This article was updated on Oct. 18, 2024 with new dates for the community kickoff and wall-raising.
WELLFLEET — The winners of a lottery to become owners of four affordable houses to be built by Habitat for Humanity on Old Kings Highway were selected early last month. A community kickoff to meet the winning families, whose names have not yet been made public, has been scheduled for 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 23 at Wellfleet Preservation Hall.
The four homes — two 972-square-foot two-bedroom houses and two 1,200-square-foot three-bedroom houses — will be built on land the town acquired in 2008 and transferred to the housing authority in 2013. The nine-year-long permitting process was delayed by three lawsuits before it was finalized last summer.
One of Habitat’s requirements for prospective homeowners is the ability to assist in the house’s construction. Starting with a “wall-raising” ceremony set for 8 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 2, all four families will work with AmeriCorps volunteers to begin building their new homes, said Kathleen Nagle, a Habitat volunteer. The construction is expected to take up to a year, she said.
Although some property owners in the neighborhood fought the project in court, at least one couple among the abutters has volunteered to assist with the construction, said Nagle, and others are raising money to hire Harwich-based ecological restoration company BlueFlax Design to do landscaping around the site.
The homes will be deed-restricted. In this case the initial owners can earn no more than 80 percent of area median income (AMI) for two of the homes — one three-bedroom and one two-bedroom — and no more than 60 percent of AMI for the remaining two. Resale is restricted to keep the properties affordable for future owners, who would have to qualify under income guidelines. Preference for local applicants was given for two of the four houses.
According to the Mass. Housing Partnership, Barnstable County’s AMI for a family of four is currently $126,650; 80 percent of that is $101,300 and 60 percent is $75,990.
There were 50 applicants for the four houses, said Tara Cronin, Habitat’s director of resource development, but only 14 qualified for the lottery, which required being first-time home buyers and being able to make monthly housing payments of $1,063 to $1,582.
Those who qualified had a 28-percent chance of winning. In Provincetown’s latest affordable-homeownership lottery, in which a single one-bedroom condo was sold, 25 of 27 applicants qualified, and there was a 4-percent chance of winning.
Cronin said that Habitat’s strict criteria may be partially to blame for the low number of applicants. “It can be very daunting to work multiple jobs and find the energy to fill out such a long application,” she said. The application is 22 pages long.
Applicants are also interviewed in their homes by Habitat volunteers to ensure that they will honor their financial obligations and participate in the house’s construction. They must document “great or compelling or severe need” for affordable housing, according to Habitat family programs manager Mary Ann Mills-Lassiter.
Another possible reason for the low number of eligible applicants is that Habitat’s desire to provide homes for families clashes with its income standard, said Jay Coburn, president of the Community Development Partnership. “They are looking for families or households with three or more people,” he said. “If you have two income earners, the family likely makes too much money to qualify.”
“While you say that 4 out of 14 is good odds, it still leaves 2 out of every 3 applicants without a home,” Nagle wrote in an email. “It’s difficult to justify wanting to open the pool to be larger.”
In 2022, Habitat for Humanity of Cape Cod raised its maximum income standard from 65 percent of AMI to 80 percent. It was a change that Wellfleet’s affordable housing trust, local housing partnership, and housing authority had asked for.
Habitat President Wendy Cullinan said those earning between 65 percent and 80 percent represent the “missing middle.”
Habitat for Humanity of Cape Cod has a covenant with Habitat for Humanity International to uphold the parent organization’s core values. The covenant stipulates that the affiliate will serve families that earn less than 60 percent of AMI and will not serve families that earn more than 80 percent. Originally, the Cape Cod affiliate enforced a 65-percent limit, but in 2022 it moved the upper limit to 80 percent.
But the increased income limit hasn’t resulted in a larger applicant pool. Cronin said that the organization received 51 applications for two homes built on Durkee Lane in Wellfleet in 2019 — one more than the number of applicants received this year with the more generous income standard. In 2019, as in 2024, 14 applicants qualified for the lottery.
Cronin and Nagle both worry that the numbers suggest that potential low-income applicants have moved away from Cape Cod between 2019 and 2024. Cronin noted that 6 of the 14 eligible applicants for the houses on Old Kings Highway made between 60 and 80 percent of AMI.
According to the Cape Cod & Islands Association of Realtors, the year-to-date median sales price of single-family homes in Wellfleet was $902,000 as of August 2024. “The struggle for local families to work and live on the Cape is just getting harder and harder,” Cronin said.
The first Habitat for Humanity of Cape Cod house to use the revised income standard was built on Phoebe Way in Brewster earlier this year. According to Cronin, the first person to qualify for housing under the new standard was a nurse working for Cape Cod Healthcare.
“It illustrates why we need to help and keep those making under 80 percent AMI here,” she said.
