In Provincetown, Massachusetts, a matchmaker helps the desperate find housing
A mix of extremes has made the housing market in the remote town of Cape Cod one of the most distressing in New England.
WHY WE ARE HERE
We explore how America defines itself place by place. In this coastal New England town, a booming summer economy means local renters fear being priced out.
Reporting from Provincetown, Massachusetts.
As soon as he saw the Facebook post of a young woman looking for a summer home for her boyfriend, Dan McKeon knew what was about to happen.
Mr. McKeon is an unofficial “housing broker” in Provincetown, on the very edge of Cape Cod, where a mix of extreme conditions – limited supply, huge summer demand, heavy reliance on an influx of seasonal workers – has created one of the most gripping housing markets. in New England.
In his widely consulted Facebook group, people looking for housing post smiling selfies and plaintive pleas for help; much less often, Mr. McKeon and others share available rental properties. Both online and as a fixture in the local social circuit, Mr. McKeon urges the city’s homeowners to open up unused rooms to desperate newcomers, shares insider search tips, and strives to make every rent-seeker, year-round or not, feel welcome.
But on this April day, the mail from the woman seeking a $700-a-month room had elicited a mocking reaction from some of the group’s 2,400 members, just as Mr. McKeon had expected. “Obviously no one told you it’s impossible,” one response read, “but $700/month is a late 1990s rent.”
In a housing market as unhinged as Provincetown — where the median sale price of a single-family home was $1.9 million last month, the number of Airbnbs has skyrocketed and vacant apartments are virtually nil — the sharp commentary reflects the frustration of local renters who are constantly fear of being discounted.
“No one is immune,” says 68-year-old McKeon, who fell in love with Provincetown on a family day out when he was 15 and retired there in 2009. been here a long time – if you rent you have to experience this.
A renter himself, he knows the cycle of unrest firsthand. Forced to move three times so far, he fears a fourth move next year, from a house he loves, when his landlord plans to reclaim it as her full-time home.
Mr. McKeon, who volunteers his time as an unpaid housing guru and also works as a photographer in town, said he was driven to help others because he knows what it’s like to dream of a life in Provincetown. He’s also driven to maintain civility — even in the online trenches — lest the hospitable atmosphere that characterizes his adopted hometown doesn’t crumble in the chaos of a housing armageddon. After the dismissive response to the $700 room request, he messaged the woman to offer his support and sternly reminded the group to be nice.
“This isn’t Oprah, or Dr. Phil,” he said in an interview. “This is my housing page.”
Long a destination for artists, gay and lesbian vacationers, and free spirits drawn to the far reaches, the city is remote and compact, 186 miles from Boston by car and half as far by ferry. The gray clapboard houses and white picket fences are surrounded on three sides by water and miles of steep and sprawling sand dunes, part of the Cape Cod National Seashore.
Windy and quiet in winter, when only 3,600 year-round residents remain, the city draws 60,000 people in mid-summer, its beaches, bars, and brick sidewalks teeming with a vibrant mix of wealthy summer crowd, LGBTQ travelers, year round – rounders and international students who arrive each spring on short-term J1 visas to work in hotels, galleries and restaurants.
There’s no place like this, its siren song irresistible to many who hear it. Yet Provincetown has become as out of reach as it is attractive, its rental properties almost mythically elusive.
The pleas on Mr. McKeon’s Facebook page chart an emotional clash of dreams and deflating reality. In the frantic run-up to the tourist season which kicks off on Memorial Day weekend, they came from a doctor who moved to the city for a new job, two Bulgarian students who “love cleanliness and hate clutter” and a mother in Utah looking for a safe place. place to raise her transgender daughter.
Long-term residents are not exempt. Francine Kraniotakis, who manages her family’s downtown business, George’s Pizza, posted her own plea to the Facebook group in April. In March, she said, her landlord gave her until June to vacate the apartment she’s been renting for nine years, close to the restaurant and her elderly parents who live above it.
“My stress level is about 20,” she said in early May on the airy patio behind the pizzeria, where her father, George Kraniotakis, an immigrant from Greece, tends a vine canopy every summer.
She had asked her landlord for more time, offered to pay more rent, and tracked down a dozen home seekers, but she hadn’t found affordable housing that she liked and was close enough to work, where she needs all day to troubleshoot problems. to solve with a lot of staff. shortages.
Painfully aware of their housing problem – and the pressing questions it raises about the future of Provincetown – local leaders have stepped up their efforts efforts to address it. The city is building 65 year-round rental homes on the former site of a VFW hall, said housing director, Michelle Jarusiewicz, while a private developer plans to create 100 dormitories for seasonal workers, who desperately need their employers.
As they make an effort to find employees, some companies have been forced to cut hours. Others offer free or minimal rent on-site housing, or rent rooms for employees in area motels — not all of them in good condition, locals said. The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce recently hired a housing coordinator to help student workers from abroad find host families or other accommodations for the season.
Kristin Hatch, executive director of the Provincetown Housing Authority, said she regularly receives calls about housing emergencies, including people living in cars or in the woods. Many are former housekeepers, wait staff, and other service employees.
“We’re hitting a wall,” she said. “Who’s going to save these people in a small town like this?”
Mr. McKeon, who spent decades working in patient care at a New York mental hospital, isn’t the only matchmaker in town. There is also another Facebook page dedicated to housing, and other scouts, such as Arlene Weston, a local housing commissioner who helped place student workers in a vacant church rectory last summer.
Adding to their challenge, Mr. McKeon said, are the fake rental listings, posted by scammers, that need to be stamped out. In retaliation for exposing it, he said, fraudsters have been harassing him on his social media accounts and cell phone.
He said he’s only found room for about a dozen people this spring, in the toughest market he’s ever seen.
Nigel Revenge, a local actor, was one of those squeezed out, after his landlord of three years decided to convert his apartment into a weekly rental. Months of searching turned up nothing, and Mr. Revenge left Provincetown in late April to stay with relatives elsewhere on Cape Cod.
Within days, he said, a driver called him an anti-gay slur as he rode his bike to work. “I’m not in Oz anymore,” Mr. Revenge said.
Henry Merges, 20, a sophomore at Brown University, was so eager to accept a summer internship with the Provincetown Art Association that he briefly considered living in a borrowed RV. Ultimately, though, he turned down the opportunity due to lack of housing, moved in with his parents in upstate New York, and resumed his job search.
“It was pretty heartbreaking,” he said, “but it felt like a battle not worth fighting.”
As summer approached and the rental frenzy escalated, outrage bubbled up again on Facebook, this time in response to a post about “two detached cottages,” 800 and 850 square feet.
“SUMMER SEASON RENTAL!” it started.
The cost for four months: $34,000 per unit.