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    HOUSING CRUNCH

    A Neighbor-to-Neighbor Rental Market Falls Short

    Six months in Facebook’s outermost housing rental group

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Someone in the Facebook group “Provincetown: Housing for Rent” called finding housing here “an impossible dream.” The page is a trove of tales of housing plans that have fallen through. And when one man wrote “luxury on the water is what I’m looking for,” the response was, “Oh, honey.”

    It’s unclear whether the social media platform is solving people’s housing issues or helping to foment political action. But it does offer a window on a problem whose solutions are not in immediate view.

    The possibilities posted are tantalizing but often impractical — someone advertised a house swap: you get to stay in their Boulder, Colo. home for a few months in exchange for letting them stay in your Provincetown abode. Selfies are captioned with biographical information. One person is the proud owner of “a small deaf chihuahua”; another is a floral photographer; and, despite the boa he’s wearing in his picture, a third notes he is straight. Most are requests for housing. “Likes” often correspond to good looks.

    A handful of real estate brokers are in the group, along with people who were born and raised in Provincetown, year-round transplants, college students hungry for a job that will fund a big gay summer, and the occasional family hoping to move out here full-time. There are nearly 6,000 members (full disclosure: this writer is one of them and did find a room through the group).

    The group was founded in 2013 by Adam and Ben Berry, Provincetown residents who run the Peregrine Theatre Ensemble. It is limited to those seeking seasonal and year-round rentals, not weekly or monthly vacation stays. To join, all one must do is click a button and more or less correctly answer what year the Pilgrims first landed in Provincetown. (Hint: the answer is not 1492, though that is apparently a popular one.)

    Most groups of this kind — for Northampton, Providence, or Burlington, Vt. — function as standard informal marketplaces. But the Provincetown group has flair. The selfies, exclamation points, and sassy quips that make it different from most housing market groups could be chalked up to Provincetown’s small size and village vibe. Or they might arise from something trickier: the lack of housing on offer here.

    The group’s tone is more pleading than personal. In other housing groups, people post available units; in the Provincetown group, that doesn’t happen much. People present their cases and ask if there are units available. Then, usually gently, commenters respond: not really.

    Good Neighbors

    “Provincetown: Housing for Rent” reveals how neighbors helping neighbors can come up short. Joining the group can feel like sitting down at a restaurant with a very friendly wait staff but no kitchen.

    In her book Good Neighbors, Harvard professor Nancy Rosenblum writes about the image of America as a nation of people performing acts of neighborly kindness for one another. She writes that, while well-intentioned, this view can sour: “When government and politics disappear from view as they do, we are left with the not-so-innocuous fantasy of ungoverned reciprocity as the best and fully adequate society.”

    Rosenblum lives part-time in Truro. Since local government is, by nature, responsible and responsive to “property owners and not people looking for housing,” she says, she sees the Facebook group as “a good response to an impossible situation.”

    In mid-May, an unusual post cropped up in the Facebook group: a call to “organize a group of workers for housing rights in our beautiful little town.”

    The post was by Juniper James, a 34-year-old trans woman who, since 2016, has spent her summers working in Provincetown.

    “The local government is obviously more interested in tax revenue than they are in providing security for the local workforce,” James wrote in the post, “but if we work together we can effect change!”

    James spent the summer of 2019 living in Provincetown — in her car. This despite the fact that she was working two jobs, at Loveland and Pop + Dutch. “I was making more money than I’ve ever made in my life, and I still couldn’t swing it,” she said.

    She feels “weird” about relying on Facebook for community organizing. “It’s a double-edged sword,” she said. “Facebook creates a public forum, but the company now owns what everyone has said in that public forum. It’s disconcerting, but it’s also hard not to rely on it for communication.”

    ‘The Saddest Thing’

    Jennifer Cabral spends a lot of time on Facebook. Too much time, she admits. She says she’s not alone, though, especially in the winter. That’s when people here flock to Facebook for connection, she said.

