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housing

    HOUSING

    Planning Board Considers Eastham’s First Inclusionary Zoning Project

    The president of Cape Associates proposes six new rental units on Massasoit Road

    By

    EASTHAM — At the planning board’s July 16 meeting, chair Dan Coppelman said the board had entered “new territory” — the first application submitted to the town under its inclusionary zoning bylaw, adopted at town meeting in May 2022.

    A rendering by SV Design shows how the proposed addition to the building at 425 Massasoit Road would look. The second floor would include six one-bedroom apartments above the office space on the first floor. (Image courtesy Town of Eastham)

    The plan, for the addition of six apartments above an existing commercial building at 425 Massasoit Road, was brought to the board by Orleans resident Matthew Cole, who owns the Eastham construction company Cape Associates.

    The inclusionary bylaw requires that any single project resulting in a net increase of five or more units include a certain amount of affordable or workforce housing. Six-unit proposals, such as the one for 425 Massasoit Road, are required to include a single affordable unit.

    The affordable unit must be identical to the others in terms of construction and layout, but its rent will be restricted so it is available to those making up to 80 percent of the county’s area median income as defined by the federal Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. That 80-percent income threshold is currently $74,800 for a single person or $85,450 for a two-person household.

    Cole told the board that the existing building at the site was “a source of embarrassment” that “needs to be cleaned up” and said he wanted to add to the town’s housing inventory in the process.

    The structure at 425 Massasoit is a 7,652-square-foot office building and woodshop that Cape Associates purchased from Cape Abilities in 2018. The rebuilt structure’s footprint would stay the same, according to project documents, and a new second story on top of the existing office space would include the six new units.

    Planning board members Michele Vion and Patricia Canavan both said they were ready to vote on Cole’s proposal at the July 16 meeting. “I think the staff did a great job of tying in this project with the strategic plan and the market study,” Canavan said.

    Coppelman said he liked the project but wanted extra time to study the proposal. The board voted to continue the discussion on Aug. 20.

     

    Need for Housing

    Cole says that he employs about 130 people at Cape Associates, but that he, “like many other employers,” is continually challenged by an “inability to find suitable housing” for his workers.

    The building as it looked in April 2022, just before Cape Abilities closed its day habilitation program. (Photo by Cam Blair)

    “Over the last several years, we’ve been more or less forced into building apartments to try to be part of the solution,” he told the Independent. “We own rental apartments in Eastham, Orleans, and Chatham. This property is one that will add to that supply.”

    Cole said that when his company recruits employees, “folks think they’ll be able to find housing either immediately or over time, and that doesn’t always happen.”

    Cole told the planning board on July 16 that Cape Abilities was also experiencing staffing troubles when it decided to sell the property to Cape Associates in 2018. The nonprofit, which at one time offered day services to 35 people with disabilities at the building on Massasoit Road, continued renting the building from Cape Associates for four more years before closing its Eastham location in 2022 and moving operations to Hyannis.

    Cole said he had considered creating two two-bedroom apartments and two one-bedroom apartments on the building’s second floor but ultimately decided that six one-bedroom units “would serve the market better.” He said he plans to give Cape Associates employees preference when filling the rental units, but that he would open them to the general public if they weren’t rented quickly.

    Creating six units instead of four triggered the town’s inclusionary zoning bylaw, which Cole said created an “additional amount of administration time and bureaucracy” to navigate.

    “I don’t think this provision is perfect,” Cole said, adding that he thought the threshold for requiring affordable units ought to be higher than the current five. Cole said that Orleans’s inclusionary bylaw is triggered at 10 units.

    Eastham Town Planner Paul Lagg told the Independent that developers choosing to build fewer units to avoid triggering the bylaw is “always a possibility.”

    The bylaw could be revised, he said, adding that “I think there’s some flexibility that’s needed to differentiate between large-scale housing projects and smaller-scale ones.”

     

    Subsidized Inventory

    One of the goals of the inclusionary zoning bylaw is to increase the town’s subsidized housing inventory (SHI) in accordance with Massachusetts General Law chapter 40B, which aims to facilitate affordable housing construction in towns where less than 10 percent of the housing stock is designated affordable.

    Only 3.7 percent of Eastham’s year-round housing stock, or 116 units, is on the state’s most recent subsidized housing inventory, and Coppelman said he wanted to be sure the development at 425 Massasoit Road would qualify for inclusion on that list.

    “We’re expanding our wings and taking on more responsibility,” Coppelman said. “In my opinion, we need to do it correctly.”

    Alexis Lanzillotta from the Barrett Planning Group in Hingham was on hand to answer questions from board members about the bylaw and the inventory. “You want to make sure that as you’re drafting conditions, you’re ensuring that the project is going to meet requirements for inclusion on the SHI as a local action unit,” she said.

    Those requirements include a long-term use restriction and a marketing and resident selection plan, including rules for a waitlist.

    “There’s a lot going on with this bylaw, and it’s very complicated,” Lagg said. “Unfortunately for Mr. Cole, he’s the first person through the door to use this.”

    REGIONAL RESPONSE

    New Plans for Housing at Seasonal Communities Meeting

    Leaders from Cape, Islands, and Berkshires discuss next steps for the new designation

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — On an unseasonably hot Friday in May, local leaders from Cape Cod, the Islands, and the Berkshires gathered at town hall to discuss the state’s newest response to the worsening housing crisis: the “seasonal communities designation” created by last year’s Affordable Homes Act.

    State Secretary of Housing and Livable Communities Ed Augustus and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll were featured speakers at the Seasonal Communities Advisory Council meeting in Provincetown on May 16. Truro Select Board member Nancy Medoff is at right; Wellfleet Select Board members Barbara Carboni and Ryan Curley are seated behind Driscoll. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    The designation provides policy tools to towns that face a burgeoning market for vacation homes that has made it difficult for many year-round residents to secure housing. Previously, towns had to come up with their own policies, pass them at town meeting, and then get the legislature to approve them as home-rule petitions, but the new law created a Seasonal Communities Advisory Council for discussing ideas for solutions and asking the state to turn them into new legal tools.

    A large group assembled for the May 16 council meeting in Provincetown, including Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, Secretary of Housing and Livable Communities Ed Augustus, state Sen. Julian Cyr, state Rep. Hadley Luddy, and select board members and town staff from Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, and Brewster.

    Driscoll said the state’s aim is to build more housing “for the individuals who live here now — families, young adults, folks who want to age in place with dignity and respect — but also for the next generation.

    “A lot of 26-to-35-year-olds are leaving the state because they can’t do the thing that many of us had the chance to do when we were 26 to 35, which is buy a house, put down roots, and contribute to your community,” said Driscoll, who described settling in Salem as a young adult after growing up on naval bases around the country.

    A map of the percentage of housing units in each of the state’s towns that are recorded in U.S. Census data as “vacant for seasonal, recreational, or occasional use.” This metric was used to help define the state’s initial list of seasonal communities, which are highlighted with white borders on the map. (Image courtesy Commonwealth of Massachusetts)

    There are “lots of intractable problems in government, but this isn’t one of them,” Driscoll added. “We just need to figure out how to build more housing.”

    The designation — which has already been accepted by voters in Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham — requires towns to adopt bylaws permitting deed-restricted year-round homes on undersized lots and to incorporate tiny homes into their bylaws. Council members discussed the details of those provisions.

    There’s “a real distinction” between tiny homes “that aren’t movable, that are true investments, versus homes on wheels,” said council member Kevin Galligan, a select board member in Orleans, “so let’s make sure we define that.”

    Council members also discussed a provision allowing towns to build housing specifically for public employees such as teachers, police officers, and firefighters, who often earn too much to qualify for affordable housing but not enough to buy homes at market prices.

    Laura Silber, a council member from Martha’s Vineyard, said that “the fire departments on Martha’s Vineyard are almost entirely volunteer,” and towns there would like “trained volunteer personnel” to be eligible for town-built housing.

    “In the coming decades, we’re going to have to figure out how to provide housing for almost all public employees” in many seasonal towns, said Cyr. Home prices on Nantucket have already surpassed what even department heads can afford, and other towns will soon find that their entire public workforce will need some kind of housing support, he said.

