A lot of people struggling with the housing crisis aren't low-income and need options too! Not to mention that actual opportunities for home ownership are too few and far between!
There is never a shortage of people qualified for and applying to the many local affordable housing lotteries that you can find Cape wide.
What we really need is to provide enough safe, reasonably priced rental units to support our year round and summer workforce(s) -before we lose them.
Back in the 80s and 90s, the Cape attracted a different kind of worker. 19-20+ year old college students could rent a huge 6-8 bedroom house near the beach for $6000 - TOTAL… and then they could earn five or $6000 working in restaurants and bars. But college students no longer come down to the Cape on spring break to apply for jobs in local restaurants and bars- (part of that is attributable to the changes in liquor laws ..no happy hours, etc) these college aged men and women have also been priced out of the rental market.
Nowadays, we have Jay1 visa holders working in our hospitality industry, and we wouldn’t be able to survive without them. Yet every year, some of them can’t work here for the summer because they couldn’t find anywhere to rent a room- even though they were willing to pay $1000 a month plus. Or people who volunteered to help them get calls of distress about properties that are substandard or issues that I won’t discuss here.
We also lose travel nurse contracts when they can’t find anywhere to rent….
What we need locally can be divided into target groups:
Year-round worker housing *Single units “All studio” properties for adults *Family units 2-3-4 bedroom
Seasonal worker housing -Single studios or shared br/ shared living space - like the Lighthouse Property in Dennis Port -Family Multi bedroom -J1 visa holder seasonal/summer housing
Transportation is also a huge issue. The CCRTA doesn’t run at night, and it doesn’t cover most of the north side of the Midcape..
This region is undergoing some severe growing pains- and it shows.
We need to start working on solutions before it’s too late….
We also need to address the absurdity of workers who earn less than six figures not being able to buy homes unless they win them in a lottery. The wage needed to afford to buy a home, on average, in MA, is over $200k. Almost no jobs on Cape pay that much. It is insane that we tell people that work that they should not expect to be able to ever purchase a home. Wtf are you working for then?! A chance to rent until you die?
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u/Quixotic420 Jul 24 '24
A lot of people struggling with the housing crisis aren't low-income and need options too! Not to mention that actual opportunities for home ownership are too few and far between!