Affordable Housing Committee Already Looking Ahead To April Town Meeting
The Affordable Housing Committee is already planning ahead for the April 2022 Town Meeting and is looking to recruit new members to staff the many working groups for their many proposed initiatives.
At its monthly meeting yesterday afternoon, the committee discussed its plan of action for the coming months and bounced around ideas for a number of working groups they are hoping to implement.
“There is life after November Town Meeting,” said board chairman Edward Curley. “I want us as a committee to form some new working groups to focus on next subjects that will need a lot of attention.”
Many ideas for working groups were brought up, including a focus community outreach and education, different funding options, and the potential conversion of the Falmouth Affordable Housing Fund to a Municipal Housing Trust.
Mr. Curley also told the committee that a letter had been received from Laura Moynihan, a Falmouth attorney, and was also sent to the select board and Falmouth Community Preservation Committee. In it, Ms. Moynihan outlined a proposal to establish a sort of buy-down program that would assist residents in buying property with the help of Falmouth Affordable Housing funds that may otherwise be out of their price range.
“The idea is helping people pay a mortgage for their house,” Mr. Curley said. “In other words, instead of looking to build 40 new one-bedroom senior apartments or 20 new workforce houses, have a program where you can, as an individual, look to buy a property in Falmouth that is out of your reach financially and be able to apply and tap into the Falmouth Affordable Housing Fund to pay down the mortgage a little bit.”
The proposal is, for now, just that—a proposal—but committee members were interested in learning more. They recognized that this proposal would have to be vetted by other boards and officials to see if it’s even a possibility for Falmouth, but they expressed an interest in looking at municipalities where similar programs were implemented in order to learn more about it. One similar program that was referenced is called HOPP, or the Home Ownership Possibilities Program. Iterations of this program can be found scattered across the US, but even with the assistance they provide, their efficacy is dubious in areas where the gap between the median salary and the median mortgage is too wide to bridge.
“The question becomes: how much money do you have to give one individual to buy down the mortgage to make it affordable?” asked Carla Feroni, Falmouth Housing coordinator. “Is that a way to go when right now we can pay a developer $100,000 per house to get an affordably priced new house?”
Mr. Curley agreed that these were good questions for either the working group or town officials to vet, not the committee.
Another proposed working group would focus on working with the town staff and select board to draft an article for the April 2022 Town Meeting that proposes 25 percent of the restaurant and meal tax revenue to the Falmouth Affordable Housing Fund.
“We don’t have to decide all of this today, but we may want to get a couple of working groups set up,” Mr. Curley said.
With so many different ideas for new working groups, the committee also took note of the fact that they’re in dire need of additional members. Mr. Curley said they don’t currently have the bandwidth to staff all of these groups. They currently have seven committee members and a few fringe attendees who participate in meetings.
“I think actually having these working groups is a great way of recruiting people, because it gives people something really direct and specific to do,” said committee member Jordan Frye.
The committee agreed to postpone further discussion of working groups and recruitment until after the November 15 Town Meeting. Their next meeting will be on November 18.