One of the provisions of Massachusetts’ recently passed Affordable Homes Act is the creation of a “seasonal community” designation for municipalities in Berkshire County as well as the Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard islands.
Berkshire municipalities with 40 percent or more seasonal residential homeownership automatically qualify for this designation. Towns so designated must accept this designation via a vote at a town meeting. Other municipalities, with lower percentages but in the designated counties, can vote to apply for the designation to the Secretary of Housing and Livable Communities, who can then use his discretion to approve or deny them.
There are a number of benefits and two requirements for a municipality that accepts this designation. The benefits include:
- The ability to preference municipal employees in affordable housing opportunities;
- The expectation of grant funding available only to seasonal communities; and
- An increase in the residential exemption tax classification option from a maximum of 35 to 50 percent (no Berkshire municipalities have adopted this option).
Additionally, there are two new bylaw requirements to municipalities who accept this designation: a bylaw allowing undersized lots to be developed for year-round housing and a bylaw allowing tiny homes to be allowed for year-round housing.
I would like to take a few minutes of your time to make the case why all Berkshire County towns should quickly put in place a strategy to be so designated.
First, let’s discuss the requirements: bylaws around housing production for full-time residents.
Local opposition
At a recent Planning Board meeting in Stockbridge, the chair spoke with some derision concerning the tiny-homes requirement. I frankly find opposition to tiny homes downright bizarre.
First, tiny homes are far more green than conventional ones. Many are net zero, meaning they use no net energy to heat or cool. In a county worried about losing forest and farmland to solar arrays, focusing on demand reduction helps to protect our natural resources and landscapes from the need to produce energy. Second, I point out that if you want to live in a tiny home, you should be able to. How about we keep the government out of your personal land-use decisions around how small a home you can choose to live in? Third, many of us who have lived in cities started off in small apartments with lofts about the size of tiny homes. With the absolute crisis we face in housing for young people, why would you take a unit that might cost less than $50,000 off the board, a price point for housing that is within the reach of the many single young folks in the 18-to-30 age range?
I suggest that any Planning Board member who is still not convinced write bylaws for tiny homes and undersized lots that preserve the onerous restrictions of frontage, front and side setbacks, mass, and footprint that have been used for decades to limit housing production. Limit their applicability to a handful of zones. Maybe you can add some gates while you are at it. Personally, I believe this would serve neither the town’s needs nor interests. We should encourage smaller homes and housing production on undersized lots, both of which by statute would be limited to full-time residents. The point I am making is that concerns over the statute’s bylaw requirements are a red herring. We have lots of options.
Seasonal communities: incredible benefits
I am going to focus on two clear benefits that give municipal leaders new tools to ensure their communities remain vibrant.
The first is the provision to allow municipal employee preference in subsidized housing decisions. That means teachers, administrators, aides, and others who work at local schools. It means, police, fire, and emergency medical professionals. It means highway, water, and sewer workers. It means town hall administrative staff. Having homes these folks can afford helps keep these folks in your communities. It is especially ironic to me, living in the town that Norman Rockwell called home—a man whose celebration of small-time life and these types of careers is iconic—that some here wouldn’t recognize the value of preserving the essence of small-town life.
The second though, as an economist, is equally compelling: the money. The state has already indicated that there will be grants available for subsidized housing available to designated seasonal communities. That may not be all. When it comes to bridge and highway funds, one can make a compelling argument that seasonal communities deserve a bigger slice of the pie, since the volume of traffic we get with visitors far exceeds what would be normal based on our census populations. Stockbridge, for example, gets around a million visitors per year, driven by attractions such as Tanglewood, the Norman Rockwell Museum, and Naumkeag. That dwarfs the impact on our infrastructure from the less than 2,000 census-population residents that count towards the component of state bridge and highway funds we receive (the other component being road miles).
All you have to do is watch the news to see that the current thinking in Washington is to severely reduce federal government spending. The days of massive trillion-dollar investments in infrastructure from legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act, flowing from Washington to Boston to places like the Berkshires, is done, at least for now. It is going to be harder to compete for funding. How about we give ourselves every advantage we can as we compete for these resources?
Next steps
For the eight towns who received the initial designation, all we have to do is accept the designation at our May annual town meetings. For communities that have yet to be designated, I strongly recommend that select boards from towns such as Sheffield, Egremont, Great Barrington, West Stockbridge, and Lenox quickly develop a plan to apply for the designation and get it passed at town meeting. We will be far more effective in securing state funding as a region than we will be as individual towns. Get the resolutions requesting designation on your May town meetings, and work through Tom Matuszko of Berkshire Regional Planning and Jonathan Butler of 1Berkshire, our designated representatives for Seasonal Communities, to best position your towns for an uncertain and unsettled future.
