Photo courtesy of the office of Sen. Julian Cyr
Julian Cyr
State Senator, Cape and Islands District and Assistant Majority Whip
Industry experience: 15 years
Age: 39
State Sen. Julian Cyr has only chaired the Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on Housing since March, but says he’s “been living the housing crisis” for much of his life. Cyr, who’s about to finish his ninth year in the Senate, also became a homeowner in February, buying a 413-square-foot home with “a view of the harbor and the sewer pump station in Provincetown” after years of sometimes-precarious renting. With housing costs eroding Cape and Islands communities “a heck of a lot faster than anything having to do with rising seas,” he said, housing is at the cornerstone of his politics.
The Truro native has been charged with assembling another package of housing reforms by Senate President Karen Spilka and helping convince his Beacon Hill colleagues to get on board with “bold” moves that could include state-level zoning reform, even as some are smarting from fights over the MBTA Communities law.
Q: Senate President Karen Spilka was on GBH News in mid-November saying that she wanted to “be bold” on housing –
A: “Nothing’s off the table.”
– Right, which is really unusual to hear. What’s driving that urgency to act?
I think the Senate president and many members of the Senate are echoing what we are hearing from our constituents, from our family members. Gov. [Maura] Healy and Lt. Gov. [Kim] Driscoll have done a terrific job of really keeping housing forefront on the agenda. And we know that we’re short at least 220,000 housing units that we’re going to need to build within the next decade.
I think there’s an understanding among members of the Senate and, I think, in the Legislature more broadly and anyone involved in public policy in a serious way in Massachusetts, that if we don’t address our housing crisis, we are just going to shoot ourselves in the foot for all these other really wise, smart investments that we’re making.
Q: When colleagues – perhaps in the House, perhaps in the Senate – say, “We’ve done a lot in the last couple of years, why don’t we see how that plays out,” what’s the reply?
A: Well, we’re in a pretty deep hole, right? And we really should be proud of the Affordable Homes Act, which is a significant investment in our housing. Unfortunately, and largely due to inflation, we think that the Affordable Homes Act just helps us keep pace with a lot of the investments and programs and housing programs that we’ve had. If you really look at how we’re going to close the gap, how we’re going to get to those 220,000 housing units, it’s very clear that more needs to be done.
Q: Is there anything that’s on your personal short list that you’re hoping to get included?
A: It’s my job to really meet the mandate of being bold and figuring out what we advance. We’re going to need a pretty hearty buffet of policies if we’re going to right the ship. Certainly, that has to include zoning reform. It has to include cutting through some of this red tape, and that’s included in a permitting reform bill we put out of [the Joint Committee on Housing]. Folks want to support first-time homebuyers. That costs money, so we’ve got to figure out where would that come from, particularly in a fiscal environment where state revenues are, if not shrinking, going to be pretty tight for the next couple of years. And then certainly, there’s a whole host of conversations about protections for renters, with the ballot initiatives. So, a lot of that is on our table.
Q: Towns in your district are pushing to get a regional transfer fee on multi-million-dollar property sales. When you present the case to off-Cape real estate industry people, how do you argue that?
A: Nowhere in Massachusetts has a more acute housing crisis than in my district. This is a proposal that’s actually been brought to us by Nantucket Realtors, by Martha’s Vineyard Realtors, by people who are quite literally in the real estate business on the Islands and also on the Cape.
If you look at seasonal communities that have been able to make progress here, it’s places like the Colorado ski towns. What does Vail, what does Aspen have? They have a transfer fee on high-end real estate transactions that then funds year-round housing. In Vail, now about a third of their housing stock is year-round, deed-restricted homes to support a year-round economy.
If you’re in the business of running something [in my district], whether it’s a restaurant, or a hotel, or a municipal government, all of those employers now have been forced to get into the business of being landlords. They’re having to provide housing to their workers. That really indicates a profoundly out-of-whack real estate market.
Q: Industry arguments against this typically ask questions like “What about the Community Preservation Act? What about the Affordable Homes Act?”
A: So, in my communities, you’ve already maxed out CPA, right? In the case of Nantucket, they’ve appropriated over, I believe it’s $68 million directly for housing subsidy. We estimate on Nantucket that we’ve got about a half-a-billion-dollar problem. I’m very clear-eyed that my colleagues in the State House probably are not going to be keen on having the commonwealth of Massachusetts pay for that.
A transfer fee effectively helps us help ourselves. The vast majority of real estate transactions in my district are second or third or fourth homes. These are investment properties. A smart transfer free policy would be structured with a series of exemptions for first-time homebuyers, for year-round owners and such.
If we’re don’t [find a housing solution], it becomes all the more challenging to put on this big party that we do every summer – that, by the way, generates a heck of a lot of revenue for the commonwealth of Massachusetts in meals tax and rooms tax.
Q: The Affordable Homes Act set up a “seasonal communities” designation that gives new powers to produce housing. A year-plus on, how powerful has it been and what needs to be done next?
A: It’s effectively a toolkit for the communities that I’m from and represent to be able to subsidize year-round housing, to have a year-round housing trusts, year-round housing deed restrictions, to provide housing for municipal workers. This last year has really been a building phase. We’ve convened an advisory council, [the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities] has put out draft regulations and they’re finalizing those regulations. What’s clear is, to actually deploy these tools at scale, we’re going to need a heck of a lot of money. And there’s a real question about where that money comes from. A transfer fee probably makes the most sense. But an all-of-the-above strategy, we’re looking at that in our communities.
Cyr’s Five Spots for a Perfect Day on the Outer Cape
- Start with a bagel from Bagelhound in Wellfleet
- Catch some rays and waves on Coast Guard Beach in Truro
- A sandwich lunch at Pop & Dutch in Provincetown
- Laugh until it hurts at the Dina Martina drag show
- End with a nightcap at the Ladyslipper cocktail bar
