We Need Housing. But Does This Law Actually Help?
These are excerpts from Barnstable Town Councilor John Crow’s latest newsletter on the Seasonal Communities legislation before Town Council. Half of all Cape towns have adopted this designation. Barnstable has just begun the public debate on whether or not to accept Boston’s generous proposition.
— Eric Schwaaab
Barnstable has a choice to make about whether it wants to be a “Seasonal Community” under a new state law. It comes with tradeoffs that everyone needs to understand. The Council’s first discussion about it is tonight. There will be no vote.
The State’s new law: “Seasonal Communities”
If you’ve heard “Seasonal Communities” designation mentioned at Town Council and weren’t sure what it means for your neighborhood, you’re not alone.
When I first heard the phrase “Seasonal Communities” designation, I didn’t fully understand it. I’ve spent the time since trying to. What I found is that this law sits right in the middle of a real tension between the state wanting Barnstable to change zoning build more dense housing, and our environment that places real limits on what this peninsula can absorb.
It’s worth noting that Barnstable wasn’t even in the original group of designated communities. The state added us later and without talking to us.
The law was written in Boston. Read what the state has to say about it here.
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/seasonal-communities
It applies equally to places as different as our densely developed coastal peninsula and a Berkshire township of 160 people in the mountains. I have more questions now than when I started.
This isn’t the first time people who do not live here have pushed for zoning changes to allow dense development and multi-families in our single-family neighborhoods. The Cape Cod Commission has done the same. The Town Council has not taken it up on its preference for new dense zoning. The Town Council sent a draft Housing Production Plan back to town staff for more work when it included zoning changes in our single-family neighborhoods around village centers. It wasn’t what people wanted, and the Council heard that loud and clear. We also adopted a Local Comprehensive Plan stripped of the same zoning change ideas. The Council adopted those plans without the density zoning elements unanimously.
On May 28th, the Town Council is holding a workshop on the latest effort to change zoning in our single-family neighborhoods to add density. We’ll hear from town staff and ask questions. There will be no vote.
I’m going in with questions. I expect to have more after. I want to know, for example, what written commitments the state has made on a wastewater problem I’ll explain below, whether the state plans to provide funding, and on how this law interacts with the state mandated ADU law since both apply to the single-family lots in your neighborhood. I welcome your questions.
In this newsletter, I explain what the law does, what it requires of towns that sign on, and what I think still needs answering.
We do need more housing.
Let’s be straight about what kind.
Nobody disagrees that we need housing that people can actually afford. But density alone doesn’t create affordability. Tiny homes won’t. And the new enormous apartment buildings in Hyannis that followed zoning changes there are priced out of reach for most locals who need help.
One in ten homes here is now a short-term rental. That’s a problem. Existing homes where year-round residents used to live are being pulled out of the market. Our housing challenge is about getting those homes back, or keeping them in the first place. That’s a conversion and affordability problem, not a construction and density problem.
Building new 400-square-foot structures on undersized lots doesn’t directly address the fact that our existing housing stock is disappearing into Airbnb listings.
I served on the ad hoc Housing Committee last year and I’m now on the Council’s new Zoning Subcommittee. I’ve shared research on how communities across the country – and tourist communities like ours – have kept existing housing stock for locals, and a draft rule to start the conversation.
The question isn’t whether we need to some affordable housing. We do. The question is whether the Seasonal Communities Act solves it the right way – the way Cape Cod residents actually want it solved.
What the Law Actually Does – and Requires
Governor Healey signed the Affordable Homes Act on August 6, 2024. Buried inside its nearly fifty policy initiatives is a “Seasonal Communities” designation.
Nine Cape towns were automatically designated from the start – Brewster, Chatham, Dennis, Eastham, Harwich, Orleans, Provincetown, Truro, and Wellfleet. That was because more than 35 percent of their housing is classified as seasonal.
Barnstable did not meet that criteria.
Later, in December 2025, the state extended the designation offer to Barnstable and the five remaining Cape towns. Barnstable did not ask for the designation. And the state did not ask Barnstable if we wanted it. We received a letter from the state letting us know.
The choice to accept the designation or not is ours to make. We need to fully understand it and make the decision based on complete information.
