Brewster Housing Trust Ponders Expanded Role

BREWSTER – Guidance is what the town’s affordable housing trust was seeking from the select board on Monday night; guidance for when affordable housing isn't quite enough and attainable housing may be necessary.

“There are a number of regulatory changes on the state level that are really exciting,” Ned Chatelain, the select board representative on the trust and its newly elected chair, told his fellow select board members. “We felt it was appropriate to get select board policy guidance on procedural questions,”

The first request to the select board was for a lead role on planning for the pond property of the Cape Cod Sea Camps. That 66-acre parcel has 10 acres set aside for affordable housing and a wastewater treatment facility for those homes and others nearby. The trust recently shepherded the Spring Rock Village project off Millstone Road with 45 affordable units into the hands of developers the Housing Assistance Corporation and Preservation of Affordable Housing. The trust would like a similar role with the pond property, which has other partners such as the Brewster Conservation Trust — which gave the town $1 million Monday towards the purchase — Mass. Audubon and the Water Resources Task Force.

“This would be a pure focus for us given the incredible need for housing,” trust member Tim Hackert said. “We’d have the experience to move this forward.”

“We have experience going through the RFP (Request for Proposals) process. We follow what are considered best practices in doing that. We’ve done it once already,” trust member Paul Ruchinskas added. “I’m confident we’d do as good a job this time.”

“The property is unique because there are more stakeholders involved,” Town Manager Peter Lombardi said. “There’s possible confusion about who has the authority to do what and who is taking the lead.”

“The success of Spring Rock speaks well of your involvement,” Select board member Dave Whitney said of the trust.

Getting down to the basics, trust members would like to change their basic bylaw. When it was created in 2016, the select board decided to require select board and town meeting approval for all trust expenditures over $50,000.

“It’s difficult to do anything for $50,000,” Chatelain, who is in real estate, noted.

In order to allow the trust to act quickly, members would like to see that limit raised to $250,000 or $500,000 before requiring town meeting approval.

“There have been just a lot of times $500,000 or more was needed,” Lombardi said, looking back over the past few years. “Those are just the big projects.”

He thought it might be easier to lift the limit to $250,000 initially. That would allow the trust to do buy-downs and housing rehabs and other smaller projects quicker without needing to go to town meeting every time.

Brewster will soon be creating a short-term rental review committee to look at town policy towards the rentals that have been the subject of two recent citizens petitions. Trust members would like a seat on that committee when it forms.

The trust is also watching activity at the state level and pondering looking into supporting new initiatives. The first is the Good Landlord Property Tax Exemption. That would give a property tax break to landlords renting to year-round residents.

“Would the select board like more information on that?” trust member Donna Kalinick said. She’s like to “learn more about it and its possible impacts, the threshold and then recommend whether or not it should be adopted locally.”

The law has been used elsewhere, such as in Vail, Colo., to create a year-round housing market in resort communities.

The BAHT would also like to explore workforce/attainable housing.

“The affordable housing trust is enabled by state law to create units for up to 100 percent of Area Median Income (AMI). But housing challenges are not unique to 100 percent AMI,” Chatelain said. “Other towns have created attainable housing trusts for up to 150 percent AMI.”

The trust receives funding from the Community Preservation Act. An attainable housing trust is not eligible for that and would need another source; one could be a real estate transfer tax, which would require special legislation. Other towns, including Chatham, have tried and thus far failed to win approval for such legislation. The current housing bill does not contain a transfer tax provision.

“None have been approved,” Lombardi said of other legislative efforts. “It is complicated and politically fraught. Spending time on something that at the end of the day is not likely to be approved at the state level, I don’t know the benefit of going through it locally.”

The town could also look at year-round deed restrictions for affordable housing, something that has been done in the west for many years.

Trust members are interested in hiring a consultant to seek out land in Brewster that would be suitable for affordable housing. Currently all of the trust’s funding requests must be made to the Community Preservation Committee.

“Every time we need money we put an application in,” Kalinick said. “That’s cumbersome to go through multiple layers. Many trusts get an annual allowance from their CPC’s to run all their programs. So we have started a conversation with the CPC to move in that direction. It will still require a town meeting vote and we are committed to annual reports to the CPC. The CPC is amenable to the discussion.”

She noted that the CPC has a goal of dedicating 30 percent of its expenditures to affordable housing. A single application might cover that, Ruchinskas said.

“What we’ve done up to now is kind of a miracle,” Kalinick said. “We need to focus on creating policy and decisions that keep people stably and affordably housed, which is a real challenge.”

She noted that if the Affordable Homes Act were to pass the legislature it would be possible to create more affordable housing without special legislation.