Building a Diverse Year-Round Community
At Truro365, we envision a Truro with affordable and attainable housing for people of all income levels and stages of life, that provides year-round services and supports a year-round economy.
We support a renewed and reinvigorated Truro that supports working families and creates stables businesses, improved services and a better quality of life for everyone in Truro.
Our current focus is to make sure that the Walsh Property moves forward in a deliberate, fact-based and collaborative manner.
We invite you to join with us to help ensure that Truro has a bright and sustainable future.
The Affordable Housing Crisis . . . and You
Truro and the rest of the Outer Cape is in crisis. Prices for housing have skyrocketed over the last 20 years, making it virtually impossible for our merchants, health care workers, fire and police and other vitally needed services to maintain or grow staff. Seniors who have lived here for decades are being pushed out. And as working families have been forced to move away, businesses have closed, prices for services have increased and quality of care has declined.
Without more affordable housing on the Outer Cape, the reports are clear: Truro and the Outer Cape will increasingly decline as a place to live, to visit, to enjoy.
Fortunately, there is a answer. Truro and other towns on the Outer Cape are now working hard to create housing that will sustain a year-round community of workers and families. In Truro, the Walsh Property represents a enormous opportunity to inject new life into our businesses, increase the availability of vitally needed services and bring new tax revenues to our town.
Truro365 was formed to support those efforts. Our objective to make everyone aware of what needs to happen and to create a group of citizen activists to help ensure that Truro has a bright and beautiful future. Our intention is to be a storehouse of news and resources that will help lead a thoughtful and fact-based conversation on addressing this Crisis.
Quick Facts
-
A working family would have to make $375,000 a year to buy a home in Truro today.
-
Only 1.8% of Truro's housing stock is affordable homes (25 homes in total).
-
Businesses say the lack of affordable housing is their number one concern.
-
In the past 30 years, as working families have been forced out of town, Truro's average age has increased from 47 to 66 years.
Voices
“For the second time this year, I need to find a new place to live, and I do not know what will happen to me. I want to explain to you how it feels to live with housing insecurity — it’s terrifying. You stop sleeping at night.
It feels like a massive rejection by the community you worked so hard to support. You’re spoken about like a beggar, or even worse — ‘Not in my back yard’ — as though the people who serve you in restaurants or treat you in the clinic when you’re sick are not worthy of living in your community."
Heather Duncan, a physician’s assistant (1)
“We’re seeing restaurants and retail places that are closed two to three days a week now because they can’t get employees."
“Every employer, municipal or private sector, is having trouble, and housing is the fulcrum."
Dan Wolf, founder of Cape Air (2)
“Year to year, I don’t know if we’re even going to open. That ‘if’ is fully based on staffing and housing.
The restaurant’s workforce is about half what it used to be (15 to 20 now, down from 30), and it’s (now) open five nights a week instead of seven."
Eric Jansen, Blackfish restaurant co-owner.
“(I am) the picture of the older single working women that need affordable housing. Rent now takes half of my income. "
“My reason for speaking tonight is to give you a face of people who contribute to the community but can’t deal with the increases in rent."
Lisbeth Wiley Chapman, 80, Truro Resident
Citations
1) Housing Solutions From Around the Country, Provincetown Independent. 8/3/2022
2) Provincetown Aims Higher on Local Housing Policy, Provincetown Independent. 12/21/2022
3) Truro Businesses Take on New Endeavors, Provincetown Independent. 5/22/2024
4) Truro Will Vote on Taking Motor Inn for Housing, Provincetown Independent. 8/10/2024
Walsh is a big part of the answer
The Walsh Property Development is Truro's singular opportunity to regrow and recreate a community of year-round residents. It will help ensure that Truro's vital local businesses, government, medical and support services can continue to operate to support you and your family.
By building up to 160 units of affordable housing, Walsh will take a huge step towards securing Truro's future as a sustainable and secure community.
The grim fact is that the last affordable property Truro built took 14 years.
We can't wait that long. Join with us and help insure that Walsh moves forward at a much faster pace.