BARNSTABLE COUNTY, MA — The state senate handed a brand new COVID-19 aid invoice that features $3.5 million to assist residence renters on Cape Cod.
S.2564, often known as “An act relative to quick COVID-19 restoration wants, allocates cash from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan. State Sens. Julian Cyr, (D-Truro), and Susan Moran (D–Falmouth), stated if the invoice turns into regulation, it’s going to assist increase the Cape’s rental housing inventory and supply rental subsidies for early educators and human service staff.
“If we don’t essentially change our course on housing, year-round working communities on Cape Cod, Martha’s Winery, and Nantucket will proceed to erode,” Cyr stated in a press release Monday. “The value of housing on this particular place has climbed exponentially in order that working households who don’t have a foothold right here merely can’t make it.”
Beneath the invoice, many of the $3.5 million can be directed to the Housing Help Company (HAC), a Cape Cod non-profit that helps residents throughout the area safe housing. The nonprofit additionally runs homeless shelters and develops new housing.
The housing affordability disaster throughout Cape Cod, Martha’s Winery, and Nantucket has been ballooning for many years, however the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath pushed the disaster to a tipping level. In line with the Cape Cod and Islands Affiliation of Realtors, the residential median gross sales worth in Barnstable County is $640,000 as of October 2021. That is a 23 % improve between 2020 and 2021.
Stock of housing inventory within the area additionally stays constricted. Provide of stock in Barnstable County decreased 38.1 % for single-family models and 40.7 % for condominiums in October 2021 in comparison with the earlier 12 months.
“The scenario on Cape Cod has reached a degree the place younger households are being utterly shut out of the market as a result of we’ve such a extreme lack of reasonably priced housing,” Moran stated. “At the moment, my partnership with Senator Julian Cyr to make use of ARPA funding to sort out the housing disaster has paid off, and we’re going to see an unprecedented funding into our area’s reasonably priced housing provide.”
The invoice will now go earlier than the state Home of Representatives earlier than going to Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk for his signature.