    Cabral is the moderator for “Provincetown: Housing for Rent.” That means she has the ability to silence comments and add and remove users, and her posts are flagged with a special tag.

    Cabral, the daughter of the late Reggie and Meara Cabral, spent her summers as a young adult working odd jobs in town. She describes the housing crisis in Provincetown as “a bucket with holes in it.”

    “You try to patch the holes you can patch,” she said. “But it’s always going to be leaking. So, you have to always be filling it. You will never solve the housing problem. You can only tackle it and keep tackling it.”

    The Facebook group could be a patch. Cabral is glad the group exists — it has helped many people find housing — but she says it’s sad that the group exists in the lopsided way that it does, with people always asking for space and others rarely able to provide it.

    “Being in the group is like staring at this huge, gaping need,” she said.

    She paused for a while.

    “It’s so sad,” she said. “It really is. It’s the saddest thing.”

    Editor’s note: Because of a reporting error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Jennifer Cabral was born in Provincetown. She was born in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

     

    SOCIAL MEDIA

    Are We Having Fun Yet? Not in Some Facebook Spaces

    Moderators say the political climate and Covid are to blame for rising vitriol

    By

    Five years ago, Andrea Sawyer was asked to be a moderator of the Provincetown Community Space (PCS) Facebook page by a friend who was giving up the position. Sawyer thought it might be fun. That’s not how she describes the role now.

    The space currently has 14,422 members, of whom 60 are people labeled “conversation starters” — that is, they make posts that get attention. Sawyer and other Facebook moderators say taming arguments and personal attacks on the pages they manage has become a time-consuming and often disheartening job. They blame the current political climate, along with stress stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic, for the change.

    Administrators of two Eastham pages — Eastham Cape Cod, with 5,485 members, and Eastham Community Space, with 4,654 — did not respond to inquiries for this article. The administrator of the Truro Facebook page also did not respond. But though they described growing incivility in posts and comments, the Wellfleet and Provincetown administrators interviewed by the Independent mostly hold out hope for the platform as a place for positive interaction.

    “PCS has always been, to me, our virtual community bulletin board — a place to find out about what’s happening in town, and discussions about everything from the blue chair to whose huge yacht is in the harbor,” Sawyer said. “It saddens me very much to see the level of rancor and incivility we have been experiencing recently. It didn’t used to be like this,” she added.

    Moderators of both the PCS and Wellfleet Community Space (WCS), the most frequented page for that town with 5,780 members, said that one way they manage the tone is to prohibit political content altogether. While posting about local events and in some cases limited forms of advertising are permitted, overtly political posts, they said, are taken down as soon as they are seen. But moderators say they lack control over the debate that occurs in the comments on posts, which can veer toward the politicized or unrelated. John Wolf, a moderator of the WCS, said his strategy is to “encourage vigorous debate but no personal attacks, name-calling, or bullying.” Those, he said, are “against the rules of the page.”

    Deleting posts and “blocking” people is an option for moderators dealing with participants who engage in bullying and personal attacks. People who are blocked from a Facebook page can no longer post there. Farrukh Najmi, another moderator of the WCS, said members of community groups usually are given a warning before being removed. Najmi believes those steps are effective. “People are typically very apologetic after having a post deleted and receiving a warning,” he said.

    Sawyer said that not everyone is so understanding. She has been threatened online by people who were removed from the group, she said. And one woman who had insisted Sawyer intervene to reinstate her membership pursued her in person. “She approached me in a local shop, following me around, cornering me, gesturing wildly and yelling,” Sawyer said. Other customers were “aghast,” she said, and the clerk was ready to call the police.

    A more common issue is that removing posts can lead to participant complaints that the pages are suppressing “free speech,” Sawyer said. (The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech applies only to government action to silence speech, not the acts of individuals or companies like Facebook, which are not required to publish anything they choose not to publish.)

    Najmi said he sometimes finds it difficult to delete posts. “I’ve had to delete posts and comments that I wholly agree with,” he said, “in order to maintain the rules of the group.” Wolf sometimes feels as though he “can’t seem to please anybody” when trying to maintain order on the page.

