HYANNIS – Officials with Housing Assistance Corporation (HAC) said that they are concerned about housing on the Cape and Islands during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The organization recently conducted a survey of more than 107 landlords encompassing 1,600 rental units.
It found that 30 percent of the landlords owned only one unit and 53 percent owned four or fewer.
Sixty-three percent also used rent to pay the mortgage for the property.
Thirty percent of landlords have tenants who are still behind on rent (about 84 households).
One landlord with 65 units reported that 40 percent of his tenants are behind on rent.
Around $514,000 has been distributed through rental and financial distance by HAC this year to date, encompassing nearly as much as what was distributed in all of 2019 ($569,000).
Cape and Islands State Senator Julian Cyr, who is also the Public Information Officer for the Cape Cod Reopening Task Force, said that the housing issue is one that he knows very well.
“Cape Codders of my generation are struggling to make a life here, largely due to the high cost of housing,” said Cyr.
In August 2020, as compared to the same period in August 2019, HAC has seen a 300 percent increase in foreclosure prevention requests and a 391 percent increase for past-due rent help.
HAC CEO Alisa Magnotta said that the housing affordability gap and the inventory gap on the Cape and Islands was a major issue before the virus and it has now exacerbated the problem.
She added that the importance of housing was emphasized when healthcare was asking individuals to go home and quarantine, they learned quickly that it was a privilege not a right.
“Not everyone can afford to shelter in place or have the means to be able to sustain themselves while they’re trying to shelter in place,” said Magnotta.
From mid-March to the end of August 14, 2020, HAC has had a 241 percent increase in foreclosure prevention requests and a 451 percent increase in requests for help with past-due rent, in comparison to the same time frame last year.
At the halfway mark of 2020, Provincetown, Truro, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket already surpass 2019 yearly total of assistance inquiries.
In four other towns, assistance inquiries are tracking ahead of last year: Chatham, Orleans, Bourne and Falmouth.
Officials said that even with additional help from federal unemployment benefits, individuals couldn’t make ends meet.
Now that it has ended, HAC is seeing another uptick in calls for assistance.
Magnotta pointed to the state’s eviction moratorium, funds for emergency rental assistance and HAC’s own fund, as good tools to help keep people in their homes.
Looking ahead, HAC is trying to understand what the impact on the year-round housing inventory is going to be.
“Any threat to that is going to add more pressure and add more complications to our year-round workforce and our year-round residents,” said Magnotta.
“We’re really keenly watching that and trying to figure out other resources that we can bring to bear to help landlords remain being landlords and keep the tenants in place as well as keep the year-round inventory in place.”
More than $875,000 has been raised from private donors and towns for rental and mortgage assistance with HAC’s Workforce Housing Relief Fund, which complements state funds.
In total, HAC is distributing $1.5 Million in housing relief funds to qualified residents.
They have also integrated new state RAFT and ERMA funding into available funding for clients and secured contracts for administering rental assistance funds from Barnstable, Yarmouth
and Brewster.
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