But Who’s Counting?

            At the housing summit at CBI last spring, an interesting method was used to assign attendants to different tables, the idea being to get people to start thinking in groups beyond their own. After each table was given the task of brainstorming how best to address the issue of lack of affordable housing, it reminded me of one of those countless hospital shows. Faced with a seemingly inexplicable problem, each specialist would come up with a treatment based upon their own area of their expertise.

            A surgeon would operate. A radiologist orders a CAT scan and an MRI. An oncologist would test for cancer. And so forth.

            Similar thinking happened here. People don’t like to come out of their area of expertise, because, well, that’s how they’ve chosen to make their living or otherwise define themselves.

            As for the patient and their family, they put their trust in their general practitioner, whose head may be spinning from the myriad of approaches, some contradictory or mutually incompatible. And, like so many patients when faced with a systemic problem, we take half measures, or do nothing.

            At the housing summit, it was clear how people started off: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The housing authority has said solutions lie within federal and state restrictions and funding formulas, but those only cater to the poor, not the near-poor or middle class. Habitat for Humanity can only get people into home ownership if land is donated, which is a problem in an area where open space is very limited and expensive.

            Bill Marsh, a developer, put the blame on zoning that made density the enemy, but has done more to raise the value of his real estate holdings by limiting supply. And the affordable housing committee, using the threat of further Chapter 40B end-runs around zoning, religiously sticks to the need to meet targets set by the state, which are admittedly arbitrary and more relevant to Chelsea and Haverhill than to Chatham and Harwich.

            The main thrust is this: State statistics say we do not have enough housing affordable to the lowest 40 percent of income-earners state-wide.

            That sounds right, but what state law really says is that out of our whole housing stock, too much is too expensive. I agree with that. I don’t know anyone on the Lower Cape who thinks we haven’t built enough houses. Instead, it is that we’ve been adding the wrong kind of housing; we’ve skewed our percentage in the wrong direction. Kind of like good cholesterol and bad cholesterol – too little of the first, and too much of the other.

            And when we tear down small Capes and ranch houses, replacing them with high-end houses with multiple-multiple bathrooms and bedrooms, we’re eating away at our limited stock of starter homes and rentals. Kind of like taking that nice piece of salmon and cooking it with some fat back. Not healthy.

            And what, I asked, happens when the big new houses are actually lived in full-time, year-round by their owners?

            The answer, by both Marsh and Len Sussman, then acting chair of the planning board, was that this was not going to happen. The population of Chatham has remained stable since the mid-1970s, said Marsh. Sussman said the prediction of people telecommuting from their Chatham homes had not materialized. Then where did all those people come from who are in front of me in the line at the bank? And all those SUV’s parked along Main Street on a weekday morning in February?

            Again, we hit a problem with our physicians. There’s a foolish adherence to an arbitrary statistic, in this case, the lack of increase in number of people who have chosen to declare their legal residence as Chatham. And a failure to understand what most on the medical profession learn early on: patients lie.

            So who would know if actual the number of people in Chatham year-round increased? Those who visit people in their homes. The police said of course people are telecommuting, and then add on workers from overseas who are here for the now-nine month “season.” The fire department says the number of emergency calls are definitely up year-round. The post office confirms the number of people receiving mail and not suspending delivery to their mail to their post office boxes is up. And, as an insurance inspector, I meet people in their homes, and have to ask how much and how often they occupy their home.

            At this point, no one can say how many people actually live in Chatham, except that it probably exceeds the official town census. Probably by a lot.

            Whether you agree with one approach or another to address issues of housing our population (increased density, more public subsidies, amnesty for illegal apartments), everyone can agree one thing: we want our efforts to be effective.

            But before that, we have to wake up to some pretty clear and simple realities. The truth and the solutions, more likely than not, lie outside of state statistics and federal formulas.

10/11/07