We agree with last week’s Banker & Tradesman editorial that affordable housing needs new sources of funding that can bring in enough money to actually make a difference – but advocating increased property taxes as the answer is completely wrongheaded (“Third Way Needed for Affordable Housing Money,” June 11, 2023).
Working- and middle-class families, public safety officials, the elderly, teachers, first-time buyers – all are being priced out of the market. The aim is to help them – not to add more regressive taxes to their burden.
What is not regressive and would actually make a difference is the adoption of transfer fees that would be added only to high-end real estate sales, and only if a community chose that option. Communities that adopt the fee can determine the threshold and the percentage, and for cities and towns with the worst problems, the fee can raise millions. Transfer fees are already working in many other states — the entire state of Vermont, for one — generating vital revenue.
We agree that Community Preservation Act funds must be part of the solution, but for a place like Nantucket with overwhelming affordable housing issues they amount to just $2.5 million a year and those funds are also expected to support other priorities. Compare that with the $6 million that a modest 0.5 percent transfer fee on sales over $2 million would bring in all for affordable housing.
Those espousing CPA funding as the be-all solution are also overlooking that those dollars are limited to serving people making 100 percent of area median income and under. From the Cape & Islands to Boston to the Berkshires, the need for attainable housing goes well beyond that.
B&T can’t seriously be worried about what a small fee would do to the pocketbooks of buyers paying $6 million or $12 million or $24 million for a property. And it can’t seriously think the answer is to tax folks who can barely afford to stay in their homes right now.
Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne, town of Nantucket Housing Director Tucker Holland and Coalition to Create a Martha’s Vineyard Housing Bank member Dan O’Connell
