Editor: 

I am writing in response to your editorial in the May 28 Chronicle (“Housing Is Needed). I agree that more housing is needed for a range of income levels (I would exclude high income owners building “McMansions”), not just low-income folks who qualify for subsidized “affordable” housing. Several Harvard housing studies have pointed out that the housing shortages exist countrywide and the New York Times article last Sunday points out that median housing price to median income levels which were in the 3-to-5 range in the recent past are now double that range across the country with some of the highest being on the east and west coasts. 

The unavailability of attainable housing ownership has driven people into a cycle of escalating rents with no exit in sight. Elderly people with larger houses than they now need can not find or afford a smaller replacement. Encouraging projects that maximize affordable housing is cited as requiring developers to forego profits from mixed income and sales revenue, to demand more density and to look for higher contributions from towns (witness the $400,000 taxpayer gift at Chatham town meeting from community preservation funds to the for-profit contractor, Pennrose, for the West Chatham project). The Meetinghouse Road project, which is low-income only, was denied that “bonus.” 

Both studies point out that relieving the housing shortages has to be done at all levels and the lack of “starter homes” and the tear down of existing small single family houses in favor of larger, costly replacements has got to be addressed. One method is to limit the volume increase over the existing dwelling size over a period of years. Other recommendations include reducing regulations and permitting requirements to favor smaller housing construction, using ADUs to add housing to existing properties and allowing factory-built small houses that are more cost effective as building costs and supply prices keep escalating. 

The current focus on maximizing affordable housing units with high density and excessive heights in established neighborhoods is short sighted and only generates community resistance. There needs to be a broad approach to solving the housing crisis that is only getting worse.

John F. Sweeney
South Chatham

Editor:

We truly are a better community because of The Chronicle's steady and smart reporting on our local issues. The paper is an important hyper-local democratic resource that I gladly pay money to read. 

I was flat out alarmed, however, to read your editorial "Housing is Needed" (May 28).  

Access to quality healthcare in a federally designated medically underserved area like Barnstable County is a vexing problem, largely driven by congressional Medicare/Medicaid funding and entrenched public and private bureaucracy (how U.S. healthcare is structured.)  Physician and nursing recruitment and retention in high impact fields like primary care and mental health is a beguiling national problem fueled by rising education costs and more bureaucracy (of the documentation and litigious kind).  

To obfuscate those difficult problems with multiple emerging housing developments (themselves a result of a patchwork of crummy laws and bureaucratic incentives) belittles the gravitas of the healthcare and housing problems we face as a community.  

And just as you muddled some of the core challenges facing us Cape Codders, you lumped together five different possible housing developments that vary in location from a motel in Orleans village center to the Pine Oaks proposal that wants to build on 30-plus acres of woods sitting on the already impaired Herring River in North Harwich in a historical neighborhood of color that for environmental, cultural and architectural reasons likely qualifies as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (look up the criteria!)  That is not fair, Chronicle!  

Lumping all affordable and attainable housing projects together in the past has gotten us into this mess. Your readers can hold the complexities of healthcare and housing as overlapping but not linearly related issues, just as Lower Cape residents articulate that a "Housing at Any Cost" approach is damaging to our people we aim to help, our fragile environment and the ultimate cause of a more healthy and just society for all.  

In the future, please opine with the intellectual rigor we expect from The Chronicle editorial board.  

Joyce K. McIntyre, M.D.
West Harwich

Editor:

Some of the trash in our community did not appear there accidentally. In fact, it often looks like someone made a choice and left the cleanup for the community.

The natural resources office in Yarmouth reports that illegal dumping remains a townwide problem: household trash, demolition debris, and yard waste are all discarded inappropriately. In Barnstable, the West Barnstable Conservation Area also has a serious illegal dumping problem, where public works crews have repeatedly removed sofas, chairs, mattresses, tires, cardboard boxes, and even refrigerators. These examples show that Cape Cod is facing a broader pattern of issues, not a few isolated incidents.

Thus I propose that our local communities streamline the process for finding disposal information, making it easier to understand how mattresses, furniture and construction debris can be properly disposed of. We should also treat illegal dumping reports as useful data: photos, locations and dates reveal the distribution of waste. Around rental turnover or the summer tourist season, towns could also offer collection days for bulky items. These steps would make the legal choice more realistic while giving our towns a chance at prevention.

Illegal dumping is not just trash on the ground. The mess itself is telling us something.

Leo Wang
Centerville

Editor:

There are approximately 8.3 billion inhabitants on this earth. Yet, there are only two inhabitants who are influencing our lives to the point of disaster! Ironically, these two individuals share the same futures. Both face impeachment and possibly jail time if convicted. It is no wonder that each of them will go to any limits to avoid prosecution. Time for action before people take to the streets en masse and world chaos ensues!

Edward Fried
West Chatham

Editor:

In reading the editorial “Housing Is Needed” (May 28), my takeaway was that if there were only more housing there would be more doctors at Outer Cape Health Services to deal with the patient load. Perhaps there would be a good number.

Perhaps not many. Any potential doctors moving to the Cape will likely not fall within income parameters that qualify for the tax-subsidized housing developers employ. Nonetheless, market-rate rentals would be out there for all to go after, if they can afford to do so. Yet all are not necessarily candidates for OCHC employment. So how does your housing advocacy specifically help solve the problem for those who require medical attention? It appears that it may not accomplish very much.

Telehealth looks like a viable approach in order to soften the need for in-person visits. Certainly not a preferable approach, but nonetheless an approach that can absorb some of the congestion. OCHS might consider buying some starter homes, renting them, or even creating a lease to purchase contract for their needed employees who stay for a certain term.

The point expressed in your editorial reminds me of the Beatles tune “All We Need Is ‘Housing.’” The love needed to give any housing for medical services a chance will also need a formula. Town employees, too, need a formula. As do tellers and fishermen who have grown up here. That formula should be measured and hold incentives. A “build it so that they can come” approach, very much suggested in the editorial, does not present any thoughtful planning, any end game. Just when will enough be enough? Appreciation of where we live should be another health concern. The Cape's biodiversity, too, needs a doctor. Taking care of where we live requires a long game. Looking ahead, housing advocates must avoid the “We're all filled up, The Cape is not so pleasant any more, What do we do now?” consequences that will be their making.

In closing, and pulling from your editorial, I believe your paper is correct: “A major attitude change is needed.” That change just might be: “We cannot be all things to all people on this fragile ground we call Cape Cod.”

Matt Sutphin
Harwich