Housing Bank Plan Wins Key Legislative Support

By IAN FEIN

The proposed Martha's Vineyard Housing Bank picked up key
support on Beacon Hill this week, where the legislative committee that
reviewed the bill this winter voted unanimously to award it a favorable
recommendation.

Though the bill still must pass through the House ways and means
committee before reaching the floor for a vote, the recommendation from
the joint revenue committee will give it some much-needed momentum
during what is expected to be a busy few months in the State House. The
legislature must act on the bill before the end of its term July 30.

Cape and Islands Sen. Robert O'Leary, who filed the bill in
October and is a member of the revenue committee, said that without the
support received this week, the proposal effectively would have been
dead in the water.

"Now it's starting to move, and that means the situation
has improved," Mr. O'Leary said yesterday. "But there
is still a long way to go, and a lot of potential obstacles."

On the Island, supporters of the bill reacted to the news favorably.

"The bill continues to make progress, and we continue to be
cautiously optimistic," said Martha's Vineyard Co-operative
Bank president Richard Leonard, who is chairman of an ad-hoc housing
bank coalition. "Our message seems to be resonating, and the
support we have shown is paying off."

Modeled after the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank, the housing
bank would generate roughly $2 million per year for affordable housing
projects through a seller-paid transfer fee on Island real estate
transactions. Voters in all six Vineyard towns approved the concept in a
nonbinding ballot initiative last spring, and, if passed by the state
legislature, the proposal would still require another round of support
by Island voters.

Mr. O'Leary and other supporters of the housing bank have said
candidly that the legislation faces an uphill battle to passage.

The state legislature typically eyes local tax initiatives with
caution, and at the revenue committee hearing held on the housing bank
bill in January, a state senator from western Massachusetts argued
against the proposal. He urged his fellow committee members to address
the affordable housing crisis statewide, and not create special
legislation just for the Vineyard.

Mr. O'Leary said the revenue committee this winter wrestled
with a similar bill proposed from Nantucket. The so-called
"McMansion bill" also would create a funding agency for
community housing, but instead of using a transfer fee would raise funds
through a tax on new home construction in excess of a certain size.

Mr. O'Leary said the revenue committee simultaneously reviewed
both proposals and ultimately recommended the Vineyard bill over the
Nantucket version, which it sent on for further study. But he added that
legislators would prefer to adopt one solution that could be applied to
both Islands.

"Both bills used different approaches but were trying to
address the same issue," Mr. O'Leary said. "The
question is, can we come up with a solution for both?"

Legal counsel for Sen. Cynthia Stone Creem, the co-chairman of the
revenue committee, said yesterday that the large turnout of Vineyard
supporters at the January hearing helped sway the committee to support
the bill.