GREAT BARRINGTON — Buying a home in the Berkshires at present is not for the faint of heart. Police patrolling the perimeters at packed open houses and cash offers for thousands of dollars over asking price make the process start to sound a bit like walking the red carpet — something few, if any, middle-class people are doing these days.
According to the Berkshire Market Watch Report, countywide real estate transactions topped 2,375 in 2021 for a total market volume exceeding $883 million dollars. A simple computation reveals an average home price that hovers around $374,000. Still, there’s reason for first-time homebuyers to rejoice: Construct, the leading nonprofit provider of affordable housing and supportive services to south Berkshire County residents in need, is now accepting applications for a pair of three-bedroom houses in Lenox to be distributed via a housing lottery. Applications — which are limited to income-eligible, first-time homebuyers who have been pre-approved for a mortgage — are due by 4 p.m. April 25; the lottery will be held May 2.
“The Lenox Affordable Housing Trust is excited to be able to offer these recently renovated homes through this lottery to income-eligible households who might not otherwise be able to enter into homeownership without this type of financial incentive,” said Marybeth Mitts, chairperson of the Lenox Affordable Housing Trust & Committee. “Both homes are close to town amenities like the Community Center, library, local parks, and the village at an affordable rate,” she said. The houses, both boasting three bedrooms, one bath, and a brand-new kitchen on 1/10 acre for $254,000, are located at 8 and 10 Hynes Street.
“The lottery process is a little complicated,” June Wolfe, housing director at Construct Inc., told The Edge. What begins with the “exploration of a town’s diversity, and how to make the lottery representative” leads to the creation of an Affirmative Fair Marketing Housing Plan (AFMHP) aimed at reducing segregation and encouraging integration. The AFMHP promotes fair housing choice regardless of a potential buyer’s age, race, color, religion, gender, familial status, national origin, or disability. Deed restrictions, as well as a detailed plan of how the lottery will be run — how many days the application will be available, where they will be available, how someone without a computer can apply, how someone who needs a reasonable accommodation can apply — is then turned over to The Department of Housing and Community Development. “[We include] everything we can think of,” said Wolfe, of efforts to make the process as fair as possible, which “in this case, took a lot of time.”
While a similar lottery system is used to fill income-eligible rental units, the pool of applicants is not necessarily the same. Every town in Massachusetts is required to have 10% affordable housing. While rental units are made available at 60% of the area median income (AMI), the housing lottery in Lenox is being made available at 80% of the AMI. “We’re selling to households at $60,000 or $70,000 a year,” said Wolfe, citing teachers and police officers who are just starting out, paid firefighters, and some of the people who work in the “many, many tourist venues in Lenox” as being eligible. In cooperation with the Town of Becket, Construct is also facilitating the sale by lottery of a three-bedroom house on 2.9 acres. Applications for the Becket property are due April 1; an open house is scheduled for Saturday, March 12.
While Wolfe and colleagues are not currently collecting stats on how many people are waiting to buy an affordable house, “[Construct has] 670 families on our waiting list for affordable apartments — and that doesn’t tell the whole story,” she explained. Before COVID, the turnover rate in affordable units was slightly below 2%; now it’s hovering around 0.6%, evidence of a “tremendous demand that isn’t even being measured.” Other pieces of the story include the fact that the Berkshires are an aging community, with factors like pervasive “NIMBYism about rentals,” and outdated zoning leading the way. In some communities, like Great Barrington, the latter is currently being addressed.
On March 24, the Planning Board will consider a pair of amendments regarding two-family use of single-family lots — aimed at correcting inconsistencies in the Town’s zoning regulations which were amended in 2014 to allow two-family use of a single lot. Amendments inadvertently retain restrictive language which could be interpreted in a way that makes it impossible to build two separate single-family structures on otherwise conforming lots. This proposal will address that issue, and it also removes the requirement that a lot be twice the minimum size in order to have two separate single-family structures on it. (The proposed amendments are outlined in detail on the town website.)
“Our zoning laws came about just after redlining was outlawed,” said Wolfe, of a once widespread discriminatory practice that withheld financial loans and property insurance (among myriad other services) from individuals living in neighborhoods classified as “hazardous to investment” — in other words, where significant numbers of racial and ethnic minorities, and low-income residents, reside.
In the wake of redlining, which essentially “demoralized a whole class of people and stripped away their economic opportunities … [and] their rights to inheritance,” Wolfe points to further restrictions in communities across the Berkshires, albeit at a time when land was more readily available, that essentially communicated: “We’re not going to redline you anymore, but in order to live here you’re going to need to afford four acres, and if you want to build a house you need to have 150 feet of road frontage (depending on the town), and you need these enormous setbacks … and that’s just single-family homes!”
Today, the conversion of multi-family homes to single-family residences has exacerbated the issue. A quick peek at the statewide Subsidized Housing Inventory reveals how local municipalities are measuring up with regard to meeting the mandatory 10% affordable units. As of December 20, 2020, the communities of Alford, Becket, Egremont, Otis, Monterey, New Marlborough, Sandisfield, Tyringham, and West Stockbridge had zero affordable units; Great Barrington and Lenox both hover around 7%, Pittsfield logs in with 9%, leaving Stockbridge the only town to meet, and exceed, the requirement at 10.8% affordable units available.
Meanwhile, addressing the region’s growing need for affordable housing continues — one project, and one step, at a time. In Becket, Construct has just begun demolition of an abandoned property acquired through the receivership process (when the town works with the Attorney General to appoint a receiver of a property that’s been abandoned or is otherwise not up to code).
“Most of the time, receivers are for profit,” said Wolfe, describing the process of getting a property for nothing, bringing it up to code, and flipping it (or, in this case, selling it at auction). “So they can make money on it,” she said. Construct — the only nonprofit receivership in Berkshire County — does this as a not-for-profit endeavor.
“[Construct] is going to put significantly more money into this [property] — due to the cost of construction right now — than we’re going to get back,” said Wolfe, pointing to a protracted process that will take some time. “With the help of grant money, we’re going to turn an eyesore into something usable … [and] create [more] affordable housing.” The epitome of a win-win in any housing market.F
