'The only path forward': Debating affordable housing, Cape towns ask if bigger is better
HARWICH — Earlier this month, the Board of Selectmen balked at a property owners’ request to join them in what is known as a “friendly” Chapter 40B affordable housing application to the state, known as a Local Initiative Program.
Under that program, developers and communities indicated they will work cooperatively, with technical assistance from the state, to create affordable housing at a higher density than allowed under municipal zoning. The Chapter 40B statute allows greater density development, as long as 20% to 25% of a project's units qualify as deed-restricted affordable rentals or homeownership.
The Harwich development proposal, which will likely still be submitted as a traditional Chapter 40B, included 96 apartments — 24 listed as affordable — in two three-story apartment buildings on 9.3 acres. While there were many reasons the selectmen gave for rejecting the request, at least one board member expressed a point of view that rings particularly hollow to affordable housing advocates.
“I don’t want to salve our conscience by creating massive projects and say we’ve warehoused them (those renting at affordable rates) there,” said Selectman Don Howell. He prefers a strategy of creating affordable housing that is scattered across town in smaller developments or single homes.
Cape Cod rental housing disappearing
Affordable housing experts said the combination of a hot real estate market during the pandemic and the rise of short-term rentals, has decimated the year-round rental and affordable housing markets. The Cape is now facing a housing crisis that could radically change communities forever as the working class vanishes like a sandcastle beneath a wave of high housing costs. Larger developments are the only way to stave off that exodus, they say.
“From my perspective, from having worked on this issue and understanding the finance and development aspect, there is no other way on the Lower Cape than building projects that can house 40 to 70 families. Any other proposal is just not economically viable,” said Jay Coburn, president and CEO of the Community Development Partnership, which promotes affordable and community housing and the local economy as ways to retain workers and families on Cape Cod.
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Combining high-density housing with sewers and other effective wastewater treatment means lowered development costs, less impact on the Cape’s fragile ecosystem, and more wastewater treatment for less money, Coburn said.
“This is the only path forward,” he said.
Construction of bigger multi-unit housing project gaining momentum
Despite qualms about changing the traditional single house-on-a-single lot look of Cape Cod, bigger projects are in the pipeline, including on the Lower and Outer Cape, which has been especially resistant to those proposals.
They include 30 apartments now under construction off Brewster Road and a proposed 90-bedroom affordable housing project — the number of apartments has not yet been determined — on 16 acres off Millstone Road. The two Brewster projects are on town-owned land. Provincetown is evaluating three bids it received to build 60 units on the former VFW property. Wellfleet just issued a request for proposals on 46 units on a 6-acre site.
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“I believe that there is a convergence of facts from different points of view, different perspectives, leading towns to understand that bigger isn’t necessarily bad, and that it is absolutely necessary,” said Alisa Magnotta, CEO of the Housing Assistance Corporation.
Paul Ruchinskas, who worked on affordable housing at the Cape Cod Commission for 15 years, said momentum is building to solve the problem, including support for larger developments.
“In the last four or five years, we’ve seen more focus, attention and support around the issue since any time since I started in 2001,” said Ruchinskas, who is now retired. “Unless we do something significant (the Cape) will turn into a place of the rich and second-home owners. It is getting closer and closer to that.”
“Forty units is a small project to get a developer to do and get it funded,” said Provincetown Community Housing Specialist Michelle Jarusiewicz. “Once you get above 40, you’re going to attract attention.”
More large developments across the Cape may help to bring prices down, Jarusiewicz said, as developers begin to realize savings from economies of scale by having multiple projects to work on.
The 'ponderous' pace of government
Larger projects struggle against public, especially neighbor, opposition, and what Luther Bates, chairman of Chatham’s Economic Development Committee, called the “ponderous” pace of town government.
A commercial fisherman and business owner, Bates has experienced the implications of the housing crisis firsthand. His committee has focused on ways the town could reduce costs for families and the workforce and help them stay in town despite skyrocketing housing costs.
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Six years ago, the committee produced a long list of recommendations that included things such as free or subsidized child care, only to see progress on a handful of those initiatives.
Cape Cod & Islands Association of Realtors data showed a 74.5% increase, to $1.2 million, in the median sales price of a single-family home in Chatham for the first quarter of 2021 compared with 2020. Provincetown’s median sales price was $1.5 million for that same time period.
Bates said those who once were hanging in, living with family or crowding in with friends hoping to survive long enough to afford a home, are now looking elsewhere.
The business community is seeing the impact with businesses on shortened hours and reduced workweeks to deal with a labor shortage exacerbated by the pandemic, but whose underlying causes are rooted in lack of housing.
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Bates compared Chatham’s efforts in the face of the crisis to building a seawall against a rising tide one little brick at a time.
“Forty to 50 bricks at once, that would be effective,” Bates said.
“Larger rental developments take a longer time to grow community and town meeting support,” said Falmouth Affordable Housing Committee Chair Edward Curley in an email.
He pointed to Little Pond Place with over 40 units that started a decade ago with the town purchasing the land and just started renting to tenants this year.
“I think 40-50 units will be the upper level for affordable housing on Cape Cod — (it’s) just the nature of the area and the communities,” Curley wrote.
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Eastham’s focus in the past was to buy single-family units and convert them to affordable homeownership with a deed restriction that capped the resale at a price set by the state, Town Planner Paul Lagg said. The town also owned some rental duplexes and helped buy down the market rate on homes to make them more affordable.
Eastham resisted large-scale projects and it took 18 years from the land purchase for it to finally build 65 rental apartments that included 50 for residents earning up to 60% of median income and 15 that were for those earning up to 120% of median income.
Lagg said the town was able to counter the criticism and gain acceptance by spreading the units out among multiple freestanding buildings whose design was modeled on traditional Cape Cod homes.
“Higher density balanced with good layout and design,” Lagg said.
“Forty units in one building is different than 40 in four buildings,” Jarusiewicz said.
Even so, long timelines are typical of many town projects that use state and federal money, housing advocates say.
Affordable housing boom in Brewster
Brewster is having an affordable and community housing boom right now (for those earning up to 100% of median income). In addition to the two affordable housing projects on Brewster and Millstone roads, a private developer is working with the assistance of the town on Serenity, a renovation of a former long-term care facility on Route 124 into 132 apartments, of which 27 will be set aside as affordable.
It took over 15 years for the 30-apartment Brewster Woods project to reach construction and 16 years for the project off Millstone Road to get to the planning stage.
“I would say that affordable housing and community housing are challenging,” said Brewster Housing Coordinator Jill Scalise. “It takes time to create units that don’t affect community character.”
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By comparison, Serenity, which reuses an existing property, has taken about a year to move into construction, Scalise said. A similar development is underway on West Road in Orleans with the proposed renovation of the former Cape Cod 5 office building into 62 affordable housing units.
Scalise said he sees those larger developments in Brewster as evidence of the community’s desire to solve the housing crisis.
“There is a desire to have more housing options and meet housing needs to keep the community character we have,” Scalise said. “If we don’t address housing challenges, we’ll lose the community we have now and I do see more momentum to create housing.
