need to rent here just can't find anything.
On the affordability side: of Sturbridge's 4,020 year-round housing units, only 220 — or 5.47% — count as officially "affordable" under state rules. The state's target is 10%. The town needs to roughly double its affordable housing stock to get there.
And one more gap worth naming: there are no assisted living facilities in Sturbridge. With 1 in 4 residents now 65 or older, and 1,078 residents (10.9% of the population) reporting some kind of disability, the options for aging in place — or getting the support you need when you can no longer fully live independently — are nearly nonexistent. The state's affordable housing list includes only 32 units in group facilities in Sturbridge. That's far short of the need.
📊 Do You Qualify for Affordable Housing?
"Affordable housing" under state rules isn't just for very low-income households. It's designed for people earning up to 80% of what's called the Area Median Income — a number that might be higher than you'd expect. Here's what the income limits look like by household size under 2025 guidelines:
Household Size | 30% AMI | 50% AMI | 80% AMI (the cutoff for most programs) |
|---|---|---|---|
1 person | $26,200 | $43,650 | $69,850 |
2 people | $29,950 | $49,900 | $79,800 |
3 people | $33,700 | $56,150 | $89,800 |
4 people | $37,400 | $62,350 | $99,750 |
5 people | $40,400 | $67,350 | $107,750 |
6 people | $43,400 | $72,350 | $115,750 |
Source: HUD, 2025. Updated 2026 limits were just released — the 80% AMI cutoff for a family of three increased from $89,800 to $94,350.
If your household income falls at or below the right-hand column, you'd potentially qualify for affordable housing programs. Given that the median renter in Sturbridge earns $54,000, a lot of people renting in town fall within these limits — yet there are almost no affordable units available for them.
Why Isn't More Housing Being Built?
One resident asked this question directly during the Q&A, and it's a fair one. If prices are so high and demand is clearly there, why isn't the market fixing it?
The short answer: a lot of things are working against it at once.
Zoning rules aren't set up for it. Sturbridge's zoning mostly requires large lots with single-family homes. Building anything denser — apartments, townhouses, smaller cottages — is hard or impossible in most of town without changing the rules.
Many areas don't have water or sewer. You can't build dense housing where there's no infrastructure to handle it. And extending that infrastructure is expensive.
Land costs are high. Buying land in Sturbridge and building housing that's actually affordable — and still pencils out financially — is very difficult.
The money mostly only goes to rentals. Nearly all state and federal housing subsidies are directed at rental projects. Building affordable homes for purchase requires different, harder-to-find funding.
Septic systems limit density. Much of Sturbridge is on private septic. That puts a hard cap on how many units can go on a piece of land.
Older residents have nowhere to downsize to. Many seniors would like to move into something smaller — but there's nothing available in town. So they stay in larger homes that never hit the market for younger families.
Questions from the Audience
"If there's so much demand and income in town, why isn't more housing getting built?" The consultant pointed to zoning, lack of infrastructure, high land costs, environmental constraints, and limited financing as the main barriers. There's a whole section of the Housing Production Plan dedicated specifically to these constraints.
"There are over 1,000 people in Sturbridge with disabilities and only 32 supported housing units. Why isn't there more supportive housing?" The consultant said plainly: there is a need for it, it's one of the plan's identified priorities, and the town needs significantly more. A second resident added that the need for certain types of supportive housing seems obvious and significant.
"Septic is a huge barrier to building more housing. What do we do about that?" The consultant said she's worked in many communities with the same challenge and that creative solutions exist. One example: "pocket neighborhoods" — small clusters of cottage-style homes built around a shared green space, with a shared leaching field integrated into that open area. It's not a perfect answer, but it's one way to add housing density in areas that don't have municipal sewer.
"What is low-impact development?" A quick conversation explained it as designing housing to work with the land rather than against it — using natural drainage instead of concrete, reducing paved surfaces, incorporating solar. This kind of design can make smaller housing projects more viable in areas where infrastructure is limited.
What Residents Said: Breakout Group Results
After the presentation and Q&A, attendees split into small groups to discuss priorities. The breakout discussions themselves weren't captured on the recording. When everyone reconvened, a spokesperson from each group shared what they came up with. Attendees then voted using dot stickers to rank the ideas — five dots to place on actions they supported, one red dot to mark anything they opposed.
Here's what the groups reported:
Group 1 said the town's top priorities should be:
Change the zoning rules to actually allow more types of affordable housing to be built
Extend water and sewer into areas where housing development makes sense — you can't build much without it
Find out what land is available — including land the town already owns — and treat it as a real development opportunity (The consultant noted that identifying town-owned land is actually a required part of any Housing Production Plan)
Build more types of housing — not just single-family homes. Rentals, smaller multifamily buildings, cottages, townhouses. And rehab what already exists.
Group 2 said the town's top priorities should be:
Change the zoning rules — same top priority as Group 1
Identify buildable land, including town-owned parcels and properties that are abandoned or sitting unused
Take a hard look at sewer fees — the current fee structure was described as making development less attractive even in areas that do have sewer access
Give builders a reason to come here — through financial incentives or a simpler permitting process
Attract more businesses to town — more local jobs means more people who can afford to live here
Make it easier to build — reduce the friction in the approval process, especially for mixed-use and multifamily projects
The through-line across both groups was hard to miss: change the zoning, find the land, and stop making it so difficult and expensive to build anything other than a large single-family home.
What Happens Next
The consultant will take all of tonight's input — plus results from a community survey, one-on-one interviews, and prior housing trust discussions — and use it to write the draft Housing Production Plan. That draft will spell out specific housing goals for the next five years and the strategies to meet them.
Once the draft is ready, the town will hold a second public forum to present it and take community feedback. Residents will have another chance to weigh in before anything is finalized.
After that, the plan goes to the Planning Board and Select Board for approval — and then gets submitted to the state.
📬 Don't Miss the Next One
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Resources
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The Town Minute is an independent publication not affiliated with the Town of Sturbridge or any municipal office. While we strive for accuracy, errors or omissions may occur. For official and complete records, please refer to the Town's approved meeting minutes or watch the official meeting recordings on the Town's website.