    Luddy asked whether health-care workers and commercial fishermen could be added to the list of occupations for which towns could build dedicated housing, while council member Alisa Magnotta, executive director of Housing Assistance, asked if child-care workers could be included.

    The Provincetown meeting was the first that most council members attended in person. Also present were select board members Austin Miller and Leslie Sandberg from Provincetown, Sue Areson and Nancy Medoff from Truro, Barbara Carboni and Ryan Curley from Wellfleet, and town staff from Provincetown, Truro, and Eastham. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    “The other crisis that’s happening in the region is we don’t have enough child-care workers,” said Magnotta. They are paid even less than home health aides and certified nurses’ assistants, yet they are “essential to the economy” and especially to women’s ability to rejoin the workforce, she said.

    Allowing towns to build housing for more categories of employees would require an update to the legislation, Cyr said, because fair housing laws require publicly funded units be available to everyone, and new laws are needed to carve out exceptions.

    Such legislation was not out of the question, Cyr said, adding that “I think you could make a really good case for health-care workers.”

    Driscoll raised another issue she hoped the council would consider: a growing need for supportive housing for elders on Cape Cod, as well as for young adults with autism.

    “Is there a way to put that on speed dial or offer some special consideration in permitting?” Driscoll asked. “Congregate housing can be hard to zone for. How do we figure out a way to offer the support that’s necessary?”

    Silber said that the legal tools in the current designation need to be supplemented with a revenue stream such as a local-option real estate transfer fee, which failed in last year’s legislative session.

    “We’re going to need funding to fully implement these tools. This is a shout out to your administration for your support of the transfer fee,” Silber said to Driscoll, “and we certainly hope you can get it across the finish line this session.”

    About two dozen people turned their gaze to Driscoll, and after a brief pause, she decided to aim for levity: “I blame Julian!” she said, to laughter.

    Council members agreed on the importance of the transfer fee and moved to discussing next steps for the council. There will be three “public listening sessions” over the course of the summer organized by the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities that will allow the public to comment on rules that are being developed and future policy ideas that the council could take up, followed by draft regulations and a formal public comment period.

    The next full meeting of the 24-member council will be on Nantucket in September, although various subcommittees will continue to meet between now and then.

    TRURO TOWN MEETING

    Bright Skies and Mild Language at Truro’s Big Tent

    The town’s divisions were evident, but the air felt lighter this year

    By

    TRURO — Staff don’t say much at town meetings here — even the town manager speaks only to answer questions. Instead, Moderator Paul Wisotzky cheerfully asks if anyone wants to introduce the next article, and the people — select board members, committee members, and the public at large — take it from there.

    Meetings can last for six hours and often spill onto a second day. The town was blessed with bright, warm weather on Saturday, May 3, however, and the mood inside Truro’s big tent seemed to reflect the mildness outside.

    People had shed their scarves and heavy jackets, and voters delivered their speeches a bit lightly — more like tennis players warming up than gladiators facing off.

    The gentle air did not resolve the town’s longstanding divisions over the size of town staff, the cost of town buildings, and the problem of housing. Those issues all emerged early during a series of free cash allocations that became a free-for-all for objections.

    The dollar amounts were often small — $45,000 for a zoning consultant, for example — but 11 speakers debated that item. At least five more were in line to speak when Lili Flanders called for a vote: there were about 200 in favor and 35 against.

    The $60,320 for discounted beach and dump stickers for elders was also fair game; Debra Best-Parker offered a complex amendment that was ultimately ruled out of order. DPW Director Jarrod Cabral fielded many questions about a plan to consider expanding the town’s water infrastructure.

    All told, the 16 sections of the free cash article took more than 90 minutes for voters to approve.

    Suddenly conscious of time — or perhaps just ready for lunch — the voters endorsed a $3.2-million plan to remediate PFAS contamination on Town Hall Hill in what felt like seconds.

    A major borrowing for large-scale solar installations on town property also sailed through. With only 10 or so voters against it, the $5-million measure was one of the most popular items at the meeting.

    With spending settled and lunches consumed, the town turned to housing. Voters flocked to the four microphones, and at one point almost 20 people were in line to speak. Despite last year’s town meeting vote in support of 160 homes at the Walsh property, the number of units to be built there was repeatedly questioned.

    “Walsh is vital to our future,” said planning board member Jack Riemer. “Its current value to all of us is measured in hundreds of thousands of gallons of drinking water per day. Walsh is the site for future public water supply development. If we apply the same pattern of extension as happened at the Cloverleaf, we could be looking at more than 550 units ranging from 30 to 45 feet tall.”

    Michael Forgione upped the estimate to 660 units. “This is why some of us believe there’s a plan for Walsh City,” he said.

    “I agree with Mr. Forgione,” said planning board chair Rich Roberts. “We do not know that the Pamet Lens can support development of the Walsh property at the densities implied by this proposed zoning.”

    “Time and time again we hear this: housing is moving too fast,” said planning board member Ellery Althaus. “When one of my employees calls in and says their car won’t start, they were gonna get a cab but they stubbed their toe, and now they have a sore throat — at a certain point I have to acknowledge that person doesn’t want to work. I think we have to acknowledge that some people don’t want housing.”

    Select board member Bob Weinstein said the expression NIMBY should in Truro be written as NIMSBY: “Not In My Second Back Yard.”

    The seasonal communities designation passed with 60 percent of the vote, while the Walsh zoning overlay proposal carried 55 percent. The last article — a nonbinding vote to cap the cost of a new DPW building at $20 million — was rejected by 54 percent of voters.

    The language had been civil, and the air in the tent never turned sour. But the bright skies had soothed the town’s divisions — not erased them.

    TOWN MEETING

    Wellfleet Says Yes to Funding Maurice’s RFP

    Seasonal communities label and money for marina repairs are also approved

    By

    WELLFLEET — The 328 voters at the April 28 annual town meeting owed their first unexpected vote to resident Brian Stern, who moved to block a $225,000 capital budget item for affordable housing site development at Maurice’s Campground by making it contingent on passage of Article 26, which would be a step toward development and which he said he opposed.

    HOUSING

    10 of 36 Condos on Capt. Bertie’s to Be Affordable

    Four-story building would be part of a denser Shank Painter corridor

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — A proposed development near the town’s evolving Shank Painter corridor will start making its way through the permitting process soon, with a review by the Cape Cod Commission as a “development of regional impact” set for a hearing later this month.

    New Boston Ventures proposes a four-story condominium building on a half-acre lot at 44 Capt. Bertie’s Way, behind Mac’s Fish House in Provincetown. (Photos courtesy Town of Provincetown)

    New Boston Ventures, a developer based in Boston’s South End, has proposed a 36-unit condominium project at 44 Captain Bertie’s Way. It plans to sell 10 of those units — a relatively high 28 percent of the total — at affordable prices under the town’s inclusionary bylaw.

    The company, whose principals are David Goldman and Dennis Kanin, bought the half-acre lot just behind Mac’s Fish House for $4 million from local developer Thomas Tannariello in mid-January. They had been working with local officials on project details for several months before that, according to documents filed online. The site is now vacant, but it was once occupied by a one-story auto repair shop.

    Based on plans submitted to the town, the units will be built in a 44,000-square-foot four-story L-shaped building with an elevator and a below-grade parking garage for 28 vehicles. The project features a courtyard and swimming pool for owners.

    In a March 17 phone interview, Goldman said the 26 market-rate condominiums “will be competitive with other things on the market.” Regarding the 10 affordable condos, “We’re waiting for the town to tell us what they want,” Goldman said.

    Under the town’s inclusionary bylaw, the community housing council decides on the income level, and therefore the pricing, for new affordable-ownership units.

    The housing-needs assessment completed by the UMass Donahue Institute in September 2024 found there is an acute need in Provincetown for housing options for households earning between 80 and 200 percent of the county’s median income — a range often referred to as the “missing middle.”

    Barnstable County’s median income for a single-person household is $88,700.

    A landscaping plan by LeBlanc Jones shows plantings and a pool for the 36-unit complex.

    Inclusionary zoning allows for a higher unit count than would normally be permitted in exchange for the developer including affordable units in the project. Provincetown’s bylaw typically requires 16.7 percent of units to be affordable.

