The Affordable Housing Committee is redefining its mission statement.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The town's Affordable Housing Committee is in the process of redefining its mission in light of an eventful year for the committee and the issue it addresses.

The committee and the board of the Affordable Housing Trust met in late October in separate Oct. 30 meetings. The latter voted to release funds it promised earlier this year to the Highland Woods senior housing project off Southworth Street on land being donated by Williams College.

Highland Woods, which promises about 40 units to open in winter 2016, is just one subsidized housing project "in the pipeline" that changes the affordable housing picture in town.

The recent start of site work at the former Cable Mills complex on Water Street, which will include 13 units of income-sensitive housing and the town's planned development at the former Photech property on Cole Avenue could combine with Highland Woods to add as many as 100 units to the town's stock of subsidized housing.

"Those of us on the committee are very pleased about all that is going on," committee Chairman Van Ellet said in a meeting telecast on the town's community access television station, WilliNet. "We're looking forward to having that capacity available in the next couple of years.

"We all feel here the work on affordable housing in Williamstown is not over. Projects under way must be completed. There is a lot of community involvement that should be involved in that."

But Ellet said now is the time for the committee to rethink its mission and added that it has a role to play in the town's broader effort around the issue of economic development.

"Housing is a critical component of that [development]," Ellet said.

Ellet is one of four committee members who remained on the panel this spring after three resigned in protest of the Board of Selectmen's decision to develop the Photech site alone and not Photech and the former town garage site on Water Street, as the committee recommended after months of study.

The committee's previous mission statement, adopted in May 2013, emphasizes the "creation and preservation of housing and housing programs" that meet a specific goal: "the state's benchmark that 10 percent of the town's total housing units be affordable to those whose incomes are at or below 80 percent of the area median income."

Many of the 100 units "in the pipeline" would count toward that 10 percent, though no specific plans are in the works for the Photech site as its proposed developers, Berkshire Housing and the Women's Institute for Housing and Economic Development, are focused on Highland Woods.

The proposed mission statement discussed late last month is shorter and makes no mention of specific targets, emphasizing a broader approach to the issue. But the draft includes a series of guiding principles that are intended to inform the committee's work and that do include the commonwealth's benchmark.

The committee will take up the draft mission statement at its next meeting on Thursday, Nov. 13, but the version it hammered out in late October read: "To assist the Board of Selectmen in its efforts to provide a full range of affordable housing choices for all residents of Williamstown, the committee is dedicated to building an economically vibrant Williamstown by developing and preserving quality affordable housing."

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