Our View: An Occupancy Problem

Last week the Healey-Driscoll Administration released the state’s first-ever comprehensive housing plan, “A Home For Everyone.” The plan hits all the right notes in terms of the problem but falls woefully short in terms of solutions. And unfortunately, there’s very little in it that will be of much help to our local Cape communities.

 The state’s housing crisis has one core cause, and it’s as basic as it comes: not enough housing to meet the demand, which drives up prices. The state plan offers many of the same old solutions: reforming zoning, combing through state and municipal land for potential housing sites, rehabbing existing state public housing, protect other existing affordable housing, supporting household and relying on federal tax incentives to entice private developers to build more homes (good luck with that under the current administration). Unfortunately, the plan is full of the sort of government speak — we’re not exactly sure what “solve the middle-market development feasibility gap” means — that will likely mean it lands with a thud and has little impact.

 Yet there are nuggets within the data that could point toward ways to address the housing situation. Of the state’s more than three million homes, 118,000, or nearly 4 percent, are considered seasonal, recreation or used only occasionally. We see that only too painfully on the Lower Cape. In Chatham, just about half of the 7,312 housing units in town are seasonal, which means they are only occupied a few months of the year (if that). In Barnstable County, 36 percent of housing units are seasonal; on Nantucket, that figure is 60 percent. According to the state housing report, between 2010 and 2020 the Cape lost an estimated 9,000 year-round housing units to seasonal use. Since then, the number has no doubt risen considerably, given the impact of the pandemic and subsequent rise in short-term rentals, which removed even more homes from year-round use.

 So what we have, really, is an occupancy problem. Obviously, no one is going to force second home owners to give up their vacation houses, but it’s worth thinking about how this situation contributes in a major way to the housing crisis, especially on Cape Cod. The state report sees a greater need for more housing almost everywhere in the state except the Cape, which it suggests needs to increase its year-round housing by less than 2.5 percent in the next decade, as opposed to up to 10 percent for much of the rest of the eastern portion of the state (not surprising given that the Cape had no direct representation on the housing advisory council that helped assemble the plan). This seems somewhat skewed to us, given the limited land availability on the Cape and the fact that what’s available is snapped up for out-of-reach market-rate housing. 

 Is it time to consider bylaws limiting conversion of homes from year-round to seasonal? Should towns force the short-term rental case by denying them via zoning as businesses in residential districts, as Nantucket explored (without a clear outcome)? We didn’t even see consideration of these ideas in the state report, which leads us to conclude, as is often the case, that our local towns can’t look to the state to solve this problem. These are tough questions that would spark blowback, since second home (and short-term rental) sales are the bread and butter of the Cape’s real estate industry. But if we don’t address the tough questions head-on, we’ll never come close to ensuring affordable and decent housing for all.