PROVINCETOWN — The Community Builders have been preparing to build 65 apartments on Jerome Smith Road since they won the bid to do the work in late 2021. But their cost projection rose from $22.3 million then to $37.8 million a year later and now to $39.4 million. On Dec. 7, the Boston-based nonprofit developer turned to Wellfleet for help, asking the town’s community preservation committee to kick in $500,000 to support Provincetown’s project.
Dept. of Housing and Community Development
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
A Humpty Dumpty Policy
Five weeks ago, we published a story with the headline “Truro and Wellfleet Will Fail to Meet Their Housing Goals.” It summarized the four Outer Cape towns’ affordable housing production plans and their progress in realizing them.
Truro did not come off well. “The Cloverleaf project,” we reported, “will potentially create 20 to 25 new affordable units, but it is mired in a court challenge, and there is no chance that construction could be completed in the next year and a half” — that is, by March 2023, the end date of the town’s five-year housing production plan.
After the article appeared, we heard from Truro Town Planner Barbara Carboni, who argued that the headline was incorrect. In fact, she wrote, Truro had met the housing production goals set out in its 2018 plan and had received a letter from the state Dept. of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) saying so. She asked us to print a correction.
I was skeptical, to put it mildly. Looking at the numbers of affordably priced units in Truro over the last several years — in 2015 there were 27 units, and in 2020 there were only 25 units — I just couldn’t believe that the goals of the housing plan had been met. No correction, I decided.
What followed was a lengthy correspondence between Barbara and me. (We are now on a quite cordial first-name basis, I’m happy to say.) She sent me a copy of the letter from the state to back up her argument. Sure enough, just as she had said, Louis Martin, the director of the Division of Community Services for the DHCD, wrote to Truro officials on June 30, 2021 affirming that the town had produced 39 new affordable rental units at the Cloverleaf, bringing Truro’s Subsidized Housing Inventory up from a dismal 2.3 percent (the lowest on Cape Cod) to 5.87 percent and fulfilling the goals of the town’s housing plan. See Barbara’s letter to the editor elsewhere on this page for the actual wording of Martin’s letter on this point.
How was this possible? The Cloverleaf is stuck in court and nothing has been built there. I wrote to the DHCD, asking how they could certify that those units had been “produced.”
Samantha Kaufman, the department’s communications director, informed me that “produced means initially eligible for the Subsidized Housing Inventory — not constructed or occupied.”
In other words, as soon as the Truro Zoning Board of Appeals approved the comprehensive permit for the Cloverleaf, all of its units immediately counted as “produced” as far as the state was concerned.
No wonder I was confused. I thought “produced” meant something completely different.
Having the town’s housing production plan certified by the state as in compliance is no trivial matter. It means that, for the next two years, Truro is exempt from Chapter 40B, the state law that puts pressure on towns to work with developers to build affordable housing.
The folks at the DHCD certainly owe a debt to Humpty Dumpty, who said, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
HOUSING CRISIS
Wellfleet Casts Net for More Land to Buy
Affordable Housing Trust will issue an RFP seeking property in town
WELLFLEET — With the town having built far fewer affordable housing units than it promised the state it would create by 2022, the Affordable Housing Trust now plans to issue a request for proposals from the owners of property that could be converted to affordable housing or used to build new units.
The goal is to have 150 units of certified affordable housing, which would represent 10 percent of the town’s total housing stock. That is the threshold established by the Mass. Dept. of Housing and Community Development, below which towns are subject to the provisions of Chapter 40B, the state law that enables zoning boards to issue comprehensive permits to developers of affordable housing. Currently, Wellfleet has only 38 state-certified affordable units.
“We need 112 more units,” trust chair Harry Terkanian told the Independent following the trustees’ Oct. 4 meeting. “At this point, anything that we can find that will get us towards that goal is positive: large parcel, small parcel — anything we can develop is worth looking at. We’re casting a net to see what we will get back.”
