Editor’s note: For more information on issues related to building affordable housing in the Berkshires, please see the webinar produced in March, 2025, by The Berkshire Edge. Panelists for that discussion included Ed Augustus, secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC), and other Berkshire housing advocates.
With affordable housing at the top of the radar for Berkshire town officials, State Rep. Leigh Davis (D – 3rd Berkshire District) sought the input of Ed Augustus, secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC), along with an array of roundtable guests on November 18 to address the workforce-housing gap and strategize ways to expand the Berkshires’ housing market. In addition to coordinating the Berkshire Workforce Housing Roundtable, Davis also hosted Augustus on a “field trip” to Lee’s Eagle Mill complex now under construction and the former Bard College at Simon’s Rock campus to witness examples of how local communities can make strides to combat the area’s affordable-housing crisis.
Background
For Davis, the region’s lower wages and rental market make most housing projects “financially unworkable,” and, additionally, “developers and landlords can’t charge enough to cover the true cost of building once financing, permitting, and infrastructure are factored in,” she stated in a roundtable overview.
Citing the EOHLC October 2025 Housing Snapshot, one in eight Berkshire County homes is a seasonal or short-term rental (rental for less than 30 consecutive days) and the area posts significantly lower incomes than in other parts of the Commonwealth, with only 21 percent of Berkshire renters earning more than $75,000 compared to 40 percent statewide, Davis said. “Yet construction costs are just as high here as in eastern Massachusetts,” she stated.
Over the past decade, the area has seen only a two percent increase in its new home supply while home prices ticked up a whopping 76 percent, Davis stated of the current 1.4 percent vacancy rate.
She linked the area’s employee shortage to the high fees charged for housing, pricing public safety officers and teachers out of the communities they serve, “while rising second-home purchases and cash sales further limit supply.” The vacant tracts in the area are not any help with the issue as the cost of developing utilities is too high and difficult for home production and the region’s aging housing stock challenges young workers and families who might move to the area.
Although the town of Lee—with its Eagle Mill and Center Street housing projects—along with Stockbridge and its adoption of an Affordable Housing Production Plan have made some inroads into the issue, a big jolt is necessary to make marked improvements in the local problem.
The upshot
The 90-minute roundtable session was held outside of the purview of the media, but attendees were available after the meeting concluded to answer questions.
A lifelong advocate for fair housing whose father was a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Davis worked alongside individuals she gathered from the community—including Berkshire Health Systems President/CEO Darlene Rodowicz, local developer Craig Barnum, and Hillcrest Education Systems Executive Director Shaun Cusson—to offer “a touchpoint from each different sector” of the region, with those business, hospital, and development representatives able to address the challenges municipalities face to provide a local supply of workforce housing.
“I’m really concerned about the sustainability of our communities and the fact that there are so many folks who aren’t able to find housing in the community that they work,” Davis told The Berkshire Edge. “It’s really an SOS, it’s a smoke signal saying, ‘Hey, we’re on a tipping point with housing in the Berkshires.’ Do we want to become just a seasonal home community such as The Villages [retirement community in Florida] that are for the wealthy and the affluent that are retired?”
According to Davis, the group discussed challenges, initiatives, and “creative, out-of-the-box thinking” related to solving the area’s affordable-housing void. She personally took Augustus for a drive, touring Lee’s Eagle Mill and Center Street housing projects as well as the empty Simon’s Rock campus that could be used for such an endeavor.
“The housing secretary is getting a good sense of the dedication and commitment but also the needs in Berkshire County,” Davis said.
For Augustus, the program offered an opportunity to see “how pressing the need is” for affordable housing as detailed by some roundtable members who are seeking workforce housing for essential employees such as healthcare workers or told by bank representatives who face businesses that cannot maintain staff due to high housing costs. He noted that Great Barrington’s downtown, with its unique stores, coffee shops, and restaurants, requires local employees as staffers.
“It’s challenging to find rental housing in the area when you have a number of homes that are second homes or you have a number of homes that are being used as short-term rentals,” Augustus said. “They’re not available for somebody who needs to rent it for the whole year at a rate they can afford given the salaries … in the area. It’s not just developers who are challenged … but it’s the folks who are counting on developers and states and local communities to figure this out because if we don’t, their businesses and customers they’re trying to serve are impacted.”
