Chatham's Housing Future Is on the Line. The ZBA Must Say Yes

 Editorial – Mike Schell – June 3, 2026

Chatham's Housing Future Is on the Line. The ZBA Must Say Yes. Twenty-three years ago, the people of Chatham made a promise to themselves. At the 2003 Annual Town Meeting, residents unanimously adopted a Comprehensive Plan with a clear, measurable goal: bring affordable housing to 10% of Chatham's year-round housing stock by 2015. It was an ambitious target, but a necessary one – a recognition that the town's essential workers, young families, and longtime residents were being priced out of the community they helped build.

We are now eleven years past that deadline. Chatham's Subsidized Housing Inventory stands at 4.81%. In the past fifteen years, the town has added a mere ten units to that inventory. Ten units in fifteen years. To reach the 10% goal today would require 192 new affordable homes. The promise made in 2003 has not been kept.

Now, at long last, Chatham has a genuine opportunity to begin making it right. The Zoning Board of Appeals is currently considering a comprehensive permit application from Pennrose LLC to develop affordable housing on Meetinghouse Road. The ZBA should grant that permit. The case for doing so is overwhelming – legally, financially, morally, and as a matter of simple civic obligation.

**This Project Is Chatham's Own**
Let us be clear about what this project is and how it came to be. This is not a developer who arrived uninvited and proposed to impose unwanted housing on a reluctant town. Quite the opposite. In December 2021, Chatham's own Affordable Housing Trust voted unanimously to pursue the Meetinghouse Road property from the Catholic Archdiocese of Fall River. The town purchased that land in 2022 specifically for affordable housing. In early 2024, Chatham issued a formal Request for Proposals seeking a developer to build on it. Pennrose responded to that invitation. The town selected Pennrose in July 2024 and negotiated a detailed Land Disposition Agreement, executed in February 2025, with the Town Manager, Select Board representatives, the Affordable Housing Trust, and the Finance Committee all at the table.

Pennrose is here because Chatham asked them to be here. Every official step in this project – the land acquisition, the RFP, the developer selection, the negotiated agreement – was taken by Chatham's own duly constituted bodies acting in the public interest. We all would do well to remember that as the ZBA deliberates.

**The Project Will Strengthen Chatham's Schools**
One of the less discussed but most important benefits of affordable housing is what it does for the long-term vitality (and viability) of a community's school system. Chatham, like many Cape Cod towns, has struggled with declining school enrollment as younger families are pushed out by housing costs. Affordable housing pushes back against that trend.

Pennrose recently completed its 62-unit Phare development in Orleans. In the school year following its opening, Orleans Elementary School enrolled 21 additional students – a surge the school's principal described as well outside the norm and directly correlated to the new housing. Pennrose's Village at Nauset Green in Eastham tells a similar story: 40 children under 18 now live there. There is every reason to expect that Chatham will experience comparable gains. That is not a burden. That is a lifeline for a school system that depends on enrollment to sustain its programs, its teachers, and its future.

**The Financial Case Is Compelling**
Beyond the town's moral commitment to this project, the financial terms are extraordinary. Pennrose is undertaking a $28.5 million development at no cost to the town. Under the Land Disposition Agreement, Pennrose will actually pay Chatham $300,000 in cash at closing, plus a $200,000 promissory note – meaning Chatham will receive $300,000 for land it purchased for the express purpose of creating affordable housing which it can immediately rededicate to other housing affordable housing.

Compare that to the competing proposal not selected: it would have required Chatham to contribute a $4 million subordinated loan to the project and transfer the land for free. Or compare it to the town's planned investment of at least $3 million to produce just 14 affordable and attainable units on Stepping Stones Road. The Pennrose project will produce more units at a far lower cost to Chatham taxpayers. This is not a close call on the numbers.
**On Density and Design**
Some opponents of this project have raised concerns about density. Those concerns deserve a measured response. In response to feedback from the ZBA and the public, Pennrose contracted to acquire the property adjacent to the project, enlarging the project site by 15% and reducing unit density by nearly 14%, to approximately 10.2 units per acre. That figure is barely above the 10-unit-per-acre metric the town's own Planning Board has recommended for inclusionary zoning in the West Chatham Neighborhood Center. Moreover, the project site is surrounded on three sides by roughly 10 acres of open, unimproved land – including Twine Fields, a 7.5-acre meadow beloved by birdwatchers – almost certainly never to be developed. This is not a project being shoehorned into a dense neighborhood.

**The Law Has Its Own Answer**
The ZBA's role in this process is governed by Chapter 40B of the Massachusetts General Laws and 760 CMR 56.07-56.09. Under that framework, general community opposition, preferences for lower density or single-family character or ownership over rental, and unsupported traffic concerns do not meet that standard. They never have. The law was designed precisely to prevent those arguments from defeating housing that a community genuinely needs.

Chatham's need for affordable housing is not in dispute. It is urgent, it is documented, and it is the product of more than two decades of inadequate progress against a goal this town set for itself.

**A Final Word**
The ZBA is the last official body standing between a 23-year civic commitment and its fulfillment. Many people and institutions – town meeting voters, selectmen, housing trustees, town managers, finance committee members – have contributed their efforts to reach this moment. The Zoning Board of Appeals now has the opportunity, and the responsibility, to bring that work to a successful conclusion. Grant the permit. Chatham has waited long enough.