    Goldman said his company almost always offers a higher percentage of affordable units than the baseline requirements. “We always try to go above and beyond because we would rather have a good solid working relationship with the community,” he said. “The one thing I’ve noticed in Provincetown is that with the town officials and government, there really seems to be a genuine public-private partnership.”

    The project on Captain Bertie’s Way will not depend on local, state, or federal funding — the revenue from the 26 market-rate condos will make up for the lower profitability of the other 10.

    The affordable units, featuring one bedroom and one bathroom, will be about 500 square feet, while the market-rate units, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, will be just under 1,000 square feet.

    Town officials supported the proposal in letters to the Cape Cod Commission.

    Town Planner Thaddeus Soulé called the inclusion of 10 affordable housing units a “remarkable contribution” for a single project on a half-acre. Soulé added that the 2024 housing needs assessment had identified a strong need for single-bedroom ownership units.

    Town Manager Alex Morse also wrote in support. “By committing to deliver 28 percent of all the building’s units as affordable dwellings, this project sets a new benchmark for collaboration between private developers and the community,” Morse wrote. “I urge you to endorse this vital new housing development, which will significantly advance Provincetown’s efforts to meet its housing needs and serve as a model for sustainable, community-driven solutions.”

    Five owners of residential properties on nearby George’s Path wrote to the Commission saying they welcomed development of the site with much-needed housing and that the developer had worked with neighbors to incorporate their input into the plans. Their letter did, however, voice concern over increased traffic from the 36 new condos and the nearby 65-unit Province Post affordable housing development.

    “It is our desire and expectation that the developers and the town work collaboratively to design and implement a comprehensive traffic safety plan for our shared neighborhood,” they wrote.

    Mac Hay, owner of Mac’s Fish House and Seafood Market on Shank Painter Road, also wrote a letter of support. “The economy of Provincetown is largely dependent on the service and hospitality industries that support seasonal and year-round residents and visitors,” Hay wrote. Affordable-ownership housing units help business owners continue to operate, he added.

    Once the Cape Cod Commission completes its review, the project will proceed to the planning and zoning boards for a series of permits, including waivers from the planning board for setbacks, building height, and density under the town’s inclusionary bylaw and special permits from the zoning board for building scale and for the pool.

    The Commission’s hearing will be online only and will begin at 5 p.m. on Monday, March 31. Information on participating can be found on the Commission’s website, capecodcommission.org, under “Meeting Notices.”

    WELLFLEET TOWN MEETING

    Citizens Petition to Earmark Rooms Tax Money for Housing

    After a four-year budget crisis, housing trust says it’s time to dedicate funds

    By

    WELLFLEET — As year-round housing becomes less available and affordable on the Outer Cape, housing advocates argue that one cause of the problem — the use of a large share of the housing stock for short-term rentals — should help pay for solutions.

    A citizens’ petition certified for the April 28 town meeting warrant asks the select board to dedicate 80 percent of the revenue from the rooms tax to the affordable housing trust starting in fiscal 2027, which begins on July 1, 2026.

    The rooms tax, currently set in Wellfleet at the state’s legal maximum of 6 percent, applies to any hotel or rental stay of 31 days or fewer. According to figures from the state Dept. of Revenue, in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2024, Wellfleet brought in $1.46 million in taxes on short-term rentals, with another $270,000 from bookings at hotels, motels, and campgrounds.

    Unlike some other revenue-generating programs in Wellfleet, such as beach-sticker fees that are routed to the beach fund, the rooms tax isn’t earmarked for a particular purpose, housing authority chair Sharon Rule-Agger told the Independent. The money currently goes to the town’s general fund.

    “There’s a long history of the town dedicating revenue to things that give rise to that revenue,” Rule-Agger said, pointing to the beach fund and the ambulance and marina enterprise funds. “We think housing is just as important as these other things.”

    Although Rule-Agger and housing trust board members Gary Sorkin and Elaine McIlroy all said they had hoped the select board would “adopt” their petitioned article and put a similar select-board sponsored item on the town warrant, the board declined to do so at its March 11 meeting.

    Select board members Sheila Lyons, Barbara Carboni, Ryan Curley, and Michael DeVasto all said they wanted further discussion of the idea.

    Lingering concerns about the town’s finances were a reason for caution, said Town Administrator Tom Guerino.

    “We’re using every nickel we have available to fund this budget this year,” Guerino said. “Taking $850,000 or $1 million, depending on the year, out of that operational budget in one fell swoop, without doing something else, is concerning, and we have to work together on a way to make that happen.”

    “I just hesitate to bind future select boards to a particular number,” Carboni said, referring to the 80-percent figure.

     

    Years of Discussion

    The proposal to earmark rental tax funds for housing is not a new one. Advocates were calling for the money to go to housing almost as soon as the state created the tax in 2019.

    In March 2021, Harry Terkanian, then chair of the affordable housing trust, asked the select board for an 80-percent earmark for housing.

    The board put off Terkanian’s request that year but expressed support for it in October 2021 and asked town staff to work on a tax allocation plan — but that never became policy.

    Terkanian proposed the idea two more times over the next two years, to no avail.

    DeVasto was on both the select board and the affordable housing trust in 2021. The problem, he told the Independent this month, was that “Wellfleet was running a structural deficit, hadn’t passed a general override in 15 years, and was using every new revenue source — including the short-term rental tax — as a stopgap just to keep up.

    “After years of work to fix our budgeting practices and stabilize our finances, it’s imperative that we finally act,” DeVasto said.

    At the March 11 meeting, DeVasto said he supports the eventual allocation of rooms tax money to housing.

     

    Housing Coordinator

    The housing trust also submitted a formal proposal to use Community Preservation Act money — which comes from a surcharge on property taxes that can be used only for housing, open space, and historic preservation — to fund a new town housing coordinator position.

    Article 23 on the warrant would allocate $250,000 in CPA money to fund the housing coordinator for two years.

    “All of our projects need outside funding,” McIlroy said. A full-time housing coordinator would help the town get access to state and federal funds, she said.

    McIlroy pointed to a $6-million project on Paine Hollow Road, where progress on eight affordable rental units has been stalled since 2007.

    McIlroy said the town had applied for a MassWorks grant to finance the project in June 2024, which required a commitment of 10 percent in matching funds from the town. Wellfleet found out in November that it didn’t get the grant — and McIlroy said state officials told her “some questions weren’t answered as fully as they should be.”

    A full-time housing specialist would have helped craft a stronger application, McIlroy said — and “without a doubt,” having dedicated rooms tax money would have also helped, she added.

    Lyons said on March 11 that the select board should commit to funding the housing coordinator position beyond the two years allowed in Article 23 — possibly with operating budget funds rather than CPA dollars. “We should say that, in two years, we’re going to pick that up or at least match” the Community Preservation Act contribution to the position, she said.

     

    Town Meeting Floor

    The rooms tax petition is nonbinding — it asks the select board to allocate money to the housing trust.

    Nonetheless, trust members plan to be “a little more assertive” about it at town meeting, Rule-Agger said. “We’re trying to say, look, we know Wellfleet is struggling with the budget, but we’re tired of waiting, and we see that we’re going to the bottom of the pile on a continuous basis.”

    “We feel such urgency right now,” said McIlroy. “It’s a critical time because of how we’re losing our workforce, jeopardizing our health-care services, businesses, everything. But it’s also an incredibly opportune time, maybe the most opportune in my 20 years of volunteering.”

    McIlroy said the state’s Affordable Homes Act would lead to streams of new funding for housing and that Wellfleet needs to sort out its ability to contribute to new projects.

    “To get outside funding you need to show local will and local support,” she said.

    This is “not an after-school program we’re looking for,” said Kathleen Nagle, another member of the affordable housing trust. “We are looking to fund housing, and housing is the root of all problems in this town. Until we acknowledge that, I’m all in.”

    Paul Benson contributed reporting.

    POWER OF THE PURSE

    Local Housing, Health, Science Rely on Washington

    An interruption of federal funding would affect many Outer Cape nonprofits

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — In the second week of the new Trump administration, the Office of Management and Budget sent out a memo announcing a “temporary pause” in the “disbursement of all federal financial assistance” — a total of $3 trillion in grant and loan programs that together amount to a third of all federal spending. Agency directors were told to review more than 2,600 federal programs to determine whether they “advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies” and if so, to cancel them.

