A proposed family homeless shelter on Cape Cod that would be funded through the state’s emergency housing assistance program has hit a roadblock after officials and residents raised sharp concerns.
The Dennis Planning Board is appealing the project which looks to convert a former nursing home into a “family transitional shelter” that would house up to 79 homeless families, mostly single mothers with infants and young children.
Board members voted Monday to appeal the town building commissioner’s determination that the project fits the criteria of the Dover Amendment – a state statute that exempts agricultural, religious, and educational uses from certain zoning restrictions.
The board is also calling on the Cape Cod Commission to look into and consider the impact the project could have on Harwich, the town over.
Harwich residents say they’ve been left in the dust by the request from Housing Assistance Corp., a regional-based nonprofit looking to morph its three family shelters in Hyannis, Bourne and Falmouth into one central space at a former nursing home in Dennis.
Though the 57,000-square-foot facility is located in South Dennis, there’s only one way to enter and leave the property, via a road off of Main Street in Harwich. That could potentially create a logistical “nightmare,” a pair of Harwich residents told the Herald on Tuesday.
“We cannot handle the traffic that comes here,” resident Pam Kendall said. “Forget adding immigrants on top of it that don’t know the rules of our road, they just don’t.”
As the migrant crisis continues to take a toll on the Bay State, residents from Harwich, Dennis and other Cape Cod towns are worried that the proposed shelter would not address the housing needs of local citizens.
Roughly 39 migrant families staying at a nearby motel, Harborside Suites in Yarmouth, moved off the Cape to “various shelters,” including one in Kingston, along the South Shore, last month. That shelter sparked controversy by violating a local bylaw that limits temporary stays to less than 30 days.
A vast majority of Harwich residents have “no knowledge” of the proposal, with the only way of knowing about it is by listening to a local radio station or being a member of the Cape Cod Concerned Citizens activist group, resident Martha Taylor told the Herald.
“Housing Assistance has been trying to say that it will be our Cape Cod neighbors that will be housed here, and that’s not true,” she said.
The shelter in Dennis would provide living space for up to roughly 177 individuals and lessons on “life skills,” with the goal of getting them permanent housing, project leaders have said.
Tenants would be required to take lessons on financial management, family planning, MassHealth enrollment, housing search, parenting, cooking and other educational interventions, project attorney Peter Freeman said in April.
Freeman on Monday tried to assure that Housing Assistance Corp. has been responsive to the concerns that have been raised in the past, highlighting how the organization has included on its site plan a 6-foot wooden fence around the entire perimeter of the property except for the front.
The outside area would also feature a garden, two children’s play areas, picnic tables, lawn play area and bike racks, Freeman said.
Occupancy would be phased in over time, about three to four months before the facility is fully housed, Freeman said. He added that the state’s emergency housing assistance program would be a source of funding for the property.
“I’m not being evasive,” Freeman said. “As I just said the rules require that anybody who is not a citizen has to be legally documented. We simply have to follow the law and that’s what we will do.”
One Love Lane South Dennis LLC sold the nursing home, South Dennis Healthcare, to Housing Assistance Corp. for $4.3 million, according to a deed recorded with the Barnstable County Registry of Deeds last September. Nursing home staff relocated 82 residents in just over a month after the sale, the Cape Cod Times reported at the time.
Leaders in February highlighted how the 79 Cape and Islands families residing at the existing sites in Hyannis, Bourne and Falmouth would be relocated to Dennis, which they anticipate happening later this year.
Families would live in 272-square-foot rooms featuring a half-bathroom, refrigerator and microwave, and they’d share a communal kitchen and shower.
The tight spaces would lack televisions and chairs, officials have said. Average stays are about nine months to a year, they’ve added.
Dennis Planning Board Chairman Paul McCormick Jr. called putting in a condition that the use of the shelter be for only U.S. citizens a “fair suggestion.” He highlighted how little power the board has given the Dover Amendment exemption which he said he is not buying.
“I find that the primary reason is not education here,” McCormick said. “It’s 100% housing.”
