$1,975 a Month, and the Formula Calls It Affordable

BREWSTER · THE PRICE OF STAYING

Brewster approved higher rents for Serenity's 27 income-restricted units. The new move-in rate is $1,975 a month.

5 min read · A Celebrate Lower Cape spotlight

Twenty-seven apartments in Brewster are governed by a regulatory agreement, and that agreement comes down to one condition. Jill Scalise, the town's housing coordinator, put it this way to the select board: "the rent is affordable to a resident at 80 percent of the area median income."

Everything after that is arithmetic. This year the arithmetic produced a new move-in rate of $1,975 a month.

The apartments are at Serenity at Brewster, the 55-and-over building on Route 124 that used to be the Wingate nursing facility. It opened in August 2022 and now has 132 apartments, 27 of them income-restricted. The Cape Cod Chronicle reported that the agreement is overseen by the state's Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, the town, and Elevation at Brewster, the legal entity that owns Serenity.

Four years, about $667 more at the top

Rich Eldred's Sept. 2 report gave the rent history in a single sentence. When Serenity opened in 2022, the top affordable rents ran $1,261 to $1,311 a month, and they have gone up every year since. The new rates the board approved at its Aug. 24 meeting top out just under $1,978 a month for a studio or one-bedroom.

Put the two ends side by side. Going from $1,311 to just under $1,978 adds about $667 a month at the top of the range, or about $8,000 a year. The paper put this year's step at 8 percent, or about $150 a month.

All of these are ceilings and move-in rates. The report didn't say when the new schedule takes effect or what each current tenant pays now. The owner says it has historically tried to put most of the increase on people moving in.

"The rents need to be at 30 percent"

The ceiling starts with a number nobody in Brewster sets. Each year the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development publishes an area median income for Barnstable County. At the Aug. 24 meeting, Assistant Town Administrator Donna Kalinick cited it in a figure the Chronicle gave as $98,900 for one person.

Scalise gave the board the next two steps. "This year that is $79,100 for one individual, and the rents need to be at 30 percent of that," she said.

Worked through, the formula goes like this:

The board also took a separate vote, 5-0, approving Serenity's annual compliance report, which confirms the units are rented and run under the agreement's rules.

A vice president up from Florida

Ben Friedman, vice president of public affairs and business development for Elevation Financial Group, came up from Florida to ask for the increase. "All of these units are at or below the 80 percent AMI," he told the board. "Technically they are all below, but some are only a few dollars below."

The new move-in rate, $1,975, sits $2.50 under the $1,977.50 the formula allows. In Eldred's words, "Serenity is actually undershooting the rates they are allowed to set."

Friedman said every unit could be priced at the 80 percent level. Elevation keeps the one-bedrooms at that rate and the studios about $100 lower. It also doesn't use the higher two-person income standard when two people share a unit, though HUD rules would allow it. "We have historically tried to put most of the burden on a new person moving in," he said. "And to reduce pressure on people already living there to not unhouse them. There is a limit to our ability to do that."

Wealthy neighbors lift the ceiling

Kalinick's objection was to the formula. The county figure has risen significantly since 2021, she said, "And that, to us in the housing world, is a systematic issue." According to the Chronicle, she added that Barnstable County's fair number of wealthy residents pushes the median up, and that allows higher affordable rents.

"For anyone looking at these it's hard to understand how these rents are considered affordable, particularly when you are talking about people who are reliant on social security or young people in entry level jobs including some entry level municipal jobs that are available," she said.

Select board member Amanda Bebrin noted that for people who moved in when Serenity opened in 2022, the increase since then has been significant, and that many residents 55 and over live on fixed incomes. Town Administrator Peter Lombardi gave the building its credit. "Serenity has been a great partner for the town and has created a community out of a building that had a very uncertain future at the time," he said. "And they've done so largely without public funding support until the third phase."

The board approved the rent increase unanimously. Kalinick's last word on the formula, as the Chronicle printed it:

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