Select Board Goal: 350 Housing Units In Next Decade, Including 150 Affordable Homes

ORLEANS – In the next 10 years, Orleans needs to create 350 new year-round housing units, with an estimated 200 available at market rates for working families and another 150 subsidized units for people earning less than the area median income.

The goal was adopted by the select board last week, with some saying it might not be ambitious enough.

There have been a number of changes since the town carried out its last housing needs study in 2017, Planning and Community Development Director George Meservey told the select board last week. “We had COVID in the interim, construction cost changes, supply chain issues,” he said. But in that time, the town has established its housing trust and committed funding, passed a series of zoning amendments designed to encourage housing development, and now has 80 units in the pipeline: 62 on West Road and another 14 to be built at 107 Main St.

“The foundation for success has been built here,” Meservey said. But the current housing needs study found that the demand has increased since 2017. Among households making less than 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), more than half are now cost-burdened, which means that they pay 30 percent of their income or more for housing. One result is that local businesses have had difficulty attracting and retaining employees.

“We’ve seen that in the municipal workforce as well,” he said. A regional housing study predicted that Cape Cod will face a shortfall of up to 22,000 housing units 10 years from now, with Orleans’ share set at between 500 and 600 units.

That supports the study’s recommended goal of creating 350 new housing units in the upcoming decade, Meservey said. Of the 300 units, 200 of them should be “missing middle” units — generally small multifamily buildings — built by the private sector under incentives to be offered by the town. Those homes would be ideal for working families earning over the AMI but not enough to purchase a traditional single-family house in town. The remaining 150 units in the goal would represent subsidized, deed-restricted affordable housing for families earning less than the AMI. The goal was endorsed by the affordable housing trust fund board and the affordable housing committee.

“This is their best estimate of what is a realistic, reasonable, feasible goal to pursue,” Meservey said. He asked the select board to endorse that goal, with the understanding that the housing study identifies detailed action items to achieve those targets.

Board member Kevin Galligan said he recently met with a citizen at a public forum and she shared the story of her own struggle with housing. “It’s really incumbent on us to advance this,” he said of the housing plan. “We have so many underutilized properties in this town.” Meservey confirmed that about half of Orleans’ housing stock is only occupied seasonally.

The goal of creating 300 units over 10 years is not ambitious enough, board member Michael Herman said.

“You just add in the Governor Prence at 77 units and we’re 50 percent done, before day one,” he said. “So I don’t really see how we’re addressing it as a crisis.”

Elizabeth Jenkins, the newly-hired assistant director of planning and community development, said she fully supports the plan, but added that the numeric goals can be revisited as progress is made. Board member Andrea Reed agreed.

“We can always re-vote and up our goal,” she said.

Scott Flood of the affordable housing committee said there’s a strong need to keep planning to ensure the necessary resources are in place to meet housing targets. If the average cost of a housing unit in Orleans is about $650,000, the price tag to build 350 units is more than $232 million. “That’s a big lift,” he said.

Select board member Mefford Runyon said he’s not surprised that so many Orleans residents are cost-burdened when it comes to housing, given his many years as a banker, saying it’s “a pretty common life experience” to pay more than 30 percent of income on housing here. Runyon said he supports achieving the housing goals by repurposing existing properties in town, “without cutting down a lot of trees.”

The select board voted unanimously to adopt the goal and plans to receive progress reports on implementation every six months.