Regional Housing Strategy

Housing Cape Cod

Click to view the Regional Housing Strategy

Affordable and attainable housing for people with various income levels and needs is key to a vibrant, healthy, and resilient region. Cape Cod is facing a significant challenge in providing affordable and attainable housing for current and future Cape Cod residents.  This impacts not only those seeking housing but also our economy, as employers may struggle to find employees locally. The region’s highly constrained housing market is unaffordable to many Cape Cod residents; a problem which has only become more acute over the past few years as home prices have increased significantly.

The Regional Housing Strategy addresses the housing supply, affordability, and availability issues facing the region by identifying appropriate areas for housing development and crafting policies and strategies to further its goals. Successful implementation of the Regional Housing Strategy will provide residents with safe and attainable housing and will provide a more reliable workforce and customer base for our local businesses.

Baseline Information

Understanding the current housing landscape lays the groundwork for strategy development. This includes housing profiles for all towns in the region with relevant housing, demographic, and economic data, an updated regional housing needs assessment, and a zoning analysis.   
 
 

Strategy Development

Strategies and recommendations have been identified to facilitate action and alleviate the region’s housing challenges. Identifying strategies included researching existing tools and strategies in use in the region and across the country and was informed by the stakeholder engagement process. Fact sheets are available on over 40 strategies identified as potentially applicable for the region. 

Tools & Resources

Tools and resources will support implementation of the strategy. These include residential design guidelines, model bylaws for towns, strategy fact sheets, and a decision support tool (under development). Other tools and resources may be developed as needed to support implementing the strategy's recommendations. 

Stakeholder Engagement

A robust stakeholder process engaged the public, municipal representatives, housing advocates, builders, employers, and others to define specific challenges, identify opportunities, and develop local and regional strategies that meet the needs of Cape Cod.