Augustus also distinguished housing issues that are shared by the Berkshires with other communities from those issues unique to the Berkshires. “It costs the same amount often to build the same unit of housing in the Berkshires as it might in the eastern part of the state, [but] you can’t sell it for the same amount or rent it for the same amount,” he said. “So that requires subsidies from the state, other incentives that make up the difference, that allow those units to actually be built but allow for the rents to reflect the realities of the communities that they’re serving.”
As the recipient of state subsidies, the Eagle Mill Redevelopment Project aims to transform an 1808 former paper mill, the Eagle Mill building, into affordable-housing units with commercial space on its 8.4 acres abutting the Housatonic River in Lee. Phase 2 of the project is in development to add 20 workforce-housing units geared towards households earning up to 80 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI); 16 Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) units aimed at households earning less than 60 percent of AMI; and eight LIHTC units aimed at households earning less than 30 percent of AMI. At a total cost of $37 million, the project’s first phase added 20 units (up to 100 percent of AMI as opposed to Phase 2’s 80 percent), 28 units, and eight units within those categories, respectively, and is currently open for tenant applications. A mix of a $21 million Rockland Trust construction loan together with contributions from the town of Lee and $16 million in housing tax credits, loans, and state agency grants brought this initial phase of the project to fruition. The total estimated cost for the entire multi-phase project is around $80 million, and the project broke ground at the end of 2021.
“Without state subsidies, that project would not have been viable,” Augustus said.
Lee’s West Center/Canal Housing project at 58–62 West Center Street is directly across the street from Eagle Mill. The joint venture between Jeffrey Cohen, who heads up the Eagle Mill Redevelopment LLC, and nonprofit Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire (CDCSB) will create just shy of 70 units of multi-family housing.
Together with the two phases of Eagle Mill, this third phase “will create a good amount of workforce and affordable housing in the center of town that, from what they told me, is the workforce of the Berkshires,” Augustus said.
“Partnering, that’s really the theme,” Augustus said. “The state can’t do it all by itself. Local communities can’t do it [by themselves]. But, together, there’s a lot that we can do to take out some of the time, some of the cost of creating more units.”
Seasonal Communities designation now expanded to 17 qualifying Berkshire County towns
A November 19 email from Davis announced that “nine more towns in the 3rd Berkshire District—Egremont, Great Barrington, Lee, Lenox, New Marlborough, Richmond, Sandisfield, Sheffield, and West Stockbridge—are now added to the list of eligible municipalities for the [state’s] Seasonal Communities designation.” That list already includes Alford, Becket, Hancock, Monterey, Mount Washington, Otis, Stockbridge, and Tyringham.
The draft Seasonal Communities designation was created as a way for some municipalities—that see their populations rise at certain times of the year—to provide more affordable-housing options. As part of the Affordable Homes Act passed last year, the effort seeks to address housing needs when local employment increases, such as during the summer season. With such a designation, qualifying communities can develop housing and give a preference to municipal workers, including public safety personnel, as well as create housing occupancy restrictions, a housing trust fund to buy or preserve affordable housing, and year-round housing for artists. Also included with the designation is the ability for towns and cities to develop housing needs assessments, offer permits for tiny homes and homes on undersized lots, in addition to increasing a property tax exemption for primary homeowners.
“This opens the door to new funding, tools, and state support, with a quick turnaround so towns can bring their designation to a vote before the 2026 town meeting season,” Davis stated in the email.
This announcement broke from the basic path for municipalities to qualify as a Seasonal Community by having at least 40 percent of their homes used seasonally, recreationally, or occasionally. The town or city so designated is also required to accept the designation, with that measure taking place at a town meeting vote.
During the roundtable meeting, the group explored what adding a “seasonal community” designation would mean to Berkshire County towns, a title that has been readily accepted by many Cape Cod and municipalities in the eastern part of the state but has yet to gain any traction in the western neck of the woods, with none of the initial eight local communities accepting the award.
The Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC) is tasked with administering the Seasonal Communities designation and developing its regulations, but those regulations have not been released to date.