    Almost a quarter of the cost of creating Wellfleet Preservation Hall came from a USDA loan. (Photo by Nancy Bloom)

    By the time that memo was rescinded, staffers answering to Elon Musk were moving to take direct control of the U.S. Treasury’s payments system. On Feb. 2, Musk boasted that he had unilaterally cut off payments to Lutheran Family Services, a group of charities that serve immigrants.

    U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has called these actions illegal, and they are being contested in numerous courts — but they sent a shudder through nonprofits around the country, including on the Outer Cape.

    Federal funds are essential to the operations of numerous nonprofits here, including Outer Cape Health Services, the Center for Coastal Studies, the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod, and Cape Cod Children’s Place, the leaders of those organizations told the Independent.

    Most affordable housing developments here rely on federal money to supplement the rents they charge, including the rentals at Province Landing and Stable Path in Provincetown, at Nauset Green in Eastham, and at Fred Bell Way in Wellfleet, according to Jay Coburn of the Community Development Partnership and Laura Shufelt of the Mass. Housing Partnership.

    Numerous arts organizations benefit from U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Rural Development loans, including the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater. A USDA loan financed almost a quarter of the $3 million campaign to create Wellfleet Preservation Hall, according to former Executive Director Janet Lesniak.

    The USDA is also set to pay the entire cost of a water main replacement on Shank Painter Road in Provincetown — a $1-million grant and a $1.2-million low-interest loan that the town is “in the midst of closing” on, according to DPW Director Jim Vincent.

    The $70-million Herring River Restoration Project is entirely financed by federal funds and matching state grants, according to Friends of Herring River’s board chair Dale Rheault. The town of Wellfleet receives direct federal grants to support construction projects, while the Friends receive funds for contract management and environmental monitoring, Rheault said.

    While child care on the Outer Cape is primarily funded by vouchers from each town, money from the Mass. Dept. of Public Health covers about a third of the operating budget at Cape Cod Children’s Place, according to Executive Director Erin Sullivan — but those funds come from the federal government, too.

     

    Health Care

    Outer Cape Health Services gets 20 to 40 percent of its revenue in most years from just two federal programs, CEO Damian Archer told the Independent — Section 330B Service Area Competition grants and Section 340B Drug Pricing Program revenue.

    The AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod also relies on the 340B Drug Pricing Program for about 20 percent of its operating budget, according to CEO Dan Gates.

    “The 340B program essentially takes profits from pharmaceutical companies and redirects a portion of them to local health clinics and organizations like the AIDS Support Group” that provide care to vulnerable patients, Gates said. The program enables community health centers and children’s hospitals to buy drugs at significant discounts and use what would have been part of the companies’ profits for program services.

    The money “helps support the cost to run a rural health center that has to be open 12 months a year and that’s not allowed to deny care based on someone’s ability to pay,” said Archer. “These grants and supports make up a substantial amount of our income.”

    Drug company lobbyists have been trying to chip away at the 340B program in recent years, Gates said. It technically isn’t a grant, “but when I think of programs that could be at risk, 340B is high on that list,” he said.

    A third pot of federal money from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, enacted in 1990, comes to both OCHS and the AIDS Support Group through the state Dept. of Public Health, Gates and Archer said.

    “Ryan White accounts for the majority of our state funding, and it comes to us monthly,” Gates said, so any interruption in the program “would potentially impact us within weeks.”

     

    Housing at Risk

    The housing authorities in Provincetown, Orleans, Brewster, and Harwich are state-funded rather than federally funded, said Laura Shufelt of the Mass. Housing Partnership.

    Almost all other affordable housing complexes on Cape Cod, however, including two that are currently under construction — the Province Post apartments in Provincetown and the Residences at Lawrence Hill in Wellfleet — use federal “project-based Section 8 vouchers” to finance their most affordable units.

    The Community Development Partnership gets $25,000 a month in project-based Section 8 vouchers for the affordable rentals it manages, said CEO Coburn.

    “It’s about 25 percent of our monthly revenue on the 64 units we own or manage,” he said. “That money fills in the gap between what the residents can afford to pay and what it costs to operate these units.”

    Other federal grants support the construction of affordable housing, including some that flow through state and county government. But Shufelt said that a loss of federal funding presented the greatest risk to projects that have yet to begin construction.

    “This confusion and uncertainty can stop a lot of things from happening,” Shufelt said. “Do banks go forward with loans for these projects when they don’t have certainty about the rest of the capital?”

     

    Science

    Since at least the mid-1990s, the majority of funding for right whale and humpback whale programs at the Center for Coastal Studies — including the disentanglement program, aerial surveys, and basic science — has come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to Coastal Studies CEO Rich Delaney.

    “Some of that federal money arrives via the state Div. of Marine Fisheries,” Delaney said, “but the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 is what requires the federal government to take these actions for endangered species like right whales and humpbacks.”

    Individual research projects are often funded by the National Science Foundation or the Cape Cod National Seashore. Together, state and federal funds are “as much as 40 percent” of the organization’s total budget, Delaney said.

    Dale Rheault of the Friends of Herring River said that the $70 million the federal and state governments are putting into the ecological restoration of the river in Wellfleet was expected to generate $100 million in economic activity for the region.

    “It’s a huge boon to the Cape — there’s construction jobs, monitoring work, adaptive management, and it’s not relying on the local taxpayer,” Rheault said.

    Many of the Outer Cape’s leaders, including Rheault, said that focusing on their organization’s immediate work was their best response to the chaotic news from Washington, D.C.

    “This project has 18 permits,” Rheault said. “It’s been decades in the making, and we’re in it for the long haul. We hold these contracts, and we are proceeding.”

    ‘NAPIVILLE’

    Current Tenants Can Stay, Say New Owners

    They’re still unnamed, but lawyer spoke to officials about their plans

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The 12 apartments at 25-27A Bradford St. known as “Napiville” after their former owner, Anton “Napi” Van Dereck Haunstrup, were sold for half their assessed value last month to an LLC registered in Delaware.

    Three of the seven buildings at 25-27A Bradford St. that make up “Napiville,” home to scores of Anton “Napi” Van Dereck Haunstrup’s friends and employees over the last 38 years. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    Bernard McEneaney, the sole executor of Napi’s substantial estate, sold the property for $1.8 million to Davis Heights LLC on Aug. 8. Because Delaware does not require disclosure of a company’s officers, the Independent has not been able to ascertain who owns or controls Davis Heights LLC.

    But at a board of health public hearing on Sept. 19, Boston lawyer Eliot Parkhurst spoke about the new owners’ plans and said they would not seek to have the current tenants vacate their apartments. McEneaney had ordered the tenants last January to move out by April 1.

    Parkhurst did not reveal anything about the owners’ identity.

    The apartments need extensive repairs, but many of them can be made while the tenants continue to occupy the property, Parkhurst said. If more serious repairs need to be undertaken, the new owners will pay for temporary housing for the tenants, he told the board.

    “We have found that they perhaps were not treated well before,” Parkhurst said. “We don’t want them to have to leave the site. It’s their home.”

    Anonymous Buyer

    Board of health members did not ask Parkhurst who the new owners were at the Sept. 19 hearing. When a reporter asked, Parkhurst responded, “My practice is not to air these things in public. As people can tell, this is a hot-button project, and people don’t like to be associated with hot-button projects.”

    Parkhurst added that the purchase of the property was “an arm’s-length transaction by people who are trying to move forward with this project.”

    Community Development Director Tim Famulare told the Independent that town staff had met with representatives of the owners, including Provincetown broker, contractor, and guesthouse owner Kevin Bazarian.

    Bazarian, who owns the Clarendon House and KA Bazarian Construction, told town staff he “was not the owner but rather was representing the owner” of Davis Heights LLC, Famulare said.

    Bazarian’s email address and cell phone number are listed under “owner contact information” on seven long-term rental certificate applications filed by Davis Heights LLC with the town. Bazarian did not respond to several inquiries about them from the Independent.

    When the holders of long-term rental certificates are LLCs or trusts, their owners are not required to identify themselves by name, Famulare said. There is such a requirement for short-term rental certificates — approved by town meeting voters in October 2023 — but it does not apply to long-term rental certificates.

