Needs Of Elders Raised As Truro Debates Possible Zoning Articles

TRURO — Conversations about housing here frequently wade into demographics: the local elementary school’s falling enrollment — it’s dropped by 30 percent since the 2021-2022 school year — or local businesses’ difficulties recruiting working-age employees.

The needs of elders and whether, in a town where the median age is 64, they are sufficiently understood and respected was on the table at the Aug. 19 planning board meeting, where discussion of possible new zoning articles to be developed for the next town meeting was the topic at hand.

At the meeting, Regan McCarthy, vice president of the Truro Part-Time Resident Taxpayers’ Association, and a longtime opponent of affordable housing development, spoke against two possible bylaw changes among the many on the list of ideas to be considered by the board: She urged members to suspend consideration of a conversion bylaw that aims to make it easier to turn single-family homes into multifamily homes and to eschew an inclusionary bylaw, which would require the inclusion of affordable units when cottage colonies become condos.

McCarthy said her recommendations were made in light of Truro’s demographics. “Seniors are here to stay as the majority population in Truro,” she said. “We should be grateful for that.” McCarthy claimed she had heard disdain for seniors in civic discourse about housing needs in town.

A Place to Downsize Into

Truro residents’ views on the town’s housing needs don’t break down along clear generational lines. In a 2018 survey of 454 residents and nonresidents 55 or older, nearly 40 percent said they would consider moving to a condominium or apartment if such housing were available in town.

Last year, the zoning task force considered proposing a conversion bylaw on the grounds that it could help elders who are “house-rich and cash-poor” to downsize and collect rent.

The zoning task force never brought that article to town meeting, partly because of concern that it could lead to real estate speculation. But since the select board disbanded the zoning task force in May, other boards have discussed the possibility of taking up a version of the measure.

Many seniors here would like to downsize because they struggle to pay taxes and upkeep, said Barbara Bond, 80, who manages Truro’s food pantry and serves as vice chair of the council on aging board. She cited one food pantry client who often asks her about the one affordable apartment complex under construction in town: “Every time I see him, he says, ‘When is the Cloverleaf going to be announced?’ ”

“We have a kind of invisible population of seniors who are living in inappropriate or substandard housing,” said Kevin Grunwald, 74. He is chair of the council on aging board and a member of the housing authority.

The housing shortage also affects seniors who have secure housing but struggle to find home health aides, plumbers, and electricians — people who make it possible for them to age in place — because those workers lack housing within reasonable commuting distance.

“One of the reasons that I built an apartment over my garage was planning ahead that maybe I’ll need a caregiver to live right here on the property when I get older,” said Katherine Black, a former member of Truro’s council on aging board. At 77, she is still spry, but helping her mother-in-law age in place in Truro has given her a glimpse of her own future.

“We can see the writing on the wall,” she said, “that, for instance, the best help I’ve gotten for pet-sitting and for elder care is somebody that I provided housing for myself.”

What Kind of Community?

At the Aug. 19 meeting, McCarthy said that “disparagingly calling Truro a retirement community is not only offensive and unconstructive. It’s out of reality.”

In May, at town meeting, planning board chair Ellery Althaus spoke in support of a right-to-farm-and-fish bylaw and addressed opponents of the article. “You don’t want commercial space, you don’t want affordable housing, you don’t want a DPW, and now it turns out you don’t want farms or fisherpeople in this community,” said Althaus, 43, a Truro native. “That isn’t a rural community; that’s a retirement community.”

Althaus, who had invited McCarthy to attend the Aug. 19 meeting, later told the Independent he wished he had worded his town meeting remarks differently.

“If I could do it over, since it’s caused so much controversy, I would have said: ‘That’s not a rural community. That’s a gated community,’ ” he said. “Because the age of the people has nothing to do with it.”

Black said she agreed that Althaus’s “retirement community” comment was “inappropriate.” But she said she saw a dire need for more housing.

“I think it was a fair comment,” said Denise McWilliams, 74. “We do need to have a conversation about the substance, as opposed to focusing on whose feelings have been hurt.”

Candida Monteith, who is 75, said she was troubled at this year’s town meeting when the $25.2-million borrowing authorization for the new DPW facility failed on the first try, then passed an hour later after, Monteith said, many elders had left the tent.

“There’s an idea that baby boomers are rich, and I think that if they spend time, like I have, at the council on aging, at luncheons, at things like knitting circles, they will find that there are people who go there who are not only frail but are very, very, very poor,” Monteith said. “Seniors who are really crushed for money don’t want” a $25.2-million DPW, she said.

Althaus said that he aims to address the housing crisis for people of all ages.

“Almost all the bylaws that I’ve been involved in have been with the thought that hopefully this will make it easier to age in place,” he said, “or it will free up some apartments if people want to sell their home, or perhaps just help people who have been struggling for so long finally find a place.”

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