How Sen. Cyr plans to tackle Cape housing crunch

Walker Armstrong

Special to Cape Cod Times 

The lack of available and affordable housing is a problem that hits all aspects of the Cape's economy and quality of life. It's a problem that has increasingly captured the concerns of town officials and local organizations.

Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Truro, is among them.

Cyr filed a number of bills on Jan. 20 that among other things are aimed at increasing the amount of year-round, affordable housing on Cape and Islands and other areas of the state.

With a crisis that’s only getting worse and a pandemic that has “put that crisis on steroids,” Cyr said fixing the problem is of paramount importance.

“There’s not one silver bullet that is going to solve this problem. We need an 'all of the above' approach that advances both housing production and preservation for year-around housing,” he said.

Proposed law to help seasonal communities increase housing

He described one measure as a “toolkit” to pair with other legislation to enable towns to create and preserve attainable housing in seasonal communities such as Provincetown and Nantucket, both of which have some of the highest housing prices in the state.

The bill would increase flexibility for directing unused Community Preservation Act money toward housing; allow the  Department of Housing and Community Development to enter financing agreements with school districts, municipalities and developers to create affordable workforce housing; and municipalities to implement a property tax exemption for year-round rentals to low- and moderate-income households, according to information provided by Cyr’s office.

He said this menu of policies is “about giving communities the tools to address housing” at the state and municipal levels. 

“It's important for people to know that the housing crisis is not something that we can solve alone on Beacon Hill, even if all of these bills would have passed tomorrow,” he said. “We need to demand that each and every town in the region does more in both housing creation and preservation.”

A local option real estate transfer fee to create, preserve housing

A second bill would allow the creation of a local option real estate transfer fee to provide money to create and preserve housing.

Nantucket, is already working on a model of a local option transfer fee, said Tucker Holland, housing director for the town of Nantucket. 

“In that particular case, when a piece of real estate transacts — and there are some exceptions — but generally when a piece of real estate transacts the buyer is paying 2% of the purchase price to the land bank,” he said. “And that goes generally for conservation and passive recreation purposes.”

The Cyr bill would apply a half-percent transfer fee to properties with a value greater than 200% of the county median sales price for a single-family home, Augusta Davis, communications director for Cyr.

In the case of Nantucket the transfer fee would be on homes valued at $6 million or more, Holland said. 

But the bill is still being refined, David said, and the plan is to make the 200% benchmark based on the median sales price of single-family homes in the state, rather than the county.

If that happens, homes valued at $2 million or more on Nantucket would be subject to the transfer fee paid by the seller, Holland said.

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Different communities may take different approaches to how the fee would be processed, Holland said. But according to the language of the bill, the money would be put toward increasing housing stock and affordability. 

Ryan Castle, CEO of the Cape Cod and Islands Association of Realtors, said he is skeptical about further taxing home buyers and sellers. 

“We don't think that taxing real estate more will create more housing availability and affordability,” he said “We need to be focusing our policies on how we create more housing and create more housing that our ‘year-rounders’ can occupy.”

Legislative proposal: Cities and towns could buy deed restrictions

A third measure would focus on year-round housing occupancy restrictions, built around a plan in place in Vail, Colorado.

In December, the Vail’s housing director George Ruther, gave a presentation to the Provincetown Select Board housing workshop about increasing housing stock by purchasing deed restrictions — a set of conditions on how a piece of property can or cannot be used — on residential homes. 

“They basically decided to go to people who own homes and say to them, we will offer you X amount of dollars if you will allow for a year-round deed restriction to be placed on your home,” Leslie Sandberg, Provincetown Select Board member, said.

The Cyr proposal would allow Massachusetts to allow towns to purchase deed restrictions on homes that serve as primary residences 11 months out of the year.

“It’s another way of creating workforce housing, but for people who make over the affordable housing limits,” Sandberg said. 

For people who earn more than affordable housing income restrictions, a down payment might still be unaffordable, Sandberg said. The bill, she said, would allow towns to offer money to purchase a deed restriction, thereby assisting with down payments and increasing the housing stock writ large.

“It’s for people in the missing middle,” she said.