    A representative of Davis Heights who identified herself to tenants as a property manager inspected eight occupied units in late August, two tenants told the Independent. The tenants also do not know the identity of the new owners of the property, they said.

    A Change in Tone

    At the hearing, Parkhurst indicated that Davis Heights LLC is working to comply with the health orders that the property has been under since 2020.

    A series of health inspections beginning that year found code violations in all but one of the 12 units, including a failed septic system, unsafe decking, hazardous electrical work, inadequate heat, leaking roofs, and a slumping retaining wall.

    In 2023, the town cited the property managers for ignoring repeated orders to correct safety problems and levied $19,200 in fines.

    McEneaney told the tenants at Napiville in January 2024 that he was selling the property because Napi’s estate could not afford the repairs the town was requiring, including connecting to the town’s sewer system.

    On May 16, the board of health voted to take the Van Dereck Trust to housing court and request that a court-appointed receiver take control of the property and make needed repairs.

    But McEneaney sold the property in August before the town had officially filed suit in housing court.

    On Sept. 19, the board of health voted unanimously to “reconsider” its previous decision to take the property managers to housing court.

    “Based on the way that the tenants had been treated,” said vice chair Steve Katsurinis, “and frankly the way that this board had been treated, not to mention the even more terrible way that the staff had been treated by the previous owner, moving forward to housing court was the appropriate decision” in May.

    “It seems to me that we have new owners and a representative who is honest and is operating in good faith to try to move this forward,” Katsurinis continued — adding that he hoped the new owners understood that the board’s interest is “to have safe and available housing for the people who live here.”

    Famulare told the Independent that the Van Dereck Trust never paid the $19,200 it owed to the town.

    “Now that there are new owners of the property, the town cannot collect the fines assessed to the previous owner,” Famulare said.

    Long-Term Plans

    Attorney Parkhurst first met with town officials on Aug. 26 to discuss outstanding health code issues on the property, Famulare said.

    At that meeting and in correspondence since then, the owners’ representatives “have not disclosed their long-term plans for the property,” Famulare said, including “whether they intend to ask residents to vacate the property.”

    On Sept. 19, health director Lezli Rowell gave Parkhurst a deadline of Oct. 11 to submit a fire safety assessment and contracts for a geotechnical engineer to assess the retaining wall and to complete some smaller repairs.

    By Nov. 15, the property owners should have made plans to connect to the sewer, improve fire separation between units, and deal with structural issues in certain units, Rowell said.

    Parkhurst acknowledged the property’s difficult history and said the new owners were eager to bring the units up to code.

    “We know this has been an extremely problematic project and a headache for the town,” Parkhurst said. “We are trying to do what we can to make things right, and we are doing it as quickly as we can.”

    If tenants need to be temporarily relocated off-site, “we will put them up somewhere,” Parkhurst told the board.

    “We feel for them,” he added. “We don’t want them to have to leave.”

    REGIONAL STRATEGIES

    Commission Aims to Create Community Land Trust

    Nonprofit land trusts can sell homes to working people at steep discounts

    By

    HARWICH — An effort to secure more housing for working people on Cape Cod took a step forward last week when the Cape Cod Commission announced it would hold a series of meetings to establish a nonprofit community land trust here. The first public meeting will be on Oct. 16, although the time and location have not yet been announced.

    The Perlman House, a former hotel on Martha’s Vineyard, was purchased through a below-market “charitable sale” by the Island Housing Trust in 2019 and repurposed into seven rental apartments for year-round residents of the island. (Photo by Randi Baird, courtesy Island Housing Trust.)

    Establishing a community land trust was one of the key recommendations to emerge from the Commission’s year-long effort to produce a regional housing strategy, which it published in May.

    Chloe Schaefer, chief planner at the Cape Cod Commission, said her organization would not run or control the new land trust; instead, it has brought on consultants to run the meetings that will guide “local stakeholders” through the process of forming one.

    Two sessions at the Commission’s OneCape conference last week were focused on the project.

    Nonprofit land trusts have been used in a variety of places, including Burlington, Vt. and Martha’s Vineyard, said consultant June McCartin of Outwith Studio. They aim to purchase properties at somewhat reduced prices and then resell them to year-round residents at greatly reduced prices, she said.

    In such sales, the land trust retains ownership of the land and sells only the home and a “ground lease” to use the land. Because land is about half the cost of residential property in many coastal markets, such arrangements can make possible sales at a steep discount compared to market-price housing.

    In places like the Outer Cape, where annual incomes of $400,000 or more can be required to afford a median-priced single-family home, being able to offer stable housing at below-market prices is now seen as a key strategy for retaining a working population.

    “The business that we’re going to have to get into in a place like Nantucket and on the Vineyard and the Outer Cape is not just affordable housing for people making below-median incomes,” state Sen. Julian Cyr said in a speech at the conference. “The path before us in the coming years is that we’re going to have to subsidize housing for all year-round working people who don’t already own a home or stand to inherit one.”

    “Peer communities” such as Aspen and Vail in Colorado and Truckee in California have successfully created a “middle market of year-round housing” to address their housing crises, Cyr said.

    Purchasing year-round occupancy deed restrictions, or requiring them to be included in new developments, have been the primary strategies in Aspen, Vail, and Truckee, but the Commission identified a nonprofit community land trust as an important parallel strategy for developing “middle-market” units.

    On Martha’s Vineyard

    The Island Housing Trust on Martha’s Vineyard has developed 156 units of below-market housing since 2006 and is currently developing another 150 units, said Philippe Jordi, CEO of the Trust, in another speech at the OneCape conference.

    The nonprofit has been able to buy properties at below-market rates because the value of the discount from the market price can be considered a charitable donation for tax purposes.

    In such “charitable sales,” Jordi said, some owners are able to “sell their homes at less than market price and capture the difference in tax deductions.”

    In one such case, the Island Housing Trust purchased an eight-room guesthouse for $950,000 in 2019 and then spent another $950,000 renovating it into seven apartments that are now run as rental housing for year-round Islanders.

    The Trust renovated a second guesthouse and rented it directly to Martha’s Vineyard Hospital as employee housing, Jordi said.

    The Trust has also built clusters of duplex and single-family homes on land it purchased at a discount, selling the structures to year-round families at below-market prices while retaining ownership of the land.

    Banks can lend money for those homes, and the federal government has published guidelines on how mortgages involving community land trusts should be written and sold.

    The pace of development has been limited by funding sources, Jordi said. The Island Housing Trust has primarily been financed with Community Preservation Act funds from the six towns on the Vineyard, along with charitable donations and one-percent interest financing offered to the Trust by “social impact investors.”

    Jordi and other leaders on Martha’s Vineyard lobbied hard for a local-option real estate transfer fee, he told the Independent in June, because it could have provided an exponentially larger funding stream to purchase and develop year-round housing.

    The 156 units the Island Housing Trust has created are “nothing compared to what we could have done if we had the transfer fee 20 years ago,” Jordi said in June.

    Neither the state House of Representatives nor the state Senate included a real estate transfer fee in their housing bond bills this year, although Cyr has told the Independent he expects the issue to return in next year’s legislative session.

    If the eight Outer and Lower Cape towns were all to vote for a 2-percent transfer fee on the portion of real estate sales over $1 million, they could collectively raise $9.9 million per year, according to an online calculator created by the nonprofit Mass. Budget and Policy Center.

    In a question-and-answer session at the conference, the Commission’s consultants said it was important that a broad spectrum of community members join the planning process for the community land trust, both at the Oct. 16 meeting and at a community land trust advisory council that would likely be formed afterward.

    Laura Silber, housing planner for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, said that getting town leadership on board was an important first step. In her experience, “It was engagement with the municipalities that brought the voters on board,” Silber said.

    ECONOMY

    Obscure Regulation Limits What Employers Can Charge Staff for Housing

    The rule hasn’t been updated in 20 years and affects all minimum-wage workers

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — As the cost of living has become increasingly untenable for workers on Cape Cod, many local businesses have had to sign leases on rental properties, or buy properties outright, in order to secure housing for their employees.

