107 Main Creates New Neighbors
In October, Meg Chaffee, director of property management for Housing Assistance, met with three of the applicants who had been selected in a lottery to be among the tenants at 107 Main Street in Orleans. After a tour, she shared the happy news that they had been approved to move in to Housing Assistance’s newest development.
“It was very emotional for me,” she said. “My eyes filled up with happy tears, and I barely got the word ‘approved’ out. Our new tenants were just as excited and as emotional as I was. They were hugging family members and began to high-five each other, saying, ‘We’re going to be neighbors!’ This is what makes all the time and effort rewarding in creating affordable housing on Cape Cod.”
Chaffee shared this experience on October 23rd at the ribbon cutting for 107 Main, a building containing 14 affordable apartments at the former site of a Masonic lodge. Housing Assistance was selected by the town in 2022 to develop the 1.25-acre property. Located close to downtown Orleans, the units are a mix of 1 three-bedroom, 4 two-bedroom, and 9 one-bedroom apartments. All units will be restricted for households below 80% of the county’s area median income. One unit is fully handicapped accessible.
“I have the privilege of doing ribbon cuttings across Cape Cod, but I’m very proud to be here in my town,” said Housing Assistance CEO Alisa Magnotta, a resident of Orleans. “This has been a vision that Alan McClennen [former member of the Orleans affordable housing trust fund board] started back in 2019 and to bring it to fruition is very special.”
“107 Main Street has tremendous local support and is an excellent example of collaboration between a town, developer, and state agencies to meet local housing needs,” David Quinn, Housing Assistance VP of real estate development, said in an interview last year.
State Sen. Julian Cyr spoke at the ribbon cutting, saying, “The reality is that we are not going to be able to sustain ourselves as a year-round community without more projects just like this. May this project serve as a model for what is possible when Cape Codders work collaboratively.”
Housing Assistance is the largest developer of affordable housing in the region and has built almost 600 units since its founding in 1974. Another 242 units are in the development pipeline.
