Buying open space, pushing big-lot zoning
Did both help wipe out affordable housing? No, only one did.
As the obliteration of affordable housing hollows out our communities, two locally-based explanations for how we got to this point surface repeatedly:
1) If we hadn’t protected all this open space for conservation and recreation, this wouldn’t have happened. Hell, something like 40 percent of Cape Cod is off-limits, from the National Seashore to state parks, town parcels, land trust holdings. That knocked out our capacity to build affordable housing.
2) Decades of zoning battles fixated on single-family homes and increasing buildable lot sizes (in the name of less intense land use) drove costs ever higher, and ignored alternatives like more density in well-selected places. That played a real role in driving us over a cliff.
Number one is totally false.
Number two is totally true.
Conservation purchases took land away from developers, no doubt. But no way would that land have been turned into affordable housing. The voracious market for summer homes, second homes, retirement homes, and investment rentals has long offered developers a high-end market that’s not infinite, but a lot bigger than land on this sandspit. High-end is where the profit is, and that’s what would have been built on protected oases now offering hiking trails and public waterfront access.
“Do people actually think you could satiate demand, and then the market would build affordable housing on what’s left?” wonders Andrew Gottlieb from the Association to Preserve Cape Cod. “That’s actually f*&*ing stupid. You will never satisfy that demand, you will never be able to build your way out of it. You’re feeding an insatiable beast, that’s all you’re doing.
“Let’s say you set out to satisfy the second-home investment market. I’ve heard you’d need 50,000 homes. So say you build that on all the open space; you won’t move the market and you’re not addressing affordability. Then what would you have left? A place that can’t handle the traffic, or wastewater. You destroyed the village to save it.”
Does anyone see a place remotely like Cape Cod that protected less, let the free market do its thing, and as a result created plenty of affordable housing? Long Island? Hilton Head? Palm Beach? Who are we kidding?
Which brings us to the second theory, that local zoning played a big part in this.
We can say zoning reform movements never intended to push working people out, but their strategies helped do that.
The major tactic, town meeting by town meeting, was to adjust checkerboard subdivisions with zoning that would make each square bigger. Minimum lot sizes went from a quarter acre to a half acre to an acre and then some. The intent was to reduce development impact – fewer septic systems, fewer foundation holes. But the key building unit remained the same: A single-family home on a rectangular lot, the American dream.
Back to Andy Gottlieb:
“Failure, failure, failure. It fragmented the landscape. It created incentive to build bigger to cover the cost of land acquisition. It created sprawl. It created traffic. It spread the wastewater load and increased distance to any future treatment facility, which adds significant costs trying to solve the environmental problem it created.”
There was an alternative, rarely employed:
Allow clusters of smaller units, dense, two or more stories, and in return set aside swaths of open space. Those small homes and apartments wouldn’t boast suburban lawns and two-car garages, each doesn’t fetch the price of a mini-mansion, but they are much less expensive to build per unit, create opportunity at the lower end with rentals as well as ownership, and produce more than enough margin in aggregate. They also could encourage mixed use, blending retail with residential.
Does this sound familiar? It should, because that’s the way our village and town centers were created generations ago.
There are only two areas left on Cape Cod where there is enough scale to employ this tactic now and make a profound difference.
One is the southern swath of Joint Base Cape Cod, thousands of acres of blighted land no longer needed for national security that could transform into Cape Cod’s 16th town, residential/retail/affordable coming together in a modern village. I’ve mentioned this before: Joint Base Cape Cod should exhale
The other is the Route 28 ribbon from Dennisport to Falmouth, many mid-1900s-era motels, cottage colonies, retail outlets ready for major facelifts and reuse, already tightly packed, including residential stock and even a few “pocket parks” mixed in. I’ve touched on this too: Cape Cod's ground zero, Route 28
The Route 28 focus seems more immediate and feasible as wastewater infrastructure improves and the free market pounces on opportunities. To transform the military base is going to take political will and courage I’m not seeing in good supply.
In the meantime, let’s get past blaming what still passes for the golden goose:
Conservation.
Haven’t subscribed yet? With all due respect, why not? Please keep seeing a Voice (a cool trick), and support this local expression:
Nope. I misread the question. Grayton was once pristine and protected--but was encroached upon by terminally increasing buyers
Does anyone see a place remotely like Cape Cod that protected less, let the free market do its thing, and as a result created plenty of affordable housing? Long Island? Hilton Head? Palm Beach? Who are we kidding?
Yes. Grayton Beach FL.