    A Bulgarian, Jamaican, and LGBTQ pride flag fly on the Victoria House on Standish Street in Provincetown, a former guesthouse that has been employee housing for the Crown & Anchor since 2014. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    But a relatively obscure state regulation mandates how much employers can charge in rent to employees who are paid at or near the state’s minimum wage — and the state’s allowable rent levels have not been revised since 2003.

    For employees making minimum wage, employers cannot deduct more than $35 per week for a room occupied by one person, $30 per week for a room occupied by two people, and $25 per week for a room occupied by three or more people.

    For employees making more than minimum wage, the rent cannot exceed an amount that, once deducted, would bring their actual wage below $15 per hour.

    An employee making $19 per hour and working 40 hours per week, for instance, could not be charged more than $160 per week for housing without bringing her wages below $15 per hour, breaking the minimum wage law. The rule pertains whether or not the rent is deducted directly from the employee’s paycheck or charged separately by her employer.

    The regulation, which is administered by the state Dept. of Labor Standards under the Minimum Fair Wages Law, also mandates that the employer provides a written notice to the employee that outlines deduction amounts and provides notice that accepting the lodging is voluntary.

    The law is not well known, and several business owners and state Sen. Julian Cyr told the Independent they had not been aware of it.

    A slide citing the law, 454 CMR 27.05, was one of 94 presented at a forum in May organized by the U.S. State Dept. and several of the American sponsor agencies that help implement the J-1 visa Summer Work Travel program, which brings hundreds of college students to the Outer Cape to work every summer, most of them from Eastern Europe.

    The slide, which had been contributed by the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, appeared to be new information to most of the employers in the room and to some of the presenters as well.

    State officials and employment lawyers reached by the Independent said that complaints and litigation involving the regulation rarely come up — partly because so few workers know it exists.

    One employee who lives in employer-owned housing told the Independent she earned $18 per hour on a 25-hour work week and paid $160 per week for housing: a formula which, according to the law, means she was paid less than minimum wage.

    At 25 hours per week, she would have had to have been paid $21.40 per hour to avoid falling below the minimum wage after the housing deduction.

    Several employees told the Independent they had no written agreement with the employers they paid for their housing.

    Raven Moeslinger, a private-practice labor attorney at the Law Office of Nicholas F. Ortiz in Boston, said that “we don’t see a lot” of cases involving housing deduction violations, “in part because people just don’t know about it.”

    The Fair Labor Division of the attorney general’s office, which enforces the regulation, “has limited resources and leans heavily on private plaintiffs to bring cases on their own,” Moeslinger said.

    Adam Shafran, an employment lawyer at Rudolph Friedmann in Boston, said that J-1 visa workers are especially unlikely to challenge their employers.

    “A lot of J-1 visa employees are very much afraid to speak up,” Shafran said. “They are very worried about taking any kind of action, knowing they are on a visa.”

    A spokesperson for the Fair Labor Division said the division does not specifically track or tally deduction-related complaints. Housing deduction violations are lumped together in official counts with other forms of nonpayment, including late payment of wages and wage theft.

    According to Fair Labor Division data, there have been 40 wage violation complaints of various kinds filed against Outer Cape businesses since 2018. Nineteen complaints were in Provincetown, three were in Truro, eight were in Wellfleet, and ten were in Eastham.

    Renting at a Loss

    Several business owners told the Independent that they make little or no money in the housing market and even rent units at a loss. Patrick Patrick, who rents units for employees of his retail store Marine Specialties, said that he charges them less than what he pays.

    Sen. Cyr said he had not heard of the regulation before the Independent approached him about it and added that the rent levels permitted in the law — about $100 to $140 per month — did not set employers up for success.

    Nicolas Ruggiero, a spokesman for the Mass. Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, confirmed that the last increase to the allowable deductions in the law was in 2003.

    “There are some real questions about whether this regulation is outdated and whether it needs to be made more current,” Cyr said. “Employers don’t want to be in the business of providing housing for their workers — they’ve been forced into the business because our communities have failed to adequately set aside year-round and seasonal housing.”

    Cyr said the regulation could perhaps be revisited through the seasonal communities provisions in the Affordable Homes Act, the state’s recently passed $5-billion housing bond bill.

    In addition to offering several immediate policy changes through a seasonal communities designation, including the right to build housing specifically for public employees and artists, the bill provides for a Seasonal Communities Coordinating Council to recommend future policy changes.

    “The council could look at myriad issues that are unique to seasonal communities,” Cyr said, adding that the rising need for employer-sponsored housing was one such issue.

    “That is far down the road,” however, Cyr said.

    CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

    Truro Part-Timers Worry About Housing and Health

    A forum was the first project of revived part-time resident advisory committee

    By

    TRURO — At a forum organized by the Truro Part-Time Resident Advisory Committee on Aug. 19, several part-time residents advocated building more affordable housing in town, with some saying the lack of housing had caused a shortage of health-care providers that made it difficult for them to imagine living in Truro full-time.

    The session had been organized as a way for residents to speak with each other and current town officials about their concerns and priorities for the town.

    The forum was the first one to be produced by the town’s recently reconstituted advisory committee, whose six members were appointed by the select board in March after a previous iteration of the committee disbanded in 2018.

    “What we’re aiming for here is really as wide a range of viewpoints as possible,” said advisory committee co-chair and part-time resident Stephen Duncombe at the outset of the forum.

    Town Moderator Paul Wisotzky served as facilitator, and select board members Susan Girard-Irwin and Nancy Medoff and chair Sue Areson were in attendance.

    Linda Brady, a part-timer, physician, and member of the advisory committee, said that, speaking for herself, the difficulty in accessing health care here is a major reason she is not a full-time resident.

    Phineas Baxandall, a co-chair of the committee, said that his experience was that when his mother became ill he realized that “the Outer Cape was not a place where a home health worker could live or raise a family.”

    Baxandall said the long commute for home health-care workers to reach Truro was “an enormous problem. It really felt like not the way I would want this community to be,” he said, adding that this was his opinion.

    Sarah Hill, a 20-year part-timer, lauded the town’s efforts toward building new housing, “both at the Cloverleaf and the Walsh property.”

    Hill argued that building housing on the 70-acre Walsh property could reduce the region’s traffic rather than increase it.

    “Workers who currently have to drive to Wellfleet, Truro, and P’town from Harwich or Dennis or even farther away will have an option of living closer to their work,” Hill said, adding that that would “bring massive benefits to the town and to the Cape more broadly.”

    Route 6 can become intensely congested in summer, and the prospect of increased traffic entering the highway from Walsh Way is often raised as a downside of building new housing there.

    Deborah Peterson, a California resident who said she rents her Truro house on a weekly basis in the summer, commended the town’s “Truro Talks” newsletter for offering a steady stream of information.

    She and several other speakers said they wished for a stronger voice in town affairs.

    “I would have wanted to vote for the affordable housing,” said Peterson, who is not registered to vote here.

    Clint Kershaw, a former part-time resident who now lives in Truro year-round, said that he believed part-time residents should be able to serve on the town’s regulatory boards, which include the planning board, zoning board of appeals, board of health, and conservation commission.

    He suggested that part-time residents could demonstrate their collective commitment to the town by applying to fill vacancies on nonregulatory boards.

    “You would show that you’re involved in town, and you want to become involved,” Kershaw said. That could lead to the right to serve on regulatory boards, he said.

    Ann D’Ercole, who had applied to serve on the advisory committee but withdrew her application because the select board did not want to appoint both her and her partner, asked about the two empty houses that the town had relocated to South Highland Road.

    “I’d like to know what the real situation is” with those homes, D’Ercole said, mentioning the possibility of asbestos and other factors that might have delayed the use of the houses by town employees.

    David Leviatin, who lives in London, asked how the town’s advisory committee was communicating with the Truro Part-Time Resident Taxpayers’ Association (TPRTA), a group formed in 1996 to be “an independent voice year-round for part-time resident taxpayers in Truro.”

    The TPRTA’s meetings are open only to its members.

    “I think it would be best for them to answer that, but we are in communication with them, and they’ve shown up at our meetings,” said Duncombe.

    Participants also asked how often the part-time resident advisory committee would interact with the select board.

    Part-timers are an especially large proportion of property owners in Truro, with 71 percent of the town’s housing stock used seasonally, according to the Cape Cod Commission.

