Affordable Workforce Housing Examined.
As remote working is on the rise, central management pushes back with new terminology!
In pursuit of understanding what is intended by the terms, “workforce housing” or “affordable workforce housing”, as used by local leaders, I looked at the mentor organization of the Boothbay Region Housing Trust, the Island Housing Trust, located on Martha’s Vineyard.
BRHT does not have a website, and so the Island Housing Trust is a stand-in, pursuant to this Boothbay Register article BRHT looks to Martha’s Vineyard’s housing model
It will take some time to look at all the pieces of the plan and how they all coordinate but I am starting with one piece at a time. In this post, I will be focusing on the Hanover House model that the Island Housing Trust developed, using short-term loans to purchase former inns and bed and breakfasts which are transformed into “workforce housing apartments” as they are referred to, but back in the twentieth century, they would have just been called rooms for rent.
It is not too difficult to argue that one of the big causes of the no-longer-existing affordable housing in places like Boothbay is the Airbnbs. I don’t know, but I don’t doubt, that realtors Winston and Yale have been profiting by the transformation of former first homes into Airbnb’s. Those first homes were affordable to the middle classes in the twentieth century. Now they are not. Now vacationers are enjoying the former single-family homes as Airbnbs. Inns and bed and breakfasts are being repurposed as affordable workforce housing.
In the case of Hanover House on Martha’s Vineyard, what looks like a single-family home and which was previously an inn is now “working force housing” for Vineyard health care workers, the most essential of essential workers in times of covid. That means 12 rooms with private bathrooms and a shared kitchen, dining, and living space among the 12 tenants plus three “efficiency apartments”, The working hospital staff shares their kitchen and dining facility with 11 others, all of whom are very exposed to covid while working at a hospital.
IHT signed an agreement with the hospital in which the hospital “assigns and manages the tenants” so that in the IHT model. affordable workforce housing is linked to one’s job- an inevitable development of ever-expanding central management social organization. It is pure speculation on my part, that the arrangement with the hospital helps IHT to gain access to short-term loans from Foundations at1% interest rate so that IHT can quickly acquire property on the market and pay it back through rents, loans, donations, and investments
IHT set up an investor’s fund to deal with paying off the short-term loan.
The sample terms of the agreement used for IHT”s for-profit investors is posted online, it includes warnings about not reproducing or distributing any of it including instructions about tearing up the document if one does not agree to its terms- and yet there it is posted online - so easy to find but I’m not saying!
This document states the exact amount of income (or less) that qualifies for “affordable workforce housing” per the Island Housing Trust in Martha’s Vineyard, stated as a single person’s income that is greater than the average household income in Boothbay Harbor for the same year (2019), which will afford the single person subpar living quarters, all done up very nicely but still subpar, because no matter how nice a room is it is still a room for rent., while the targeted workforce class is trained professionals, who would not have had difficulty finding real affordable apartments or houses in the twentieth century.
In my layman’s point of view, the warning about not quoting anything in the document does not impress me as legally enforceable, but what do I know. I am not a lawyer but I am familiar with some court rulings that seem unjust and make no sense so anything is possible. I included a mention of the income level in my recent Newsbreak submission, trying to dance around the bush and yet to use the information but the story has remained under review for a couple of days, not published and not rejected, and so today I took out the specifics and anything else that could potentially present an issue. I am not the one who would be sued, both because of the optics and because I am not the one with deep pockets. that would be NewsBreak. I am sure NewsBreak has its own legal experts whom I do not have and I hope that my story is eventually approved.
I am finding it most valuable to deconstruct how the IHT is doing its financing. because I would like to make the 501(3)(C) purpose of the Andersen Design Museum of American Designer Craftsmen such that it can fiscally sponsor projects to develop “workforce housing” as businesses in a home, after all a business in a home is a workforce housing of a very individualist nature. The way it is in the Island Housing Trust model, the businesses will control affordable living spaces. How scary is that? If the business one works for is going to also manage one’s living space, then the business might as well be oneself and the business located in one’s own home. This fits right in with the remote work movement.
Right now the museum’s purpose is written so that the museum can fiscally sponsor working studios but is not specific to the business in a home as “the workforce housing”, which in days of old might have been called “cottage industries”. I crafted the part of the purpose that permits the funding of studios directly from the 501(3)(C) purpose of Maine Technology Institute. The VLA lawyer in Boston approved it, giving me enough to get the VLA lawyer in Maine but now I still need the three board members and so far I have none.
However, as a true believer in God working in mysterious ways, if finding three board members takes a long time, it is because more time is needed to clarify the purpose of the museum. It is still unfolding into what it needs to be. That means that while I am looking for the team, I can work out the legal purpose that would allow a fiscally sponsored project of the Museum to be the whole package- funding the business in a home- as “affordable workforce housing” and as “economic development” and as “opportunity zones” in the new decentralized workforce world being called for by the workforces.
The way that The Martha’s Vineyard Island Institute is set up to acquire properties is probably the plan the Boothbay Region Land Trust is counting on to finance “large scale workforce housing”, though the Martha’s Vineyard model doesn’t come close to being “large scale”. One should be concerned if this large scale workforce planning is to be strategized using the same relationship as is described in the Hanover House model, where a deal is made with a business and the business “selects and manages the tenants” That is a level of control over the individual and community that goes beyond what is already instituted in the Industrial Partnerships Act, or anything that exists today that already has the workforces in revolt against overly controlling management. but the same system can be changed up to further a more complexly organized individualistic community. That is what I hope to evolve.
WOW! Just as I finished this post The Martha's Vineyard Model Used by Boothbay Region Housing Trust was published on Newsbreak!
How is that for perfect timing?