Patrick White is chair of the Stockbridge Affordable Housing Trust, which is working to keep people in their homes and develop new housing as costs skyrocket and supply lags far behind demand. The Southern Berkshire town of around 1,900 residents, immortalized by Norman Rockwell in his iconic 1967 painting “Home for Christmas (Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas)”, is changing, and White says the community has to move quickly to sustain itself.
“We've got one of the highest real estate values in the county, if not the highest and that impacts young people and young families," said White. "When I was growing up here, we had 350 kids in our school system. Today, we have about 105 of which, 65 are in 7 through 12, and only 31 are in 1 through 6. So, we're seeing a movement toward elderly retirees or second homeowners.”
Stockbridge’s median household income is almost $132,000, nearly double the average in Berkshire County. Despite its affluence, White says the new rent and mortgage assistance program the town’s affordable housing trust is funding through Great Barrington-based Construct is a vital backstop.
“A recent report on housing studies in Western Mass showed that one 18%, nearly one in five folks in Stockbridge who are homeowners, are severely cost-burdened, and that's really what we wanted to address is making sure that those folks can stay in their homes, as well as renters," he said.
Stockbridge has committed two $25,000 grants to the undertaking.
“Now, this isn't the government paying their rent," said White. "This is based on their mortgage. This is for people who have a situation that arises- They break a leg, they have some other medical emergency, they lose a job. So, can we pay one or two months, basically, for people who are otherwise financially responsible, to help make sure that they don't get into a spiral.”
The mortgage support component in Stockbridge is a pilot program as Construct expands its efforts in the region from just renters to homeowners as well.
The nonprofit first launched its rental assistance program at the dawn of COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020, and has continued to help keep the residents of Southern Berkshire communities including Great Barrington and Lee in their homes as rents and eviction rates continue to climb.
“Because we have limited amount of funding, we like to keep it at, like, $1,000. I will make exceptions depending on like the circumstances of one's situation, especially now, because rents are higher than they were even just three, four years ago," said Courtney Kimball of Construct.
She says the assistance program is designed to be dynamic, and to make quick interventions into perilous housing situations.
“I've had a couple of times where their landlord took them to court for like, $1,000," she said. "I had one just last week where they took them to court for $1,000 and if they didn't pay that $1,000, the judgment was probably going to be eviction. And so I went ahead and contacted the landlord, and I said, we'll just take care of this $1,000 and thankfully, she lived in Great Barrington where we have CPA funding for our rental assistance, so we were able to do that. And so that kept her case was closed in court, and she's still housed and she's able to sustain herself when going forward, and will hopefully not be in the situation again.”
Working on the front lines of the Berkshire housing crisis, Construct staffers say the situation is particularly dire this winter.
“Just yesterday, I was speaking with a woman in South County who owes money still for the last tank of oil that was delivered to her house, and she's down to a quarter of a tank now, and she's fearful that she's going to run out. The furnace is running non-stop, and so she really, she needs help, and so we're going to dig into a funding source that we have to help her," said Kate Coulehan, a Construct housing navigator. “The other thing that I've been seeing and hearing a lot about are displaced, unhoused people and individuals and families, and we've only- I actually manage the waitlist, and the amount of people that are housing insecure are, it's frightening in Berkshire County, up and down Berkshire County.”
With rents soaring and emergency shelter nonexistent in the Southern Berkshires, Coulehan says the assistance for renters is a last-ditch effort for a situation that is already spiraling out of control.
“They're getting evicted, or they're leaving because they're told that they need to leave, and they don't have anywhere to move to," she said. "And so, we have a real - it's not even a housing crisis anymore, even though we do have such a low, low vacancy percentage rate. We have a homeless crisis.”