    “Although admins have always had to keep an eye on things, we could now literally spend all day doing it,” Sawyer said.

    The 14,000-plus members of the Provincetown Community Space, in a town with fewer than 3,000 residents, would seem to show that Facebook is a primary source of local news. Yet a 2019 study by the Pew Research Center found that just 15 percent of adults in the U.S. said social media was their preferred way to get local news. (Only 13 percent in that same study said their preferred source was print.) Perhaps people are tuning in to PCS just to watch the fights.

    “The deep divisiveness of our society, within us, is reflected in these community pages,” said Najmi. But he believes people are learning about online debate. “Opinions can change and no one is perfect,” he said. “We have to emphasize and normalize the concept of a growth mindset.”

    Allie Birger’s summer fellowship with the Independent is supported by the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University.

     

     

    CIVICS

    Moderator Defends FinCom Pick and Facebook Rants

    Says FinCom’s Mark Hatch has a right to offend

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — David Panagore, the former town manager, has been appointed as an alternate on the finance committee, raising the ire of part-time resident taxpayers once again.

    Panagore, the town manager for four years until April 2019, was appointed following the expiration of a one-year waiting period, as mandated in the town charter for former employees with a supervisory role.

    Moderator Mary-Jo Avellar, who appoints FinCom members, said, “He’s eminently qualified, having been the town manager. I’m obligated to appoint the most qualified person, and I think that is what I did.”

    Members of the Provincetown Part-time Resident Taxpayers Association had criticized Avellar for attempting to appoint him earlier this year, before the waiting period was up. A charter change recently allowed nonresident taxpayers — home owners who are not registered to vote here — to serve as alternates on nonregulatory boards, of which the FinCom is one.

    When the alternate position opened up months ago, Scott Van Hove, a certified public accountant who lives in Florida and Provincetown, put in his application. But Avellar said no thanks; she did not want to appoint a second-home owner.

    The finance committee has submitted an article on the town meeting warrant to be considered on Sept. 21 that would block second-home owners from serving on the FinCom. Avellar supports the article.

    “I think the finance committee is too important to have nonvoters on it,” she said. “It should be voters only.”

    Laura Rood, who also applied to be on the FinCom, complained about being passed over for Panagore. She recently became a Provincetown voter, though she is also a member of the part-time resident taxpayers association.

    But Rood’s complaints go beyond that. Like many others, she is calling on Avellar to remove  FinCom chair Mark Hatch from his position because of his posting what many find offensive and divisive comments on Facebook.

    Following a Black Lives Matter protest in Provincetown on May 31, Hatch wrote, “Oh I get it, white people driving through town instead of actually doing something for the disconnected and disenfranchised people of color in the town, who, mostly have overstayed visas and are basically living in the shadows in scummy places. But sure, I get it, it’s trending.”

    Hatch said he posts on Facebook out of frustration and he doesn’t mind being provocative.

    “The point of Facebook, I think, is to have discussions, and you cannot have discussions if all you’re going to do is only post what everyone agrees with,” Hatch said. “So having an opinion that is different is critical to the public discourse.”

    Avellar said she doesn’t always agree with Hatch, but it’s his First Amendment right to speak on social media.

    “Social media is a pain and I tell everyone not to be on it,” she said. “But I’m certainly not going to remove someone because of it.”

    LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

    Writing Thursday

    By

    It’s “Giving Tuesday” as I write this, and I can see from looking at the online posts of local nonprofits that people really are giving. We know firsthand about this generosity because so many of you have contributed to our own Local Journalism Project, helping us to build up the resources that will be needed to support young journalists here and make the Independent a stable and sustainable local news organization. We’re still at the beginning of that work, but the signs are encouraging, both from donors and from subscribers — more than 900 of you already.

    There’s another area, though, where we wish our readers were more generous: writing letters. We know you’re busy. And you probably think that anything appearing in print over your name has to be a masterpiece of rhetoric and wit.

