Most of the arguments for delaying, reducing, or halting the affordable housing project at Maurice’s Campground in Wellfleet are ill-informed or based on false information.
First, it’s argued that the project will put an unnecessary burden on town resources — the school, the fire and police depts., and the freshwater aquifer.
The police and fire depts. can’t lay off workers in the off-season. The state will no longer allow them to hire untrained summer help. They must maintain a level of preparedness that meets the demands of the high season. In the off-season, those resources are underused.
And since many occupants of affordable housing will be Wellfleetians moving out of untenable or unaffordable housing in town, they would not put any additional burden on our town’s infrastructure. Our school population has shrunk to the point that the school is in danger of closing. Those who are new to Wellfleet will only help by increasing the use of our underutilized institutions.
Two other resources potentially affected by the Maurice’s project are roads and water. Traffic is a problem on the Outer Cape only in summer. The campground already contributes to that problem. The proposed housing will replace Maurice’s summer residents with permanent residents, adding traffic only in the off-season.
The argument about water resources is also ill-informed. Our freshwater aquifers are continually recharged. The problem is salt intrusion caused by extraction at the edges of the freshwater lenses in areas such as Lieutenant Island. The Maurice’s project will get its water from Eastham, which draws water from wells far from those edges.
The problem of salt intrusion should be addressed by those who live at the lens edges. They should join with neighbors to prohibit watering lawns and washing boats and cars, install water-saving devices in their homes, and eliminate garbage disposals.
Another argument against housing at Maurice’s is that it will be too dense, and that high density causes problems. There were indeed studies in the 1960s suggesting that high-density development is problematic. Since then, however, those studies have been refuted. They were based on public housing projects built after 1947 that were notoriously under-maintained and where the occupants were below the poverty level and had few political or financial resources to deal with deteriorating conditions.
Density was not the problem; low quality from the get-go and lack of upkeep were the problem. There are plenty of successful high-density projects serving low- and moderate-income residents, such as the ILGWU and ACW co-op housing in New York City.
Finally, the planning board’s Gerry Parent argued that the plans for Maurice’s will undermine our village community. But the community is actually being undermined by market forces that the Maurice’s project will help mitigate. We are becoming a winter ghost village.
Wellfleet is already built out. We need more affordable housing, and we have little space for it. With municipal water and sewage, we could reduce lot sizes to a quarter acre. That would increase the potential for many more houses, but it would radically change our community. Or we could cluster more dense development in limited areas, such as downtown and at Maurice’s.
If we really want to do something to protect our village atmosphere, we should work to limit teardowns where smaller affordable homes are replaced with large, expensive second homes. “Protect our village atmosphere” has been the rallying cry of those opposed to affordable housing across the state. It has an ugly undertone, and it is time to put it to rest.
I ask those opposed to the Maurice’s project to refrain from beginning your arguments with “I’m in favor of affordable housing, but….” We’ve heard this construction before. The “but” is followed by “not here,” “not yet,” or “not now.” “Not now,” it turns out, means “never.”
John Cumbler, a member of the town’s conservation commission, has owned a home in Wellfleet since 1986.