    Larry Pisapio, who chaired all six meetings of the 2018 version of the advisory committee, said that his group had encountered difficulty getting the select board’s ear back then. “We never had a chance, although we requested to meet with them,” Pisapio said.

    “I’m an elected official, but I represent all taxpayers in Truro,” said Areson, the select board chair. “If this group wants to come before the select board four times a year, we’re all ears,” she added.

    HOUSING

    Inventory of Subsidized Units Falls Across Outer Cape

    Changes in overall unit count caused the share of affordable units to drop

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — All four Outer Cape towns have recently seen a decrease in the state’s subsidized housing inventory, or SHI, which measures how much of a community’s year-round residential housing is affordable.

    The official target is for each town to have 10 percent of its housing be affordable for people making less than 80 percent of the median household income there. Some towns, including Amherst, Cambridge, and Chelsea, have exceeded that target; about three dozen very small towns have no affordable units at all.

    On the Outer Cape, Provincetown was close to the target, with 9.7 percent in 2020. Truro was at 2.3 percent in 2020, Wellfleet at 2.5 percent, and Eastham at 4.5 percent.

    Those percentages all fell when the 2023 numbers were released. Provincetown’s affordable inventory now stands at 8 percent of the total; Truro is at 1.9 percent; Wellfleet at 2.0 percent, and Eastham at 3.7 percent.

    According to Laura Shufelt, director of community assistance at the Mass. Housing Partnership, this is because new market-rate housing has been coming online at a faster clip than new affordable housing, causing the percentage of affordable units to decline even when their absolute number hasn’t changed much.

    “Any increase in the bottom line without an equal increase in affordable housing will not keep the SHI number stable,” Shufelt said. “You have to be willing to do big projects that are all affordable in order to make any real progress. You have to outpace the market development.”

    When Restrictions Expire

    The decline is not only about the faster pace of market-rate development. A few affordable units have actually been lost.

    According to Eastham Housing Coordinator Rachel Butler, the inventory of affordable units there went from 119 in 2020 to 116 in 2023, largely because deed restrictions on five units at Gull Cottages expired.

    Provincetown has also seen a handful of affordability restrictions expire over the years, according to Deputy Housing Director Mackenzie Perry. Before the early 2010s, many affordability restrictions lasted only 40 years, Perry said, whereas most new restrictions are in force “in perpetuity.”

    Provincetown’s current SHI inventory includes 66 units with deed restrictions that will expire, with the soonest coming due in 2031 and the restrictions at 40A Nelson Ave. lasting until 2103.

    Many of those properties are owned by the Provincetown Housing Authority or nonprofits such as the Community Development Partnership and are unlikely to become market-rate units when their restrictions expire.

    Five units at 27A Conwell St. are owned by Community Housing Resource, a for-profit company, and have restrictions that will expire in 2037, however.

    One affordable ownership unit in Truro had a deed restriction that expired in 2019, according to that town’s 2020 SHI list. The rest of Truro’s units are deed-restricted in perpetuity. Ninety-five of Eastham’s 116 units have perpetual deed restrictions.

    Wellfleet did not provide the Independent with a list of its affordable units, but according to housing authority chair Elaine McIlroy, the falling percentage of affordable units there was not caused by expiring deed restrictions.

    Data Issues

    According to Shufelt, the state’s SHI formula helps explain recent changes.

    The 2023 SHI is the first to use measurements from the 2020 U.S. Census as the baseline count for “occupied housing units,” Shufelt said. A lot of people moved into vacation homes during the pandemic. Provincetown’s “occupied housing” number increased by 380 units in the 2020 census; Truro’s went up by 243, Wellfleet’s by 419, and Eastham’s by 524.

    These occupancy changes affected the SHI numbers because the state does not count seasonally occupied homes — the majority of residential properties in all four Outer Cape towns — when calculating what percentage of a town’s homes should be affordable.

    The U.S. Census considers homes reserved “for seasonal, recreational, or occasional use” to be “vacant,” and the state excludes vacant homes from its SHI formula.

    In fact, according to the formula, every time a year-round home becomes a seasonal or vacation home, the number of affordable units that town needs to reach the state’s affordability target goes down.

    The SHI formula was defined in 1968 and does not represent the housing needs of resort communities well, Shufelt told the Independent last year.

    In some communities, the SHI tally also counts many units that are not actually affordable but were built through the state’s Chapter 40B, which allows developments that are at least 25 percent affordable to access a special path through permitting.

    Every rental unit in a 40B development counts toward a town’s SHI percentage, even the market-rate rentals, according to Jennifer Gilbert, executive director of the nonprofit Mass. Housing Navigator.

    “We have to get more clear on what it means when we say ‘affordable,’ ” Gilbert told the Independent. “When people look to see if we have our 10 percent, they aren’t really looking at what is being counted.”

    The SHI was invented to decide a relatively narrow question, according to Shufelt: who will decide on appeals to 40B development permits. Those permits are contested in Land Court if a town has an SHI above 10 percent and in a state Housing Appeals Committee if it is below 10 percent, according to the 1968 law.

    One consequence of focusing too heavily on SHI, Gilbert said, is that a town may lose its path for streamlined 40B appeals before it has actually addressed its housing challenges.

    “There is a difference between achieving your 10 percent goal and creating enough affordable housing for your community,” Gilbert said.

    WORKER HOUSING

    When the Boss Is Your Landlord, It’s Complicated

    The agreements keep businesses open but are legally ambiguous

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — When eight longtime employees of Marine Specialties owner Patrick Patrick arrived back on Cape Cod from Jamaica in 2019, their housing had fallen through.  After a fruitless search, all eight wound up moving in with Patrick’s parents for the summer — a fairly typical roommate situation, except everyone was middle-aged or older.

    Todd Barry, the owner of Moby Dick’s on Route 6 in Wellfleet, in front of an employee cottage next to the restaurant. Barry has been renting to his staff since 1993. (Photo by Cam Kettles)

    The next summer, Patrick did what dozens of Cape Cod employers have done to ensure their staff could live where they work: he entered the housing market, both paying rent to a landlord and collecting rent from his employees.

    “Sometimes, it’s a little messy if you’re the employer and the landlord,” Patrick said. “I encourage businesses to keep that separate.”

    The agreements that sustain employer-assisted housing here range from informally negotiated case-by-case deals to entire buildings owned and professionally managed for employee living. As more employers move to secure housing in a region with few affordable alternatives, more workers will come to depend on businesses for both their wages and their homes.

    Losing a job means losing a home, too.

    When the Boss Is the Landlord

    Employer-assisted or employer-owned housing agreements are not new. They began in the U.S. as company towns around mines or railroad construction sites in the 19th century. Now, they are becoming common again in cities with steep housing prices. On Cape Cod, many businesses are ahead of the curve.

    Todd Barry, the owner of Moby Dick’s restaurant in Wellfleet, has been providing and maintaining employee housing for three decades, buying enough property to house the company’s seasonal workers in houses and cottages near or right next to his restaurant.

    Barry charges each tenant $162 per week for every week that they work. That includes utilities, laundry, linens, and a full kitchen in each apartment. If employees leave their units as they found them, said Barry, Moby Dick’s issues them a $25-per-week refund. The housing agreement is separate from pay, but it sweetens the deal for younger workers who would otherwise be on their own to find housing.

    Barry maintains the properties himself along with his wife, Mignon, and a handyman, repairing doors and sinks when the restaurant is closed in the winter. He said the housing arrangement is what allows the restaurant to recruit a full staff and cover every shift for the season.

    “The season is short enough,” he said. “I don’t want to lose a lunch, a dinner, a day.”

    His tenants can’t smoke or light candles or have overnight guests. The arrangement is advertised on the restaurant’s website.

    Most business owners, however, said their housing agreements vary from employee to employee.

    John Yingling, owner of Spiritus Pizza and Bubala’s by the Bay in Provincetown also owns two properties that house about 15 seasonal employees. “You make different deals with everybody,” he said. “I have people who I supply housing for, and I have people who pay rent.”

    Yingling has some employees who lease from him year-round and others who work on short or seasonal contracts with less formal agreements. While some of his employees have found their own housing in the past, Yingling said there are few options now. “We work it out however we can,” he said. “It got progressively worse and worse here, as housing does.”

