When it comes to creating affordable housing, the town of Oak Bluffs appears well-equipped to help its own. The town owns a sizeable number of buildable lots, including 16 lots that were purchased by the now-defunct Oak Bluffs Resident Homesite Committee (RHC), the town’s first attempt at affordable housing, begun in the late 1980s.
The total assessed value of the RHC real estate portfolio alone is $3.5 million, according to the Dukes County Registry of Deeds. The portfolio includes a seven-acre parcel next to the Ice Arena, with frontage on Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road and access to town sewering. It’s an ideal parcel of land for multiunit rental housing advocated by the Duke’s Country Regional Housing Authority, the 2015 Oak Bluffs Community Development plan, and the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC).
The town also has cash to spend. In 2010 and 2011, town voters approved warrant articles that transferred a total of $300,000 of Community Preservation Act (CPA) funding to go into the Oak Bluffs Affordable Housing Trust.
But endemic of the pace of progress that has frustrated Oak Bluffs affordable housing advocates for years, the $300,000 — minus a $40,000 disbursement for emergency roof repair at Lagoon Heights affordable housing in 2013 — has sat untouched for five years because of incomplete paperwork.
“Resources are not the issue,” Ewell Hopkins, planning board member, former housing committee chairman and longtime affordable housing activist, told The Times. “There’s a lack of will when it comes to affordable housing in this town. I hope somebody proves me wrong, but I question if there’s a sincere desire to address it.”
Mr. Hopkins said he resigned his housing committee chairmanship because of its inherently passive role. “The affordable housing committee has no role other than to advise the selectmen,” he said. “I resigned when I realized the selectmen were not asking for our advice.”
History of disarray
Since 1989, three different committees with three different strategies have have been created to tackle affordable housing in Oak Bluffs. The Resident Homesite Committee (RHC) was charged with finding and providing affordable lots to town residents. It slowly faded from existence, and was followed by the Oak Bluffs Affordable Housing Committee in 2006. The Affordable Housing Trust, a merger of the board of selectmen and the housing committee, was approved at town meeting in 2009.
James Westervelt was on the housing committee from 2006 to 2011, a span that included all three organizations. He said despite the best efforts of a core of dedicated people, there was frustration at the lack of progress.
“Once the founders left the resident homesite committee, that fizzled out,” he said. “Then there was an affordable housing committee created that Michael Dutton chaired, but there was no spark. When Ron DiOrio came on as chairman, he was also chairman of the selectmen, and we got some things done. That’s when the three affordable rentals were created at the old library. We were setting our sights on more rental units when the town went into its dark [financial] period. After Ron left, affordable housing floundered.”
Trust issues
The Oak Bluffs Affordable Housing Trust was created so the Community Preservation Committee (CPC) could legally transfer funds for affordable housing expenditures without waiting for a vote at annual town meeting. Speaking to The Times on Friday, Joan Hughes, chairman of the CPC, expressed her frustration about the five-year delay.
“People voted for the housing trust at [2009] town meeting because they realized this problem is too big for the regional agencies to handle alone,” she said. “But that money has stayed in the CPC main account because we’ve been waiting for them to set up the trust. Needless to say, they’ve been incredibly slow.”
In a follow-up conversation with The Times on Wednesday, Ms. Hughes said the CPC office had just received confirmation from town treasurer Sharon Jackson that the housing trust’s trust documents had finally been vetted and approved.
“I was trying to get this trust done for three or four years,” selectman Walter Vail, who also sits on the housing committee, told The Times. “It’s was like pulling teeth, but now we’re moving forward. We know how much money is in the trust, and we finally have access to it. We just haven’t found a way to spend it, because we haven’t been organized properly.”
Mr. Westervelt said the trust document was an example of an important detail being kicked down the road by an indifferent administration. “The rules of the trust were very clearly spelled out,” he said. “But there was never a mission statement for the trust, and there wasn’t a clear understanding of how that trust was supposed to work. When we tried to get a meeting with the selectmen to discuss it, we’d get two minutes as a formality, but we never had a working meeting to make it happen.”
Recent discussions about the special permit issued to developer Corey Kupersmith in 2004 for the Preserve at the Woodlands have raised a problem with a different trust, which also points to sloppy past practices of the housing committee — it’s now 11 years since Mr. Kupersmith donated $50,000 to Oak Bluffs affordable housing via the Kupersmith Housing Trust, and it’s still not known where the money ended up.
Charting a new course
Oak Bluffs selectman Kathy Burton, the newest member of the AHC, acknowledges progress has been painfully slow, but she is resolutely optimistic about the future. “We’re a revitalized committee,” she said. “We have more frequent meetings, and we’re ready to get going.”
“Kathy is a tremendous asset,” Dukes County Regional Housing Authority executive director David Vigneault said. “Having two selectmen on an affordable housing committee is unheard-of. With Bob’s [Whritenour] expertise, I think the town is poised to make great strides.”
“Our approach is, Let’s get going,” Mr. Vail said. “I think we should keep it simple and just get one project done. We haven’t proven we can do that.” Ms. Burton and Mr. Vail agreed that the next best step for the housing trust was to create an affordable single-family home.
But not everyone agrees with the ownership strategy, including Mr. Vigneault.
“We often want ownership, which is understandable, but what this Island needs is rentals, for all income levels,” Mr. Vigneault said.
“I think we should spend the [CPC] money to lobby for more support at the state and federal level,” Mr. Hopkins said. “The $200,000 we can spend on one house can go a lot further in the community if we invest it with our eyes on the big picture.”
Ms. Hughes said there had been discussions to use part of the funds to hire a part-time, qualified affordable housing planner for the town. “I thought it was a good idea in a lot of ways,” she said. “The CPC would definitely have paid for it. But different people had different agendas, and it just kind of died.”
“I see incredible potential in Oak Bluffs,” Island Housing Trust (IHT) executive director Philippe Jordi told The Times. “Unfortunately, for whatever reason, there hasn’t been a lot of action. But [IHT] has had great success with town-owned property in West Tisbury, Tisbury, and Edgartown, and we’ve done them in a year and a half. With the amount of town-owned land there is, Oak Bluffs is way ahead of the game.”
The housing trust will not be able to tap into the 16 RHC land parcels, which also include the 24-acre “doughnut hole” at Southern Woodlands and the 7-acre lot that abuts the Ice Arena, until a town bylaw is amended at town meeting in April to reflect the legal termination of the long-defunct residential homesite committee.
“The town owns a lot of land besides the homesite committee lots,” Ms. Burton said. “You’re going to see action from this committee.”
Marie Doubleday, current chairman of the housing committee, did not respond to inquiries from The Times.
Town administrator Robert Whritenour is absent on paternity leave, and was not available for comment.