Housing and Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one measure of economic output. Massachusetts generates approximately $615 billion in economic activity annually. The Berkshires represents just 1.18 percent of the state’s GDP. The Cape and islands collectively generate 2.86 percent of the state total. These are the two regions whose municipalities can be designated as seasonal communities.
Gross Domestic Product, Massachusetts and select counties:
- Massachusetts — $615,504,521,000
- Berkshire County — $7,240,663,000 (1.18 percent)
- Cape and islands — $17,599,221,000 (2.86 percent)
- Seasonal communities counties — $24,839,884,000 (4.04 percent)
The state tracks the aggregate assessed value of all real estate per municipality. It is called Equalized Values (EQV) . Massachusetts has almost $1.6 trillion in real estate values. The Berkshires represents just 1.34 percent of the state’s real estate value. In contrast, the Cape and islands together represent over 10 percent of the real estate values for the entire state.
Aggregate value of real estate (2022 Equalized Values):
- Massachusetts — $1,583,183,946,900
- Berkshire County — $21,225,192,900 (1.34 percent)
- Cape and islands — $161,432,240,500 (10.20 percent)
- Seasonal communities counties — $182,657,433,400 (11.54 percent)
If you think real estate prices are out of whack in the Berkshires, these statistics show how it is actually far worse for the Cape and islands. Kudos to Jonathan Butler and Tom Matuszko for getting the Berkshires designated with the Cape and islands in the seasonal communities component of the Affordable Homes Act. It groups us with this much larger economic block for which this legislation was primarily targeted.
Finally, just read the Cape Cod Times or any of the smaller Cape newspapers or blogs to get a sense of how tourism and its corresponding impacts on the housing market have wreaked havoc on municipalities’ ability to function. It has gotten nearly impossible for some of these communities to hire police, fire, EMTs, and other municipal employees because of the stresses surrounding housing affordability. Berkshire communities still have time to learn the ample lessons from the Cape and islands and put in place strategies to mitigate these stresses. How about we do that?
Regionalization
Strengthening ambulance service
At a recent Planning Board meeting, a member suggested the cost of the new Stockbridge Fire House would be $50 million. I responded that I believed the cost was actually $7 million. I misspoke. The building cost is just $5 million.
I believe the biggest challenge we will face is not funding the building but staffing the eight full-time EMTs to provide Stockbridge and West Stockbridge with around-the-clock, year-round coverage coverage of ambulance service, critical to our aging communities. The average age in Massachusetts is 39. The average in Stockbridge is over 60. An ambulance that shows up within six minutes saves lives. An ambulance from a surrounding town that takes 20 minutes to show up costs lives.
I had a chance to speak with a 24-year-old EMT for Southern Berkshire Ambulance who was lunching at Elm Street recently. He agreed that the single most important benefit we could bring to the table as we try to recruit EMTs was to provide housing they could afford on salaries that range between $40,000 and $50,000 per year. With apartment costs in our region ranging from $1,500 to $2,000 per month or more, these jobs don’t pay enough to be able to afford housing. This, right here, is why we should accept our designation as a seasonal community and work towards providing the municipal employee housing we will desperately need to keep our community safe.
‘Tis the season
Gift drive results
I spearheaded a gift drive to purchase toys for Pine Woods families, to provide a few small gifts for each of the residents of Heaton Court, and to give the women who live at Riverbrook a small shopping spree at the Stockbridge Country Store.
Thanks to the following folks who donated to make this possible:
Jamie Chadwin/Camp Mah-Kee-Nac
Chris Greendale
Ed Lane
Phil McCaffrey
Peter Most
Steve Picheny
Lincoln Russell
Ed Silverstein
Peter Strauss
Eleanor Tillinghast
Ranne Warner
Kathy White
Patrick White
Terri Wise
Stuart Yurman
You all were responsible for buying nearly 150 gifts for these communities and brought a lot of smiles to folks this holiday season. Thank you.
Finally, I would like to point out a few things regarding these communities. The 22 residents of Riverbrook, all affordable-housing residents, are some of the nicest folks you will find in this community. I find it incredibly rewarding to spend time with these women and their dedicated staff. Pine Woods has just 32 units yet represents over 20 percent of the school-age children in Stockbridge. Just during my time on the Select Board, two of our dedicated elected officials were residents of Pine Woods at the time of their elections. The 51 senior residents of Heaton Court are amazing folks, most of whom spent a lifetime working in the Berkshires, not some far-away community. A number of these residents serve as volunteers on local nonprofit boards as well.
I would ask all of us, as we debate the challenges of housing, to get to know these wonderful folks and to avoid making these neighbors of ours feel anything less than welcome in this community. Words matter. Tone matters. To these residents I say this: I see you. I respect you. And as long as I serve in an elected position in this town, I will have your back.
