I got to report some good news this week: eight years of sustained effort, including major support from the state, have brought the Cloverleaf project in Truro to fruition. A process that began in 2015, when Gov. Baker directed the state to transfer unused land to town governments for affordable housing, will see shovels in the ground sometime next summer.
I have some bad news for you, too, however. Working people have had to move from the Outer Cape in each of those six years. A report by the Concord Group commissioned by the Housing Assistance Corp. projects the loss of 829 Cape Cod families earning under $100,000 every year. The affordable housing inventory of the entire Cape has increased by 580 units since 2006. So, roughly 16 years of affordable housing development has not created enough units to house even one year’s worth of the region’s economic refugees.
The costs of this exodus are clear to anyone willing to see them. Mental health care, child care, and disability care are at breaking points. Truro’s fire department was briefly down to three people last year. Wellfleet’s accounting department has no permanent staff and a free cash balance it cannot reconcile. Ask anyone who has to hire — in fact, ask anyone who works here — and you’ll hear there are just not enough people to do the jobs that need doing.
New construction is vital but not sufficient. At Provincetown’s housing workshop next Monday, Dec. 19, select board members want to discuss down payment grants, rental assistance, short-term rental regulations, and strategies that have led to good news elsewhere.
George Ruther, director of housing in Vail, Colo., will be there to talk about that town’s program to purchase deed restrictions. Ruther was at the Cape Cod Commission in August to outline Vail’s strategy of foregoing income requirements and resale rules to focus on the simplest deed restriction possible: a unit’s occupants (not necessarily its owners) must live and work in the county.
Placer County, Calif., home to the resort towns of Lake Tahoe, has posted free accessory dwelling unit (ADU) plans online. Permits are approved by county staff based on clear rules and a short timeline.
According to Jay Coburn, CEO of the Community Development Partnership (which, with the Homeless Prevention Council, recently opened an ADU resource center), such changes can clear away the obstacles that prevent people from building ADUs: the need to hire a lawyer and an architect and face a gauntlet of meetings.
The biggest problem, Coburn said, is that good ideas are more plentiful than the staff that could implement them. Provincetown has one housing specialist. Truro and Wellfleet have none. Wellfleet does not even have a town planner, Coburn said.
Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham are looking at regionalizing their health and conservation departments and their coastal resiliency work. If the towns can’t each create strong housing departments, Coburn said, then perhaps they should establish a regional housing office with enough staff to create and implement these programs.