Wellfleet is one of two Outer Cape towns that will fail to meet their existing housing production goals, the Independent reported last week. The other is Truro. Wellfleet’s 2017 housing plan called for the creation of 45 new affordable units by October 2022. As of last December, only four new units had been created.
Current housing initiatives, if completed, would add about 59 homes, Terkanian said, though that will certainly not happen by the October 2022 target date.
The 95 Lawrence Road project, now in the planning stage, is expected to add as many as 46 new units to the total. (See related story on page A8.) Another request for proposals (RFP) for the construction of one affordable single-family house at 90 Freeman Ave. will be released in the coming weeks.
There are also the four planned houses on Old King’s Highway and eight units on Paine Hollow Road that have been bogged down in litigation with abutters for years. (See related story on page A10.)
The members of the Affordable Housing Trust described the RFP as a way to bring attention to a critical issue. The trust is a new town body, created by vote of the 2020 annual town meeting. There are seven trustees; besides Terkanian, a lawyer who is a former town administrator, the other members are housing authority chair Elaine McIlroy, housing authority member Gary Sorkin, Sharon Rule-Agger, water commission chair Jim Hood, real estate broker Kathleen Nagle, and select board member Michael DeVasto.
“I would like to tell the people who are supporting us that we are making an effort to identify properties we can use to generate more housing,” Terkanian said during the Oct. 4 meeting. “It’s a little different than saying we made six phone calls and we don’t have anything to buy.”
The town of Chatham issued a similar RFP for developable parcels this past August.
“It looked to me like a tool that would afford the town an opportunity to solicit proposals in a public process and in compliance with Mass. procurement law,” Terkanian said.
Housing Goals
Wellfleet’s Chapter 40B housing production plans (HPPs) are reported to the state, establishing five-year goals for the creation of deed-restricted affordable housing. Once the production goal is reached, the town can deny comprehensive permits under Chapter 40B, which allows developers to bypass some local zoning regulations if they include a certain percentage of affordable units in the plan.
The state defines affordable housing units as those serving households with incomes at 80 percent or less of the area median income (AMI), a metric developed by the federal Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.
The Affordable Housing Trust aims to serve households with a range of incomes, from under 30 percent of (AMI) to 120 percent. Besides affordable housing, there is also a need for what is commonly called “workforce housing,” for households that make more than 80 percent of AMI but still can’t afford to live in Wellfleet, Terkanian said.
“That’s another issue that needs to be addressed over and above reaching the affordable housing goal,” he said.
As larger parcels have become available in other towns, like Truro’s Walsh property or Eastham’s T-Time, towns have stepped up to buy them, trustee Kathleen Nagle said in a phone interview. “Perhaps, someone in town will want to work with us.”
Nagle doesn’t expect people to be “altruistic” when it comes to real estate, she said during the trust’s meeting. “We will likely have to pay market value to get something.”
Funding
How much money might be spent on a housing initiative will be determined if any proposals come in, and if they make sense, Terkanian said.
“If someone says they have a half-acre lot and want $900,000, then that’s probably a non-starter,” he said.
While the trust already has some funds, the amount wouldn’t cover a large purchase. Town meeting would need to authorize additional funding. The trust would be able to handle a small purchase with the funds on hand, Terkanian said.
The parcels offered can be any size but must be in Wellfleet, have a clear title, no easements, restrictions, or reservations, and be up to date on payment of real estate taxes. The owner must be prepared to enter a purchase and sale agreement within 30 days from acceptance of the proposal, according to the draft RFP.
Timeline
The trust’s RFP is set to be issued on Nov. 15, according to the draft discussed during the meeting. The language is being finalized by town staff.
The trustees hope to have responses before February, giving the trust 120 days to evaluate proposals and decide whether to ask for town meeting funding, Terkanian said.
While any property is potentially helpful, those larger than eight acres could provide multiple units of housing with a proportionally larger effect, Nagle said.
“We also need to sell it, to put it out there with press releases and a flyer that says if you’re interested, contact us,” McIlroy said.
If a piece of land becomes available before the January deadline, the trust also has the option of negotiating a deal with the land owner and then taking the proposal to town meeting.
