Time Is Wasting

It’s a dilemma, with very high stakes. Affordable housing is a crisis on the East End, and there is a proposal to designate millions of dollars a year to help fix it. Every year is money that doesn’t go toward the problem — revenue from a real estate transfer tax that is lost forever.

But despite the universal identification of the problem, this Community Housing Fund is no slam dunk. Not a single town has even put a plan together on how it will use the millions of dollars it will receive each year. There are seven months until voters will decide whether to create this tax — a very small window to convince them not just to add a new tax in the midst of a complicated economic moment, but to set aside NIMBY concerns long enough to let the new money get something accomplished.

It’s a tricky gamble. It would be awful to push off the vote to 2023 and lose yet another year of revenue. But it would be worse to rush toward November 2022 with a half-baked proposal, and see a generational opportunity voted down.

The CHF is modeled on the Community Preservation Fund, in that both use a tax on real estate transfers to try to offset the costs of development. The CPF sought a successful balance between construction and preservation. The CHF recognizes the overheated local market and seeks to carve out a niche for working class families to be able to live where they work.

But the CPF took years to sell, and it had a coalition of hundreds of nonprofit and business interests aligned, all of whom saw the coming disaster if something wasn’t done to offset overdevelopment. It was an innovative solution — it added a new tool to the toolbox that didn’t exist before — and that helped to sell it to the community, as did a strong, coordinated push by its advocates.

It’s April, and there’s still no word how the towns might use CHF revenues. One thing is clear: There is no good tool in the toolbox right now to encourage the creation of affordable housing. Linking it to subdivision development has been a massive failure, as builders over the years have driven cement mixers through the loopholes, or negotiated payments to avoid having to actually include affordable options. Towns and villages have had some success, but not nearly enough to make a difference. But seven months before they’ll decide its fate, voters have no idea what the CHF will actually do to fix the problem.

The clock is ticking.

First, towns must sweep an arm over the desktop, clear it off and start working on CHF proposals, today. It must be a priority to have a framework of ideas to present to voters before Memorial Day — and they must be able to convince them that no existing tool is adequate to address this problem, and these new tools will be used to make repairs to the region’s quality of life.

A similar coalition must come together to make the case for a new tax to fund active, ambitious and innovative affordable housing programs — not just new construction, not just making existing housing stock more affordable, not just housing for laborers or just for professionals, for young or old, but for all of the above. Business leaders who are losing good employees. Fire departments and volunteer organizations who need a year-round residential community to pull from. Civic organizations, who have to challenge their own knee-jerk reactions to individual proposals in their own backyards and see the greater need as intense enough to need new thinking.

The towns shouldn’t turn away the easy solutions, like Habitat for Humanity, which has a model few can argue with, and targeting dilapidated structures found in every neighborhood. Show voters that this housing plan has benefits for them as neighbors, in their backyards, and they’ll get behind it. Paint a compelling picture showing how affordable housing can help a community — and it will remove NIMBY from the equation.

The CPF has been an overwhelming success. There is a template to work with in getting the CHF over the line — but there simply is no time to waste. The towns are already behind schedule; by Memorial Day, the campaign had better be on a solid foundation and building momentum. Failure is not an option.