Cape View Way: Bourne welcomes new 42-apartment complex, after 950 people applied
As seen in the Cape Cod Times, by Zane Razzaq
SAGAMORE BEACH — When her husband suffered a life-changing accident that left him with a permanent disability, Shamim Morris said the family’s finances were rocked.
They could no longer afford their apartment in Sagamore Beach, so they began to search for another place. She applied to about 10 different housing lotteries, completing piles of paperwork just to be rejected.
Because almost nothing was immediately available, she said she “just had to put our name on every wait list we could.”
“It’s been difficult trying to keep everything together and keep our bills paid and have a place to live,” said Morris, who moved to Cape Cod about four years ago to accept a job as an administrative assistant at Barnstable Public Schools. “We literally applied for everything that we could find.”
But now she and her family are officially moved into their new apartment at Cape View Way. She was one of about 950 people who applied for one of the 42 units at the new affordable housing development.
A partnership between Preservation of Affordable Housing and Housing Assistance Corporation, the three-story Cape View Way features a mix of nine one-bedroom, 28 two-bedroom, and five three-bedroom apartments.
The demand for housing on Cape Cod, across 15 towns, is substantial. The demand in 2020 for units affordable to workers earning up the median household income exceeded supply by 26,800 units, according to the Cape Cod Commission.
Town-owned land near Sagamore Beach
The project is on a parcel owned by the Bourne Housing Authority near Sagamore Beach behind the Bourne Fire Department headquarters. Three apartments are accessible for people with disabilities and a fourth can accommodate sensory-impaired residents.
Twenty-six apartments are available to residents earning 60% of the area median income with 16 units subsidized for residents at 30% of area median income.
The town first acquired the land in 2000. In 2018, the Bourne Housing Authority issued a request for proposals seeking developers to construct up to 60 housing units on the site.
Hearings to reduce the size of the project
During a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday, April 25, Housing Assistance CEO Alisa Magnotta said 13 Zoning Board of Appeals hearings were held to reduce the size of the project.
“It’s the little housing project that could,” Magnotta said.
Cape View Way is also a passive house building, said Cory Fellows, POAH’s vice president of real estate development, which means it is designed to be airtight to create, store, and use its own energy. Residents can expect to see lower utility bills as a result.
“It maintains a relatively stable temperature,” said Fellows. “That’s where the passive part of passive house comes in: that just by virtue of the inherent design and the construction details, it maintains a certain level, relatively constant temperature.”
Rep. William Keating, D-Massachusetts, called housing projects like Cape View Way “not an expenditure as much as it is an investment.”
“We invest so that people can live here … we’re building our economy, we’re building our families, and we’re building our communities with these kinds of investments,” said Keating.
ICON Architecture, Horsley Witten Engineering, and Dellbrook JKS are on the project’s design and construction team.
“We had over 950 applications to move in here. So let us not forget that we still have significant work to do,” said Magnotta.
From her new second-floor apartment, Morris now has a view of the Sagamore Bridge and Cape Cod Canal where she and her family love to walk. She said her daughter commented that “living here feels like a fancy hotel except without the vending machines.”
“It’s a dream come true,” said Morris. “I almost gave up. I almost thought it was never going to happen.”