The state’s press releases lead with the benefits, every time: grants of up to $175,000, the ability to create a Year-Round Housing Trust Fund, preference in housing allocations for teachers and firefighters, and the authority to place deed restrictions keeping homes in year-round use. These are real tools, and I don’t dismiss them.
But here is what accepting the designation also requires, in plain language:
a town must rewrite its zoning laws within 24 months to allow two new uses as a matter of right – without a special permit, without a discretionary review, without a further town meeting vote on individual projects, without any say by any neighbors – in every single-family residential neighborhood:
1) Tiny homes of up to 400 square feet must be allowed on any single-family lot.
2) New residential development must be permitted on any lot of at least 10,000 square feet (roughly a quarter-acre), or 25 percent of the minimum lot size in the district – whichever is greater – so long as the housing is restricted to year-round use and occupied by households earning no more than 250 percent of area median income.
Our Town Council President Craig Tamash raised a practical question immediately: “Tiny houses would be allowed as a matter of right. If I have a two-acre lot, can I put six tiny houses on it, if sewer is available?” His question was not a hypothetical.
This Seasonal Communities law layers on top of the state’s Accessory Dwelling Unit law. Since February 2025, that law already requires every single-family lot to allow one ADU of up to 900 square feet by right.
Nothing in either the ADU law or the Seasonal Communities law explicitly prohibits a lot from having all three –
1) a primary home,
2) an ADU, and
3) a tiny home on the same single-family lot.
When I walk around neighborhoods in Precinct 5, it’s hard to even imagine it.
Setbacks and wastewater requirements constrain the extremes, but the interaction between these mandates on a typical Cape Cod village lot has not been fully worked out by the state.
It’s worth noting that the state-mandated ADU law overturned elements of Barnstable’s own ADU law that was already in place. Here is just one example: our law included on-lot parking requirements. The point was traffic safety and to preserve our scenic and historic roadways. The state ADU mandate does not require any on-lot parking for homes within a certain distance from bus stops. Drive down our narrow roads near village centers that have a bus stop, such as Osterville, and consider the state mandate allows ADU residents to park on both sides of our narrow streets – many winding, and many with granite curbs. In practice, I believe it will make some of our roads impassable.
The state law treated Barnstable like Boston, Wellfleet like Worcester. The Seasonal Communities would add tiny homes on top of that.
Cape Cod Is Not Like Everywhere Else This Law Applies
When I learned that the same Seasonal Communities Act applies to both Cape Cod and the Berkshires, my first thought was that these places have almost nothing in common. Different population density, different roads, different lot sizes, different housing problems.
Take Mount Washington, in Berkshire County. It’s a township of about 160 year-round residents. It is spread across 30 square miles of forested mountain. The entire town would fit inside a single Hyannis neighborhood. The eight Berkshire towns automatically designated under this law have a combined year-round population of roughly 8,500 people – a fraction of Barnstable’s 45,000.
Yet, the law would require the very same thing in all if the town says yes: allow tiny homes by right on every single-family lot. The state law makes no distinction between Mount Washington’s 128 homes scattered across a forested mountain and dense village center like Barnstable Village, Hyannis, and Osterville. Same tool. Every town.
Cape Cod Has a Specific Environmental Problem This Law Doesn’t Account For
We spend a lot of time talking about our environment and protecting it. Cape Cod sits on a sole-source aquifer. That’s one underground water supply that all fifteen towns drink from. The vast majority of Cape homes use individual septic systems. And our sandy, porous soil means nitrogen from those septic systems moves fast into groundwater, then into our bays and ponds. It’s already a problem to manage.
Most of Cape Cod’s coastal embayments have unacceptable water quality. The state has already mandated a massive, decades-long regional wastewater cleanup to address this, with an estimated price tag in the billions.
Every additional dwelling unit generates more nitrogen. We know that. State environmental regulators know that, too. And yet the state is simultaneously telling towns to reduce nitrogen and urging town to allow more residential structures. Those two state mandates have not been reconciled.
What that means in practice: a homeowner who wants to build a tiny home may be required to upgrade their septic system before construction even starts. Stack that cost on top of building a 400-square-foot structure, and the idea of housing that is affordable starts to ring hollow.
And Then There Are the Bridges
You all know well that Cape Cod has two aging bridges. Both already back up 25 miles on summer weekends.
