Panel: Housing Is A Community Crisis

ORLEANS – Hadley Luddy sees the growing housing problem on the Cape every morning when she commutes over the bridge into Boston. The cars queued in traffic coming onto the peninsula over the Sagamore Bridge are a reminder of how many people have to commute to the region for work because they can’t afford housing locally.

“So there is no doubt that finding a place to live is really our greatest community challenge for a large number of people who are trying to live and work here in our community,” Luddy, an Orleans resident and state representative for the Fourth Barnstable District, told attendees of a housing forum held at St. Joan of Arc Parish Hall May 8.

Still more evidence of a regional housing crisis exists in the data. According to the Cape Cod Commission, from 2019 to 2022, the median cost of a single family home in Barnstable County grew by 60 percent, while the median household income grew by just 7.5 percent over the same period. Another stat? More than half of Cape Cod residents spend more than half of their income on housing. The average household income needed to afford a single-family home on the Cape? $210,000. 

Local officials and housing advocates gathered at St. Joan of Arc last week for “A Place To Live,” a forum and panel discussion focusing on affordable housing and homelessness. The forum invited 13 panelists to discuss the ongoing housing crisis, what is being done presently to combat it and what more can be done to address the problem moving forward.

The rising cost of housing in recent years, spurred on in no small part by the COVID-19 pandemic, has made it increasingly difficult for younger residents and working families to find affordable, year-round housing on the Cape and the islands. According to Susan Mazzarella, CEO of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fall River, this has resulted in a significant shift in the demographic of people in need of housing support. No longer is it the stereotypical “chronic homeless,” she said. It’s the “working poor,” people who work by day and stay in homeless shelters by night. It’s people displaced from their rentals, and others forced to live with family or friends.

“These are the faces of the unhoused,” she said.

The Lower Cape Outreach Council, which operates nine food pantries across the Lower and Outer Cape, distributed more than $850,000 in financial assistance to clients last year. That included funds for housing, food, paying bills and other needs, said CEO Katie Wibby.

“I’m going to bet that you meet our clients on a daily basis,” she said of how the demographic of people in need locally has changed.

And while shelters and local housing agencies can offer people in need short-term relief, there are still many long-term questions that remain unanswered for those struggling with housing insecurity and homelessness, Mazzarella said.

“The issue facing our society now is ‘What’s next?’ That’s why we need housing solutions,” she said.

At the Homeless Prevention Council, the agency’s program officer, Terri Barron, said that 2,853 clients were served in 2025 across 1,400 households. Of that figure, 44 percent were between the ages of 25 and 64, she said.

More troubling, noted Housing Assistance Corporation CEO Alisa Magnotta, is that the existing crisis was forecasted as far back as 20 years ago.

“This was all predicted, and it has taken about 10 years to get some good action,” she said.

Luddy pointed to a number of initiatives and programs at the state level that are aimed at addressing the ongoing crisis. That includes the Affordable Homes Act, which she lauded as the largest housing initiative passed in Massachusetts history. The bill, passed in 2024, pledges a $5 billion investment in housing projects and programs statewide over the next five years.

Among the provisions of the bill is a seasonal communities designation that provides towns on the Cape the tools to secure more year-round workforce housing. Seasonal communities are also allowed to create accessory dwelling units by right, Luddy added, pointing to programs run through MassHousing and the state’s Clean Energy Center that encourage the creation of ADUs. Luddy said the state is also looking at “permitting reform” to streamline the permitting process for housing.

Martha Hevenor, a planner with the Cape Cod Commission, said that the creation of a regional housing bank that can work alongside local housing trusts could also help accelerate the creation of new housing. In that model, the regional bank would buy available land for housing and sell it to a local trust.

At the local level, towns including Brewster, Eastham and Orleans have each adopted lease to local programs to incentivize the owners of seasonally-rented properties to rent to tenants year-round. Chatham voters addressed a town meeting article to fund the program Monday. In Brewster, half of the town’s short-term rental revenue goes to the local affordable housing trust, noted the town’s housing coordinator, Jill Scalise. Chatham collects short-term rental revenue to fund attainable housing. Orleans last fall also adopted new form-based zoning to further incentivize the creation of more housing in its downtown corridor.

But while those efforts mark positive steps in the right direction, Elizabeth Jenkins, Orleans’ assistant director of planning and community development, said that there is still much more that needs to be done.

“Bottom line, we need to build more housing,” she said.

Around the Lower and Outer Cape, there’s evidence of gains being made on the housing front. Last year, Orleans saw two long-awaited projects through to completion, including the 62-unit Phare/Pennrose project on West Road and the 14-unit development at 107 Main St. Currently, a joint application from Housing Assistance Corporation, Preservation of Affordable Housing and Habitat for Humanity Cape Cod to redevelop the former Governor Prence Inn is set to go before the town’s zoning board later this month. 

In Wellfleet, officials are celebrating the completion of a 46-unit project on Lawrence Hill, a ribbon cutting for which was held on Tuesday. Sharon Rule Agger, chair of the Wellfleet Affordable Housing Trust, said that at least 11 of those units will be occupied by Wellfleet residents, while an additional six residents are from the Outer Cape.

But panelists said that for wide-scale progress to be made in the creation of more affordable and workforce housing, the housing crisis needs to be treated as a community issue. For Amanda Bebrin, senior director of advocacy for the Community Development Partnership, that includes showing up in support of housing at local town meetings.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re new here or if you’ve been here forever,” she said. “You’re one of us, and we’re a community.”

Magnotta said that unification and support is needed, especially as housing initiatives can be the subject of significant opposition. She spoke of the “hate and vitriol” her organization has endured in its efforts to relocate Catholic Charities’ St. Joseph’s House Shelter in Hyannis less than a mile away to a larger commercial facility in the vicinity of a local elementary school.

“Bullying is cool now,” Magnotta said, noting that her children have been “doxxed” and named online by project opponents. “It’s accepted. It’s cool, and it’s intended to silence us.”

But echoing Bebrin’s comments, Magnotta said that unity in the face of opposition is needed to fight the ongoing crisis.

“What you can honestly do is step up,” she said.

Discussion was also given to the role of local churches and other faith-based organizations in helping address the region’s housing needs. Rev. John Terry, a retired pastor who formerly served at the Federated Church of Hyannis, called serving the homeless and those struggling with housing “God in the flesh and blood.”

“And when we ignore them, we’re ignoring him,” he said.

Mazzarella, meanwhile, said much of Catholic Charities’ work is rooted in one overarching concept: “Love thy neighbor.” 

“Suffering is universal, but charity and compassion have to be as well,” she said.