||| FROM NANTUCKET INQUIRER AND MIRROR |||
Lease to Locals has been incredibly successful in helping local workers and their families secure housing. On Nantucket, the program offers homeowners incentives – ranging from $4,500 for a private room to $27,000 for bigger units that can house at least three qualifying tenants.
This past September, ACKNow Community Initiatives launched a privately-funded 12-month pilot with the goal of unlocking 20 year-round rentals.
We’re thrilled to report that we’re on track to reach 24 year-round rentals housing nearly 60 residents!
We’re incredibly grateful to our generous donors for helping us to allocate nearly $450,000 to homeowners converting their housing units into year-round rentals. That’s slightly over $9,000 in incentives per bedroom to help secure housing for workers and their families for a whole year.
The program is now paused (because it’s been so successful!) and over 20 homeowners are on the waitlist while we explore ways to extend and hopefully expand this program another year (and hopefully many more).
On March 19th, ACKNow Community Initiatives and Placemate – founder of Lease to Locals and our partner on Nantucket – presented an update to the Affordable Housing Trust. Watch the discussion here, it begins at minute 28.
Now that we’ve proved the Lease to Locals concept works on Nantucket, a public-private partnership could turn the pilot into a sustainable source of year-round housing. We asked the Affordable Housing Trust for funding to help extend Lease to Locals for a second year and we hope members will see the importance of using a small portion of the $6.5M annual housing override towards this goal.
The Housing Coordinator for the Nantucket Cottage Hospital, Jack Bulger said:
“We’re thrilled with the success of Lease to Locals on the island. Over roughly six months, nine hospital workers and their families have found housing through this program. We’re just one of two dozen employers who have benefited. Lease to Locals is really working, and we hope the Affordable Housing Trust agrees it’s worth supporting as a near-term solution to Nantucket’s housing crisis.“
The value and immediate impact of Lease to Locals is spreading to the Cape.
On April 1st, Placemate announced it is launching Lease to Locals in Provincetown!
Alex Morse, Provincetown Town Manager, stated in the announcement:
“We realize that construction of new units takes time, and people are losing and looking for housing now. With that in mind, the Select Board and the Year-Round Market-Rate Rental Housing Trust have appropriated funds to launch this program [Lease to Locals] to help qualified tenants immediately ahead of this summer season and beyond.”
Provincetown allocated roughly $350,000 in funding for the first year and will re-evaluate six months into the process whether to continue in subsequent years.
We’re truly grateful to our partner, Placemate, for helping us bring Lease to Locals to Nantucket and other communities in great need of housing solutions!
Thank you to all our donors and everyone who helped make the success to date possible.
Glad our rich sister being successful at providing housing for locals, but that’s a very expensive carrot to the public that I wouldn’t expect this County to subsidize. Here’s the stick: Massachusetts Land Court has ruled that short-term rentals are not allowed as the primary use of a residence; i.e. home must be occupied more than half the time by its local owner. https://www.facebook.com/groups/348680987204571/
So much for “empty” corporate-operated STRs and vacation homes (37+% in this county).
Remember, this program was started as a privately-funded 12-month pilot with the hope to expand it with the Affordable Housing Trust adding to it. This could be repeated here.
The cost per housing unit seems extremely high with this program.
What about a county owned “residential hotel” with modest studio apartments for weekly or longer term lease at affordable rates to provide PERMANENTLY AFFORDABLE dedicated rental spaces for young adults moving out of a parent’s home, seasonal workers, disabled folks and seniors of limited means or (if there is availability) anyone in need of housing for weeks or months rather than years? There are million and one details in this kind of project that you can easily get bogged down in trying to figure out, but rather than fixating on the specifics at this stage, what do we think of the basic idea? Check out the link for history of residential hotels in America.
https://medium.com/panoramic-interests/the-decline-of-residential-hotels-left-a-huge-housing-gap-panoramic-interests-can-help-fill-it-19929eda3808
The program mentioned in this article is a temporary, expensive, short term reaction, not a viable solution to affordable rental housing. There are, of course, other aspects to affordable housing than just the availability of modest rentals, but a couple of county owned residential hotels might be a partial solution to that aspect.
With that in mind, instead of giving taxpayer money to AirBnB hosts to compensate them for the significantly lower income and greater maintenance expenses of converting their vacation rental to a long-term lease basis, why don’t we fund an architectural design competition for a 21st century residential hotel suitable for SJC? The winning designer gets the acclaim and prestige of having their design built AND the prize money, while the public gets a variety of designs to compare. (The usual “throw money at pet consultants” method costs a fortune and never seems to result in anything the slightest bit suitable – witness the Deer Harbor bridge design fiasco.) It could be a place to start….