Housing advocates push for Homes Act passage

State lawmakers and Island housing representatives are seeking support from Vineyard residents for an upcoming hearing on the so-called Affordable Homes Act — a bold housing bill presented last year by Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy that champions a transfer fee on high-priced real estate transactions. 

While the housing bank legislation continues making its way through the legislature, its proposed funding mechanism — the collection of 2 percent of home sale transactions on the Vineyard — was included in Healey’s landmark $4 billion bill, directed at reducing barriers to the production and preservation of housing throughout the commonwealth. 

Just within the past 10 years, the Island has seen a net loss of more than 850 year-round units — more than 10 percent of our actual year-round housing stock, MVC’s Island housing planner, Laura Silber, said at a forum hosted by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission’s Housing Action Task Force last week.

Regarding current affordable housing development efforts, “we’re not actually getting ahead,” she said. “Even though we have 202 units currently in the pipeline, by the time those units get on the ground, we’re likely to have lost more than those units.”

Combating that trend, Silber said, requires tools the Island doesn’t currently have: “That’s why this bill is so incredibly important.”

The proposed legislation would not only enable the Island to generate its own funding to support the housing bank, but it would also include exemptions for housing developers, as part of the seasonal communities designation. It also calls for accessory dwelling units by right, which means homeowners could build ADUs no larger than 900 square feet in single-family zoning districts, regardless of local zoning bylaw.

Silber was joined Thursday by State Sen. Julian Cyr (D-Truro) and Executive Office of Housing Chief of Policy Eric Shupin, who came to the Oak Bluffs Town Hall meeting room with an update on the state’s progress on housing initiatives. 

Shupin also spoke to this week’s hearing with the Joint Committee on Housing. The hearing will be held at the Gardner Auditorium in the State House or remotely via Zoom at 11 am Thursday, Jan. 18.

“You don’t need to hear from me how tremendously challenging our collective failure on housing, and to build the housing and preserve the housing for year-round people here on Island and across the region is,” Cyr said. “This is a crisis. This is a workforce crisis. This is also sort of existential for who we are as a people — Islanders and Cape Codders who make our lives here.”

But, Cyr said, some efforts to alleviate that crisis have begun to prove successful. “We’re really making some traction on this issue statewide,” he said, calling Healey’s bond bill a “game-changer.”

The Joint Committee on Housing will be accepting testimony up until 5 pm on Thursday. 

The committee is expected to take action on the bill, likely within a month of Thursday’s hearing, and possibly return it to the governor’s desk by the end of the legislative session.