According to the 2024 National Community Survey, an overwhelming majority of Needham residents like it here, feel very safe here, think highly of the town’s schools and don’t plan to leave anytime soon.
On the other hand, they also wish Needham were less expensive and that there were more quality childcare/preschool services, a wider variety of housing options and better ways to dispose of their trash.
These findings and dozens of others emerged from the 673 resident responses to the survey conducted in March and April of this year. It is a biannual exercise that Needham has undertaken since 2008 (with a pandemic-driven exception in 2020).
Needham is one of more than 500 U.S. municipalities that participate in the National Community Survey, which asks respondents to answer more than 120 questions about the “livability” of their communities.
Needham has perennially landed in the top 10 of those municipalities when it comes to residents’ perception of safety, and in the upper 90th percentile when it comes to assessing the quality of the public schools and the perception of Needham as a place to live and raise children.
Almost 90% of respondents said they intend to remain in Needham for the next five years. They love the town’s library (97% positive), endorse the public schools (90%) and strongly concur (97%) that Needham is a great place to raise children.
“When I hear someone say that the people in this town are really unhappy, I say, ‘No, 96% of them think it’s a great place to live,’’’ said Town Manager Kate Fitzpatrick.
The survey results function partly as a report card, but also as a planning tool. “We really use the survey to inform our budget choices, which is how you drive a lot of this work.
“We know what people are concerned about. I mean, we didn’t learn we need to tackle stormwater or trees from the survey. We already knew that. But sometimes we get other clues.”
With a few exceptions, this year’s survey results did not stray far from the 2022 responses, but there were far more signs of slippage than improvement. This year’s results showed 27 ratings trending downward compared with three that trended upward.
Two of the 27 declines were dramatic, and in each case the reason for the drop was fairly obvious. In the aftermath of the August 2023 torrential storm that flooded scores of homes and businesses, the town’s favorability rating for stormwater management dropped from 87% to 64%.
Similarly, the calamitous IT event that delayed the processing of water and sewer bills for multiple months caused the town’s rating for “utility billing” to drop 18 points from 82% to 64% favorable.
A large number of the survey questions cover topics that reflect only peripherally — if at all — on the performance of town departments or municipal policies and practices, and many of the ratings are more subjective than objective.
Among these, the ratings that suffered double-digit declines included availability of affordable quality child care/preschool, from 53% to 38%, overall quality of new development in Needham, from 55% to 43%, and quality of health services from 90% to 78%.
Respondents are also less satisfied with the “availability of affordable quality food,” which dropped from 65% to 57%, and the “availability of affordable quality mental health care,” which dropped from 55% to 49%. This is a continuing trend, as it is down a cumulative 22 percentage points from 2018, when it received 71% approval.
Housing woes
As it did in 2022, the survey revealed concern among residents regarding the town’s housing market. While largely driven by market forces, housing is a category that the town can attempt to influence through particular policy initiatives, such as the MBTA Communities Act and altering zoning regulations to address the impact of teardowns.
The survey found only 14% of respondents are satisfied with the availability of “affordable quality housing.” Three out of four respondents were not satisfied with “the variety of housing options,” and 57% were not satisfied with the “overall quality of new development.”
Transportation responses mostly positive
When it comes to getting around town, residents appear mostly satisfied. Two-thirds of residents said they were satisfied with how traffic flows on major streets. They were quite satisfied with the ease of travel by car (87%) and on foot (83%), but less so about getting around on bicycle (53%) or via public transportation (47%).
The level of satisfaction for street repairs improved by 7 percentage points, with 56% of respondents rating street maintenance as good or excellent. Although this is a somewhat subjective measure, it correlates with the town’s more objective method of assessing street conditions, and may even underrate the quality of the town’s 260 lane miles of roadway.
Tyler Gabrielski, the town’s director of streets and transportation, explained the town’s Pavement Management Program relies on a pavement condition index to evaluate road conditions. It is one of several factors that help the town decide which streets are in need of repair and the best treatment options.
Gabrielski said the index provides road surface ratings on a 0-to-100 scale. “Currently, Needham’s systemwide RSR is approximately 78,” he said. This compares favorably with the estimated statewide average grade of 72.
“This score has been ticking up consistently over the last several years,” said Gabrielski.
Amy Haelsen, director of communications and community engagement, said the survey is just one tool the town relies on to determine the pulse of the community. It is not, she said, a way of keeping score vis-à-vis other communities.
“It’s not so much necessarily how we compare to other communities, but it’s how we compare to ourselves,” she said. “We’ve been doing this survey since 2008. The value comes from comparing our own results from the prior surveys.”
Save as PDF