Hardworking nurses, deep local roots, still no good place to live
Carolyn Norris and family are back in a basement apartment she and Matt left 25 years ago
Perhaps sharing stories about great people with deep local roots who can’t find affordable places to live will help them (and us) solve this housing crisis.
If so, let’s keep telling those stories:
Carolyn Norris, back to Cape Cod after more than 15 years, most of that time working as a nurse in Florida, is ecstatic to be home with her husband Matt. Both are providing top-quality care at Liberty Commons nursing home and the Broad Reach health care facility in Chatham.
But the big problem looms:
Now with teenage daughter Zara, they also are back in the same small basement apartment of her family’s West Dennis home where the couple lived when they were 24 years old, 25 years ago.
Even for two accomplished, hardworking health care professionals, the housing crisis strikes home, or better put, makes finding a home a heartbreaking challenge.
“It’s just impossible,” she says. “We’re seeing things like $4300 a month for a three-bedroom rental in Dennis that honestly is really crummy. I could live on Beacon Street in Boston for that. But the wage scale here isn’t comparable.
“Of course you’d rather buy. But buy a $795,000 home on the Cape? No way. Even a $500,000 home, if you could ever find one, plus all the other expenses for living, is very difficult for nurses.”
Carolyn’s first job out of nursing school in 2001 was at Liberty Commons for almost five years. By 2005 she and Matt, a combat veteran, firefighter and paramedic, decided they wanted to get somewhere warm. That turned out to be Tampa, Florida, where Carolyn was hired at the regional hospital’s Emergency Room and Matt joined a county fire and rescue team, becoming an RN.
They were able to buy a house, and yes, the climate was better. But the social and political climate was less comfortable, and both jobs were stressful. Carolyn left the ER after six and a half years to work primarily in pediatric nursing. In 2015, Matt’s paramedic partner was shot on duty; he decided to get off the streets and move to the hospital Carolyn left a few years earlier.
Then came COVID, and by May, 2021, “we really wanted to come back home, we didn’t want to be away anymore,” Carolyn remembers. “I was wondering, ‘Where’s the most impact we can have?’ I had stayed in touch with people at Liberty Commons, and I realized we could make a big impact just saying we’re going to work in a nursing home. I knew COVID had been very difficult for friends of mine still working here. And I wanted to make geriatric care as ‘sexy’ as all the other areas of nursing, for people to know this is just as rewarding and important work as taking care of 30-day-old babies.
“So I called Bill (Bogdanvovich, her first boss and still CEO at Broad Reach), and told him what we were thinking. He said, ‘What do you want to do?’” Her answer, in part: “Come back and help my friends.”
By July, 2021, they were here, with Matt at the sub-acute unit while his RN credentials took time transferring from Florida. And with brave, flexible 14-year-old Zara willing to give it a try, they moved back into the West Dennis basement they knew well, though never expected to live in again.
Even though their Tampa Bay home sold for a solid return, enough for a downpayment, the cash flow isn’t enough. High health care insurance doesn’t help, neither does skyrocketing inflation.
Carolyn knows she’s not alone, better off than many people she grew up with. That big picture worries her as much as her own situation:
“Most of the nurses I know are over 56 years old, perhaps they started working in their 20s. But how does the next generation replace them? You can’t afford to live here without getting seven roommates, even if you can find a place. I want to ask people all around us who are now in their 60s or 70s, ‘Who is going to take care of you if you need help in a nursing home or somewhere else? Who is going to be the policemen, the firefighters?’
“More affordable housing is critical.”
Carolyn believes civic leaders need to change the rules town by town, allow affordable dwelling units, adjust zoning allow for building on smaller pieces of land with safe septic systems. She has gotten involved in Dennis, urging adoption of rules to encourage more affordability.
Tough as it has been, she’s glad she came back:
“We’re staying positive,” she says. “We won’t stop until we find a place to live – and everyone finds a place to live.”
Any leads out there?
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Thank you for sharing our story Seth! We appreciate your Cape Cod voice endlessly! We are really hoping to buy, as the rents way too high for people like nurses to save money or to live a decent lifestyle at $2500 or more a month. It would be easier to stay in the basement, pay half that amount and save as much as possible for a more significant downpayment. I never thought I would feel fortunate to live in a basement, but at least I can save $$ and not work 3 jobs. I already am working over 64 hours a week just to save. If I jumped into a $2800 a month rental I would be doing nothing but working. At 47, I can’t sustain that. I would never see my daughter. I would end up sick. Nursing is awfully hard right now. I just don’t think the people running these towns get it. I do think we are going to have a catastrophy within the next year or so on the Cape unless something changes and quickly. We desperately need affordable housing.
Nothing I can add to your story about this true crisis — only that I have six grand children all living within a mile and a half from our home in Orleans. Not one of them has a chance to live in the town where their parents and they were born. I am angry about what has happened to this place, not at any individuals because everybody wants to live or at least own land and a house in a beautiful place with a nice climate, which we are and have. We should all be angry at the lack of action by our town governments to this growing problem that gets lots of talk and little action. The longer we wait for something to happen, the more of our future here on the Cape will be lost to everyday young people who will be forced to leave. I am sick at heart seeing the culture and community that once existed here be turned into a haven for investments and growing gentrification. I am lost at what to do about it. Thousands of empty bedrooms, hundreds of empty living rooms and kitchens, dens and parlors, all empty and a bunch of kids looking for a place to get started in their lives. What are we allowing to happen?
Thank you Seth. As always, you bring us light. B. A.