Orleans Nets First Renter Through Lease To Locals Program

ORLEANS – To create more affordable and attainable housing, you have to be creative. With that, town officials are hoping a new initiative incentivizing year-round rentals will help Orleans make some headway.

In partnership with the town of Eastham, Orleans launched its lease to locals program last month, and it was announced last week that the first local property owner has qualified and signed on with the program.

“So it’s working right off the bat,” Elizabeth Jenkins, the town’s assistant director of planning and community development, told the select board Sept. 10.

The program offers cash incentives to property owners who rent their properties year-round to qualified tenants. Qualified properties can receive between $5,000 and $15,000 in one-time incentives “to convert short-term rentals or vacant units into year-round housing,” according to a press release from the town. The amount of the incentive is based on the number of bedrooms in the dwelling and the number of qualified tenants.

“Supporting our local workforce goes beyond simply providing housing — it’s about investing in community,” Orleans Town Manager Kim Newman said in the release. “Lease to Locals gives us an opportunity to help our year-round employees and residents find stable homes, which in turn helps us maintain the character of our area. The Cape would not be what it is without its locals." 

To qualify, properties must be rented to existing residents in Orleans or Eastham for at least a year. Employees who work a minimum of 30 hours per week at local businesses in either town are also eligible. Properties cannot be rented to a blood relative or to someone who is already on an existing year-round lease with the property owner.

Orleans and Eastham are enacting the program on the heels of Provincetown and Nantucket, two communities that have successfully launched their own lease to locals program in the past year. Nonprofits including Housing Assistance Corporation also operate their own leasing programs to encourage year-round rentals, Jenkins said.

“It’s definitely gaining in popularity around here,” she said.

The first eligible property in Orleans is a detached accessory dwelling unit, Jenkins said, adding that there are more property owners interested in the program that are working their way through the application process.

The program is being managed by a third party company called Placemate. The company, based out of Truckee, Calif., accepts all incoming applications and vets them to ensure that they qualify for the program.

“This is what they do,” Jenkins said. “They do the administration of this program, because we do want to make sure that we’re being responsible with these funds.”

The launch of the program comes as Orleans and other towns on the Cape and Islands continue to explore different options for boosting their local affordable and attainable housing stock. Orleans is in the midst of an affordable housing surge, with the Pennrose/Phare property on West Road now online (62 units) and the impending opening of Housing Assistance Corporation’s 14-unit development on Main Street this fall. But even with those gains, Jenkins said the town needs to continue to be varied and creative in its approach to securing housing.

“There’s no magic answer,” she said. “You have to do all the things because everybody has a different situation in different times of their life. So you really need all of those tools to really be able to help people.”

And while the program’s goal is to create more housing for people that need it, it can also be a benefit to local property owners that are looking to rent out their properties on a year-round basis. 

“We do get a lot of feedback that it can be very difficult to be a short-term renter,” Jenkins said. “Folks start doing it, they get into it a couple of seasons and they see how difficult it is. And then they have a property that they’re trying to figure out what to do with.”

To learn more about the program and how to apply, visit www.placemate.com/Orleans.