Adding a second year-round home to every single-family lot on a peninsula with that kind of built-in bottleneck has consequences that simply don’t come up in a Berkshire hill town with room to spare. The law doesn’t account for that either.
“Worker Housing”:
The Authority Is There. The Money Isn’t.
The part of this law that probably sounds most appealing is the worker housing piece – the legal authority to set aside housing specifically for teachers, firefighters, paramedics, and public works employees.
The law gives towns the authority without the money.
The state’s Seasonal Communities Grant Program distributed $1.9 million in its first round to the fourteen towns that had accepted the designation. Grants ranged from $50,000 to $175,000 per town. Provincetown received $134,692. Eastham received the maximum of $175,000.
The median single-family home price on Cape Cod as of mid-2025 is approximately $789,500. A $175,000 grant does not buy a house.
There’s another catch. The law’s income cap for “attainable” housing is 250 percent of area median income – about $225,000 for a family of four on Cape Cod. That means a remote worker from Boston, a dual-income professional couple, or a retiree drawing on savings could all qualify.
The worker preference for teachers, first responders, public works only applies to housing a town has specifically bought or built for that purpose. Towns don’t have that money. Meanwhile, the mandatory zoning changes apply to every residential neighborhood regardless.
The Funding Idea That Has Thin Support: A New Tax on Cape Cod Homeowers
In February 2026, the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates voted – narrowly, 51.4 to 48.6 percent weighted by population – to send a home rule petition to the state legislature. Barnstable’s Delegate voted no.
The petition would give Cape towns the authority to create a real estate homes sales tax on sales above $1 million. Proceeds would go to housing. The county estimated it could generate up to $60 million annually. The county government would like to keep some of the money.
Similar proposals have repeatedly failed in the state legislature. The Cape’s state senator who sponsored past failed attempts asked the County Assembly of Delegates to send the petition to Boston. He said it would let him tell other legislators that “Barnstable wants this.” The fact is, most public commenters spoke against it at the public hearing where the proposal barely passed the Assembly of Delegates.
At that meeting, he said that it would be “pollyannish” to expect Cape Cod voters to pass such a tax increase at town meetings. Concerns about further burdening our property owners who are already stretched thin are widespread and well known.
On Where The State Encourages More Building
A point that deserves brief mention: The state considers Cape Cod an actively eroding sandbar. Sea level has risen along the Massachusetts coast since 1921, and state and federal projections estimate additional erosion.
The same state government promoting dense housing development – a tiny home on every single-family lot on Cape Cod – have maps showing which parts of our coastline are most vulnerable. Yet, the Seasonal Communities Act says tiny homes should be built everywhere.
Who Shaped This Law and Who Didn’t
The Affordable Homes Act was written largely in Boston. Legislative hearings drew testimony mostly from state agency officials, housing nonprofits, real estate attorneys, and trade associations.
The state held fourteen listening sessions statewide before the law passed. They were attended by roughly 1,600 people total. That’s about 0.023 percent of the people who live here.
Cape-specific listening sessions didn’t happen until the summer of 2025. That was nearly a year after the law was already signed and after communities had already been designated.
When Cape residents weighed in at town meetings, the concerns were consistent: density on small lots, septic implications, strain on emergency services, and uncertainty about who the housing would actually serve.
Some towns have accepted the designation. Some have not. Some said it is premature to even consider the question. Bourne’s Planning Board paused the process because it felt it didn’t have enough information. Sandwich chose not to pursue it at all.
The Massachusetts Municipal Association, which represents all 351 cities and towns in the state, told state officials that the regulations “go much further in their zoning requirement allowances for tiny houses and residential uses on undersized lots than those stated in their enabling act.” It warned that the strict mandates were likely to push municipalities away from opting in.
Before we make permanent zoning changes that will affect every residential neighborhood for decades, we need to fully understand the implications.
The Seasonal Communities Act offers tools and comes with real tradeoffs.
We are a sandy peninsula with a fragile aquifer, two aging bridges, 86 percent of our land already developed, and a coastline that doesn’t stand still.
The best zoning and housing solutions for a place as specific as Cape Cod typically come from people who know it, not a framework designed in Boston for the entire Commonwealth.
Email at John.Crow@Barnstable.gov
His town phone number is 774-487-0976.