In that case, a uniqueness declaration would be required, describing why a procurement process didn’t take place, as happened with Eastham’s T-Time and Town Center Plaza purchases, Terkanian said.
HOUSING
Last-Minute Change Delays Cloverleaf OK
The developer wants to remove market-rate units from project
TRURO — The development of the affordable housing project known as the Cloverleaf hit a snag on Dec. 17 that has delayed the approval of the 39-unit plan by the zoning board of appeals.
The developer, Ted Malone of Community Housing Resource of Provincetown, told the zoning board that the seven market-rate units that were included in the original plan— along with 32 income-restricted apartments — are no longer feasible because of the way the state regulates housing subsidies.
“The numbers just don’t work,” Malone told the ZBA last week.
He explained that the state Dept. of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), which assists with securing subsidies for housing projects, doesn’t want more than three levels of income restrictions in a single project. The original plan called for three levels, plus market rate, so people earning 60, 80, and 110 percent of the area median income would be eligible for income-restricted rental apartments.
Malone asked that fewer specifics be written into the ZBA’s approval of the project; he wants the specific income limits to be left to his and the DHCD’s discretion. All of the units would, he promised, be income-restricted.
“There’s just a level of detail [in the draft of the ZBA decision] that may conflict with the regulatory agreements drafted by the subsidizing agency,” Malone said.
The change took zoning board members by surprise.
“Then, that’s a different project,” said Barbara Carboni of KP Law, the acting town planner.
She asked Malone to provide a written summary of what he wanted. Art Hultin, chair of the ZBA, reiterated her demand.
“I’ll caution you, Mr. Malone, it’s got to be clear,” Hultin said.
“Yes, I intend to do that,” Malone said. “We’ll have something written and clear. I’m just alerting you that this language [in the draft decision] won’t work.”
The ZBA, which has been reviewing the project for over one year, will meet again virtually on Jan. 7 at 5:30 p.m.
The ZBA has also not yet voted on whether to allow the proposed wastewater treatment plan. A poll of the board, however, found all but possibly one member, John Thornley, would support it. Malone plans to use an alternative treatment system that treats effluent more effectively than individual Title V systems.
But neighbors of the project continue to raise objections. Karen Ruymann, of Bay View Drive, said even the town’s health agent doesn’t understand why there is poor water quality in the Pond Village neighborhood.
Emily Beebe, the health agent, had in a previous meeting talked about a resident whose well water had a nitrate level over 10 mg/L although she has a tight tank. Since all septage is contained within the tight tank, her well had to have been contaminated by something else that no one, including Beebe, knows, Ruymann said.
“This is deeply disturbing to us, that there is not a really detailed hydrogeological study,” Ruymann said.
She asked that such a study be part of the conditions on the project. That could be a heavy economic burden for Malone and probably would not stand up to a court challenge, Carboni said.
Beebe told the Independent that she has not herself seen any recent readings over 10 mg/L in Pond Village. But she took that resident at her word. She lives right on Pilgrim Pond, which catches runoff from surrounding hills and Route 6.
Hultin said the area has had poor water quality for years, but that is not due to the unbuilt Cloverleaf development. Studies by the Cape Cod Commission and an independent peer reviewer, Mark Nelson of the Horsley Witten Group, found the Cloverleaf wouldn’t affect neighboring wells at all.
The Truro Part-Time Resident Taxpayers’ Association’s most recent newsletter, sent to members on Dec. 21, associates the Cloverleaf with questionable science by the Docs for Truro Safe Water, whose materials talk about the dangers of “nitrate contamination on living things,” the newsletter states.
The “docs” derive their name from the fact that all of them have doctorate degrees. They are epidemiologist Ron Fichtner; Dr. Frederick Ruymann, a gastroenterologist; Dr. Robert Brown, a neurologist; Mary Pearl, a conservation biologist; Christopher Clark and Brian Boyle, both engineers; and Robert Simpson, who holds a doctor of social work degree and specializes in behavioral health.
None is a hydrogeologist.
