When Housing Stability Arrives by Lottery

PROVINCETOWN — Humberto Ortega and Maria Pinelo were working at Shirts N Stuff on Commercial Street on Aug. 1 when Deputy Housing Director Mackenzie Perry called Ortega on his cell phone. Humberto Ortega and Maria Pinelo in the living room of the apartment on Commercial Street they’ve rented for 24 years. (Photos by Elias Duncan) “When Humberto picked up, he just kept saying, ‘Wait … wait,’ like he was in shock,” says Pinelo. “I kept asking, ‘Yes or no?’ and finally he said, ‘Yes!’ ” The couple had just won the town’s lottery for the right to purchase a brand-new one-bedroom condo at 50 Nelson Ave. for the subsidized “affordable ownership” price of $189,685. Similar condos in the neighborhood sell for $600,000 or more, and the median price of a Provincetown condo was $930,000 last year, according to the Cape Cod & Islands Association of Realtors. Ortega and Pinelo have worked at Shirts N Stuff for 24 years and raised their three children in Provincetown. “All these years, our lives have been spent working, working, working,” says Ortega. They had saved to own a home, but prices here were always out of reach. “I couldn’t believe it — God, I really couldn’t believe it,” Pinelo says. The couple are set to close on their new home this week. The inclusionary housing development at 50 Nelson Ave. has 10 new condos, one of which is the affordable-ownership unit that Ortega and Pinelo purchased. Provincetown’s inclusionary zoning bylaw, passed at town meeting in 2017, requires developers of five or more housing units on one parcel to include one or more affordable-ownership units in their plans or pay into the town’s housing trust funds. Six deed-restricted units have been created under the bylaw, including the 962-square-foot unit purchased by Ortega and Pinelo. The lot at 50 Nelson Ave. used to hold one single-family house built in 1972. It was purchased by Dol-Fin Development LLC, owned by Maria Cirino, Lyn Plummer, and Elizabeth Barbeau, in 2019 for $412,000. The developers added 10 condo units in five buildings to the 0.7-acre lot, with one unit deed-restricted to affordable ownership. If they decide to sell, Ortega and Pinelo will be able to list it only at a price determined by the county’s area median income at that time; the right to purchase it will again be awarded through a town-organized lottery. The town’s community housing council sets the income limits and price for deed-restricted units created by the inclusionary bylaw. The condo at 50 Nelson was available to applicants with a household income equal to or less than the county’s area median income in 2023 — $85,890 per year for a one-person household or $98,160 per year for two people. Applicants must also be pre-approved for a mortgage, be first-time homeowners, have less than $100,000 in assets, and commit to making the condo their sole domicile. Town residents, employees of town government or local businesses, and the parents of children in Provincetown Schools were given “local preference” in the lottery. The rental apartment on Commercial Street where Ortega and Pinelo raised their family. Twenty-eight households applied for the condo at 50 Nelson, and 27 of them met the strict criteria for the lottery –– a record number, said Perry. “This could be someone’s first time applying, or often their fifth, sixth, or seventh,” Perry says. Lottery day is a tense mix of anticipation and paperwork, says Perry. “The excitement is contagious, and often it’s coupled with relief that they have a direction forward for their housing in town, permanently.” Applicants are assigned unique codes that are written on folded slips of paper, with each fold identical to ensure fairness. The slips are dropped into a bucket, shaken, and stirred. Finally, the slips are drawn one by one and read aloud, determining the order in which applicants will be offered the chance to purchase the home. Ortega and Pinelo couldn’t make the Aug. 1 drawing for Nelson Avenue — like most people who live here, they were working that day. Ortega and Pinelo arrived in Provincetown in 2000 from central Mexico hoping to build a better financial future for their young family. Ortega worked long hours on the assembly line at the Volkswagen plant in Puebla, one of the oldest foreign-owned car factories in the country, while Pinelo stayed home to care for their young children. Ortega says they could barely make ends meet. “No matter how hard you work in Mexico, it’s never enough,” he says. “The opportunities to provide for your family are better here.” Pinelo’s brother already lived in Provincetown, and he encouraged them to come for the summer and make some money. At Shirts N Stuff, Ortega is now the manager and Pinelo presses designs onto T-shirts. “We came to give it a try, and we never left,” says Ortega. “We love this town. We love the people. We were lucky to end up here.” Ortega and Pinelo’s youngest daughter, Irma Alejandra Carreiro, now lives in Bourne. Her parents “worked a long time for this,” she says. The couple found a 575-square-foot two-bedroom rental on Commercial Street above what is now the clothing boutique BXclusive and across from the Underground Bar. Their children joined them later that year. “Provincetown is their home, and they’ve worked a long time for this,” says their youngest daughter, Irma Alejandra, who graduated from Cape Cod Tech in 2011 and now lives in Bourne. “It’s really nice to see them happy and know they’ll have their privacy.” Jason Greene owns one of the other five units that have been created through the inclusionary zoning bylaw: a one-bedroom at 70 Bradford St. Extension that was sold by lottery in October 2023. Jason Greene won the 2023 lottery to purchase a one-bedroom affordable-ownership condo on Bradford Street Extension for $241,100. His canine roommate, Samantha, did not contribute to the purchase. “I had them check and confirm my number three or four times when I won,” says Greene. “I still don’t believe it. I was just so over the moon and still am.” Greene’s unit sold for $241,100 and was open to people earning up to 120 percent of the county’s area median income, which at the time was $104,412 for one person or $119,326 for two people. “I never thought I’d be able to own here because of the prices — I’m not a very wealthy person,” says Greene, a medical case manager at the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod. “Owning a piece of property in Provincetown is such a big deal. It’s just been a dream come true.” Thomas Acone and his husband, Cesar Acone, were among 16 households who applied for the Bradford Street unit in 2023. Of the 14 who qualified for the lottery, their number was picked 13th, which was “pretty crushing,” Thomas says. The ground-floor condo at 50 Nelson Ave. sold for $189,685 through the affordable-ownership lottery. The two condos above it are currently listed at $899,000 each. The couple would like to enter more lotteries, but the income limits kept them out of the lottery for 50 Nelson Ave. Cesar is a certified nursing assistant at Seashore Point and Thomas is a server at the Red Inn; their combined household income was over $98,160 that year. “People like us are stuck between a rock and a hard place in this town,” says Thomas. “You have to make a certain amount of money to live here, but if you do, it disqualifies you from housing opportunities like this.” According to Laura Shufelt of the Mass. Housing Partnership, federal area median income calculations are still based on four-person households, with total allowable income reduced by 10 percent per person fewer than four. That math means a two-person household can earn only 14 percent more than a one-person household to qualify at the same income level. “There is an unmet desire for homeownership opportunities among locals above the current AMI thresholds” for affordable-ownership units created through the inclusionary bylaw, says select board member Austin Miller. The 30 below-market condos the town is helping develop at the site of the former police station at 26 Shank Painter Road will help “meet the need and demand at income levels not currently eligible for the existing affordable housing lotteries,” says Perry.