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Raise the drawbridge: NIMBY opponents target plans for new housing in Cape Cod’s commercial hub, arguing the resort peninsula is full and can’t accommodate any more people
Every village has its idiots.
But in the case of Hyannis Village, Cape Cod’s commercial hub, they may soon rule the roost, with the power to make the region’s already dire housing crisis even worse.
For years now, the Cape has been suffering from a shortage of apartments and homes that has pushed rents and prices into the stratosphere, while making it increasingly difficult for everyone from local schools to restaurants to staff up.
But over the past two years, developers, with help from some favorable zoning rules, have opened or begun work on an array of new apartment buildings and other desperately-needed housing in downtown Hyannis.
Now a group of local pols, encouraged by an online NIMBY cheerleading section, is gunning to shut down one of the Cape’s few success stories when it comes to dealing with a housing crisis that is one of the nation’s worst.
On Thursday evening, Barnstable town councilors seeking to clamp down on additional downtown Hyannis housing came close to taking action on a proposal that would have slapped a temporary moratorium on the construction of new housing.
Business groups, including the local chamber, had come out against the proposal, which would have asked the Cape Cod Commission to designate downtown a “District of Critical Planning Concern.”
Overall, nearly a thousand new apartments and other housing units have either been built or are in the planning pipeline for downtown Hyannis.
But if a local online forum is to be believed, the town councilors’ pullback from the proposal was a tactical one, as housing opponents are hoping to expand their slim majority in town elections come this fall.
“NO MORE HOUSING PROJECTS,” wrote a commenter named Ken on the Facebook forum, while Sharon argued against replacing the nearly century-old Cape bridges, lest they encourage more people to move to what “is supposed to be quaint and rustic fishing community.”
“The residents who live here do not wish to live in a city, where there is no room for trees to be planted in front of businesses, and buildings cast long shadows downtown and block the sunlight,” wrote Felicia Penn, a Barnstable town councilor who has led the charge. (Hyannis is one of the seven villages that make up Barnstable, the Cape’s largest town.)
Meanwhile, the median listing price in Barnstable has soared to $945,000, up from $575,000 at the end of 2019, according to stats compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
“It's alarming that a proposal to halt new business growth and housing in the Cape's biggest downtown even got as far as it did,” Stefanie Coxe, executive officer of The Home Builders and Remodelers Association of Cape Cod Board of Directors, told Contrarian Boston. “Particularly since the origin of the proposal is social media, not the town's own committees."
Missing the story once again: The mainstream media loves to hate on Bari Weiss and The Free Press, but could learn a few things from its rapid rise
To say that Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press, is reviled by more than a few people in the mainstream media is an understatement.
A recent piece in The Nation, a venerable progressive publication founded in 1865, labeled Weiss a “vile grifter.” The New York Times couldn’t resist throwing a whole lot of shade at its one-time editorial writer in this piece last year, noting she had built a “new media empire” by “persuading audiences she is a teller of dangerous truths.”
Her offense? Weiss has founded a wildly successful center-right publication - now on the cusp of being acquired for as much as $200 million - that adheres to traditional journalistic norms (not always the case with conservative media - see Fox News).
But much of the mainstream media, especially but not limited to local and regional newspapers, is mired in an existential crisis amid the collapse of its traditional business model.
Can the paladins of the establishment press truly afford to simply hate on Weiss and The Free Press and not try to learn from it?
