Chatham Trust Buys Crowell Road House; Will Be Deed-restricted As Affordable

CHATHAM – A single-family home on Crowell Road will be added to the town’s affordable housing inventory following its purchase last week by the affordable housing trust board.

The trust announced the Aug. 2 sale Tuesday. It purchased the three-bedroom house at 558 Crowell Rd. for $430,000, which is $243,000 below the one-acre property’s assessed value.

Owners Mira Rabin and Tom Whitman contacted the town in response to a March call for properties suitable for affordable or attainable housing. The couple offered the property below market rate and asked that it be permanently deed-restricted at an affordable or attainable price and sold to a family, according to a press release from the town.

“They’re just very, very charitably inclined,” trust chair Michael Schell said of the couple, who purchased the ranch, built in 1965, in 2019 for $435,000, according to assessing records.

Rabin and Whitman made some minor improvements to the home, Schell said, and the trust will do some further upgrading before offering it for sale to a qualified buyer, likely a family whose income is at or less than 100 percent of the area median income. The trust will contract with a non-profit organization to vet qualified applicants and hold a lottery for the home.

The trust came in for some criticism for choosing Pennrose LLC to develop affordable rental housing on Meetinghouse Road and Main Street in West Chatham, with some suggesting that there should have been a provision for home ownership. The Crowell Road house will be a home ownership opportunity, Schell said, and the select board, which he also chairs, and the trust are looking at possible home ownership opportunities for town-owned land on Stepping Stones Road and at 127 Old Harbor Rd.

Given the positive response to the March request for proposals, Schell said he’d like to see the call for potential affordable and attainable housing properties remain ongoing, “so that when people have this charitable impulse they have a ready opportunity to actually exercise it.”

Anyone interested in learning more about deed restricting a property or selling to the town for affordable or attainable housing can reach out to housing and sustainability director Gloria McPherson at 508-945-5168 or gmcpherson@chatham-ma.gov.