    We know you are reading what we write. We hear you talking about it. At Monday’s special town meeting in Provincetown, it was clear that many people had read in these pages Paul Benson’s amazingly complete and digestible history of the VFW parcel at the heart of the controversy. And we see plenty of comments about our work on Facebook.

    But it’s so easy to post a comment on Facebook, you say. Well, we make it easy, too. Just send us an email. We’ll work with you to make your letter even better, if you like. That’s something that Facebook won’t do.

    Sometimes I wish you could all sit in on our weekly editorial meetings here, when we talk about the last edition and the articles that people are working on. It’s very different from my last newspaper job, because this group has so many more voices with varied points of view. It changes and deepens the way we understand and report the news.

    That’s why we need your letters, so that your voices become a part of that conversation. The direct encounter between people with different ideas and opinions who actually listen to each other is the foundation of good journalism — and good government as well.

    After town meeting this week, Fire Chief Michael Trovato, who was on the losing end of a close vote, was none too pleased to be approached by reporter Paul Benson. He gave Benson an earful because, he said, the Independent’s editorial last week had hurt his cause and he had taken so much abuse for his position on the VFW. Benson, ever curious, listened and asked questions about how the town might move forward to address its public safety needs, taking notes for the next story. Soon the two were shaking hands and sharing ideas for the spring town meeting.

    Here’s my idea: Writing Thursday. When you sit down with the latest issue of the Independent and read something that gives you an idea, write it down and send it to us. It’s a gift we’ll make good use of.

    letter from the editor

    Moderators, Editors, and Free Speech

    Pushing back against the forces that pull us apart

    By

    More than one reader of the brand-new Provincetown Independent has asked us about our “politics” as a newspaper. What is our position on property taxes, or the Mass. Shellfish Initiative, or the funicular (sorry, “inclined elevator”) up the hill to the Pilgrim Monument? What’s our agenda?

    My usual answer to these questions is not very satisfying, I fear. In general I say we need more information before we even think about possibly taking a position.

    In fact, that is our agenda: gathering information, reporting it, and creating a space where an honest give-and-take of opinions can occur in a vigorous and yet respectful tone. Newspapers are especially important in pursuing that purpose.

    So are our town meetings. Only in New England do we have this peculiarly democratic form of government, and one reason it works at all is because of the moderator, whose job is to protect everyone’s right and ability to speak while ensuring that the work of the meeting is accomplished. “Free speech” is the foundation of this precious institution, but that doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want whenever you want. The moderator can cut you off if you take too much time, wander from the topic, or make a personal attack.

    That’s what editors do, too. Like the moderator, the editor’s most important job is not to express his or her own opinion but to enforce the rules of discourse in a way that encourages the truth to emerge and good decisions about the public’s business to ensue. The best ones do this while overseeing some good-spirited entertainment as well.

    As newspapers have declined, we have seen the ethic of moderation waste away. Facebook’s overwhelmed “moderators” can’t even hold back a tidal wave of child pornography, much less keep neighbors from abusing each other to the point of physical violence. In last Sunday’s New York Times, Andrew Marantz wrote, “I no longer have any doubt that the brutality that germinates on the internet can leap into the world of flesh and blood.”

    Marantz suggests that it’s time to reconsider some aspects of our understanding of the First Amendment, including “blanket protections of hate speech.” He quotes Berkeley law professor John A. Powell: “It’s simpler to think only about the First Amendment and to ignore, say, the 14th Amendment, which guarantees full citizenship and equal protection to all Americans, including those who are harmed by hate speech. It’s simpler, but it’s also wrong.”

    We have launched the Independent not to promote a particular point of view on one or another issue but to promote a way of engaging with one another that pushes back, in some small way, against the forces — economic, technological, and political — that tend to pull us apart. Let’s not give up on that town meeting-like way of addressing our differences and leaving the auditorium smiling and shaking hands at the end of the evening.

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