    Others provide housing but keep the specifics of the agreement private. A spokesperson for Stop & Shop, which also arranges housing for some of its employees, declined to give the Independent details so as to “maintain the integrity of our program and privacy of our associates.”

    ‘An Ongoing Battle’

    Five employers who spoke to the Independent about their housing agreements with employees said they made little or no money in the housing market. Some employers rent the units at a loss to keep their businesses staffed.

    “There is absolutely no profit in housing,” said Mac Hay, the owner of Mac’s Seafood.

    Hay also owns the Cape View Motel in Truro and properties in Wellfleet where he houses about 125 seasonal workers at his 10 restaurants and markets on the Outer and Lower Cape. He said the daily upkeep of the properties requires significant time, and he does it out of necessity.

    “It’s an ongoing battle,” Hay said. “Toilets, sinks, faucets, showers — you name it.”

    Patrick said his current agreement with his employees costs him money because he charges less than what he pays in rent. “Sometimes they don’t have the resources to pay up front,” he said. “I think some landlords would much rather rent to an employer.”

    Because it is Patrick who signs the lease, he is liable for his employees’ conduct. He is responsible for rent and damages and can ask the employee, a subtenant, to move out of the property.

    “It’s sometimes cleaner that way because we are paying the financial part of the obligation,” said Hay, who also said his business handles the lease agreements with landlords. “We are trying to keep the rents as absolutely low as possible while still trying to stay in business.”

    Avoiding the Lease

    But just because an employee lives in an apartment owned or rented by her boss does not automatically make her a tenant. And the employer has an incentive to keep it that way.

    “The employer is concerned about having a landlord-tenant relationship with the employee,” said Robert Nislick, a Massachusetts lawyer who specializes in real estate law and landlord-tenant practice.

    Under a traditional tenancy, either with a lease or at will, a tenant cannot be evicted until the end of the lease or with at least 30 days’ notice. That poses a problem for employers who want to replace staff quickly and need their apartments free to do so.

    Nislick said employers are better off signing a license, which may have less legal protection from eviction for employees and likely exempt the renter from the proper notice laws that exist for tenants.

    “In theory, they would have the ability to make them leave sooner,” Nislick said, nevertheless warning employers to exercise caution. “They have to be aware they can’t just throw someone out.”

    According to Nislick, the laws are adapting slowly to the increasing prevalence of such agreements. “There is a lot of undeveloped law on the subject,” he said.

    Every business owner interviewed by the Independent said that because housing is a benefit of employment, renters must leave if they are fired. “If someone loses their job, they are required to move out of their housing,” Hay said. “We try to work with them to relocate.”

    All also said they try to avoid such cases by hiring the same seasonal workers every year or finding new staff through the recommendations of other employees. “I haven’t really been in that situation,” Yingling said.

    Employee Dorms

    As more businesses attempt to secure housing for their employees, Patrick is following the lead of rural resort towns to develop a large dormitory for workers in Provincetown.

    The dorm, a complex called “the Barracks,” will collect fees from employers as well as rent from their employees. Patrick said it will turn a profit by renting competitively and allowing employers to avoid buying and managing property themselves.

    A similar project already exists for employee housing in Dennis for workers at the Pelham House Resort, which rents units to employees on a subtenant basis. According to the company’s website, “it is the employer’s sole discretion how they handle the payment with their employee.” Although separate companies, the Pelham House Resort and the “Living Lighthouse” workforce dorm are owned by the same family.

    “Their work is tied to their living, and their living is tied to their work,” said Pelham Hospitality managing partner John McCarthy.

    A year and a half before Patrick expects to open the Barracks at 207 Route 6, he said 65 percent of the rooms have already been reserved by businesses for their employees. The dorm will have room for about 130 people.

    “Any business that has more than two or three employees is looking at how to get staff,” Patrick said. “The problem is usually, ‘How do we make sure our staff has housing so they can work here?’ ”

    HOUSING

    Two Houses Moved to S. Highland Road Sit Forlorn for Now

    Without suitable renovation bids, housing for summer staff will wait until winter

    By

    TRURO — Two houses that were pulled down the highway in late February to be renovated and used to house some of the town’s seasonal staff stand side by side on blocks, still in disrepair, on a now-cleared 0.77-acre lot owned by the town at 25 South Highland Road.

    The town is behind schedule on refurbishing two houses that were relocated to 25 South Highland Road during the winter. Once they’re ready, they’ll become housing for town staff. (Photo by Sophie Mann-Shafir)

    One of the houses came from the Walsh property and the other was donated by Tom and Kathleen Dennis and moved from 127 South Pamet Road.

    The hope was that their overhaul would be completed by summer. But Town Manager Darrin Tangeman said that didn’t happen because of a shortage of certified and competitive bids from contractors.

    The town has now selected Cape Cod Builders Inc., the contractor that submitted the lowest bid, to do the job, though the contract with the company is still under review, Dept. of Public Works Director Jarrod Cabral said Monday.

    “We expect to sign in the next few weeks,” Tangeman said. Once the contract is in effect, the contractors will have 210 days to complete the work. That 30-week timespan means that if the contract is signed in mid-July, project completion would be slated for mid-February.

    In the town’s advertisement for bids, the sitework was to include “installation of a new foundation to receive the relocated structure, building addition, exterior and interior building repairs and renovations, plumbing, electrical and HVAC work.” It would also involve “installation of a new septic system, and other site utility work to include electrical service, onsite well, telephone and cable.”

    Some abutters were skeptical about the town’s choice to relocate the cottages before building their foundations. “It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money to spend money moving houses without any infrastructure in place,” Robert Baker of 18 South Highland Road told the Independent.

    Tangeman said that, although the initial plan was to put down foundations first, the town opted to move forward in increments rather than not at all. “There was a normal timeline for this, but it ended up being more complicated because of a lack of contractors,” he said.

    The buildings also likely have lead paint and asbestos, Tangeman said. “They’re very old buildings,” he said. But, he added, those toxic materials do not pose a danger to the community because they’ll be removed and disposed of properly.

    In an abutters’ notice dated Aug. 7, 2023, the town laid out a timeline for construction on the parcel that put completion in fall 2023. That notice was long enough ago that some abutters were surprised by the arrival of the houses.

    “I didn’t know what was happening until they started clearcutting the trees,” said Deborah White during the public comment period at a select board meeting on May 14. “Now, it’s a mess. They’ve cut down the trees; there’s insulation blowing all over the neighborhood.”

    The town has cleaned up the debris since White and other neighbors spoke up, but abutters remain unhappy with the pace of the renovations.

    “Since those houses have been moved, they have done nothing,” Todd Motta told the Independent. Motta lives at 20 South Highland Road, across the street from the town-owned lot. “I’m not against housing, but do it the right way,” he said.

    “This is an eyesore for all of us,” said Carol Motta, Todd’s wife. “We’ve all got nice yards; we take care of everything.”

    “What the public needs to understand about it is there were a number of failed bids as it relates to the foundations,” Tangeman said during the May 14 select board meeting. “This is the nature of the construction industry right now.” The winning proposal from Cape Cod Builders president Chase Pappas has a base price of $881,840.

    Once the town adds a housing coordinator to its staff, a change scheduled for July, that person will be responsible for developing a business plan for the rentals, Tangeman said. For now, DPW staff periodically visit the property to do maintenance work, he said.

    Answering questions about the project, Tangeman seemed to be as frustrated as the neighbors about the pace of progress on the houses. He had described plans for the cottages’ move in a December 2022 newsletter. The housing shortage was responsible for turning away qualified applicants for “critical town positions,” he wrote at the time.

    “I’m apologetic to the community members that are neighbors of this project that the process isn’t working as fast as we would like,” Tangeman said on June 24. “We want to get this done and get this cleaned up and be good neighbors.”

    TRURO TOWN MEETINGS

    DPW Plan Sent Back; Voters OK Walsh Proposal

    A two-day 12-hour marathon showed solid support for housing

    By

    TRURO — Last weekend’s town meeting marathon saw overwhelming support for multi-pronged efforts to build affordable housing. But when it came to plans to upgrade a dept. of public works facility, voters wanted almost none of it.

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