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Housing needs evaluation nixed
Banner Daily Update Tues. Mar. 4
By Pru Sowers
Banner Staff
PROVINCETOWN – An inquiry into reevaluating the affordable housing assessment plan currently being followed by the town was rejected this week by the community housing council.
Joe Carleo, housing council chair, told selectman that the CHC voted to recommend the town not perform another housing needs assessment and continue to use a consultant’s report issued in August 2006 as its blueprint for affordable housing planning.
“What we have is a very comprehensive needs assessment done only two years ago. They tend to last five to 10 years,” Carleo said. “We don’t need to redo it right now.”
The CHC was responding to earlier comments by selectman Lynne Davies asking the council to come up with more current numbers on the need for affordable housing in Provincetown. Davies was worried that the statistics and recommendations cited in the report, prepared by John Ryan, a housing consultant with Development Cycles in Amherst, Mass., might be out of date. If so, she said, the town could be creating housing plans that will not meet its needs.
“I’m looking for a management tool as we move forward that would give us a better understanding of what is truly needed today. How many people are in line [for housing]? How many people are waiting,” Davies said Monday.
Amy Lawson, the town’s housing specialist, said she could produce updates on housing meetings, reports and goals. However, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to issue recommendations based on need because those numbers are hard to calculate, she said.
Selectman Pam Parmakian, who works for Community Housing Resources, a for-profit community housing developer, said the Ryan Report should be reevaluated after the 2010 census but not before that.
“This is such a thorough report. It was based on all the available resources in town,” she said.
However, at least one housing official disagreed. Bryan Green, chair of the housing authority, which develops and manages affordable rental housing for residents, said he did not agree with the recommendations made in the Ryan Report.
“It is way out of date. It was done years ago,” he said, asking selectmen to direct the CHC to update the statistics.
In the 2006 report, Ryan estimated that 200 to 250 units of affordable rental apartments were needed to meet a rental housing shortage in Provincetown. Another 40 units of affordable homeownership were needed immediately, as well as 24 units of affordable senior rental housing, the report stated.
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Feb 28th, 2008