While Mashpee officials appreciate having properties such as this contemporary home in the town’s Popponesset section, they are trying to create more affordable housing in their community.
With the median price for a single-family home reaching $315,000 last year, Mashpee certainly isn’t the most expensive community on Cape Cod in which to buy a house. In fact, in at least a dozen other Cape towns and villages – including Truro, Orleans and Chatham – the median price for single-family homes sold in 2003 far exceeded Mashpee’s.
Still, Mashpee’s median single-family home price last year shot up 117 percent from 1999 when the median price for single-family homes was just $145,000. With that type of appreciation, officials in Mashpee, as well as other parts of the Cape, are realizing that housing affordability is an issue that must be addressed.
About six years ago, Mashpee took the first step by completing a local comprehensive plan, and last year with a grant from the Cape Cod Commission – a regional planning and regulatory agency – it hired a Boston firm called McGregor & Assoc. to start the process of developing an affordable housing plan.
On Tuesday, the town will host a public forum on housing to review a draft of an affordable housing plan that mostly identifies the community’s housing needs and challenges.
Three other Cape communities have undergone the process of developing such housing plans. Falmouth is the only community that has had its plan certified by the state Department of Housing and Community Development. Barnstable’s plan has been approved by DHCD but has not yet been certified, and Sandwich submitted a plan in May that is currently being reviewed by the state.
Rapid Development
“There’s definitely a need for [affordable housing] and it’s definitely a balancing act,” said Jamie Regan, broker-owner of Century 21 Regan Realtors in Mashpee and vice chairman of the Mashpee Affordable Housing Committee, a group that was established four years ago to identify and discuss solutions to the community’s housing needs.
Mashpee, like other Cape towns, has developed quickly, so it’s critical to start thinking and planning for the town’s growth, said Regan. “You want to have sensible growth, not radical growth,” he noted.
One housing need that has been clearly identified in the draft of Mashpee’s affordable housing plan is the need for year-round rental housing. “We have desperate need for year-round rental units,” acknowledged Assistant Town Manager Eric R. Smith.
Mashpee has 8,325 housing units, 5,256 of which are occupied year-round, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. More than 75 percent of those housing units are single-family homes, and 83.4 percent of all Mashpee homes are owner-occupied. With only 16.6 percent of town’s housing units occupied by renters, Mashpee has the second-lowest percentage of renter-occupied housing compared to surrounding communities, ahead of only Sandwich, according to the draft plan.
In addition, the Massachusetts Housing Partnership has identified 14 typical indicators that show that a community needs rental housing, and Mashpee meets eight, including a rental vacancy rate below 5 percent and a long waiting listing for subsidized rental housing. Mashpee’s rental vacancy is about 5 percent and there is a waiting list of five to 10 years for subsidized housing in Mashpee.
Factors that add more pressure to the rental market include tourism and summer rentals as well as local zoning. During the peak tourism season in the summer, for example, many year-round residents rent out their homes at high weekly rates, which shrinks the number of units available to year-round residents. Meanwhile, multifamily developments are allowed only by special permit, and lot-size requirements restrict the construction of multi-unit properties.
The state’s comprehensive permitting law, Chapter 40B, has produced some rental housing in Mashpee and other communities. Chapter 40B is a law that enables developers to go through a speedier permitting process in communities where less than 10 percent of the housing stock is considered affordable. In exchange, builders must include affordable units within proposed projects.
Thirty-four percent of the Cape’s affordable housing units have been produced under Chapter 40B, according to a report compiled by the Cape Cod Commission in September of last year. Of the units produced under Chapter 40B, 72 percent have been rental and 28 percent have been ownership.
In Mashpee, where about 3.2 percent of the town’s housing stock is considered affordable, three Chapter 40B housing developments have yielded a total of 35 housing units, according to the Cape Cod Commission.
Two of those developments produced rental housing, one of which features 24 apartments for seniors. There are also Habitat for Humanity projects that feature a total of five homeownership units.
There are at least nine Chapter 40B proposals at various stages in the permitting process in Mashpee currently. Those projects could produce roughly 1,000 new housing units. But according to Smith, the majority of proposals are for single-family homes – not rental units.
“[Chapter 40B proposals are] not really producing the housing units that meet the housing needs,” said Smith.
The forum will take place Tuesday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Mashpee Town Hall. Presentations will be made by two housing consultants from McGregor & Assoc.
