The surprising place you won't find facts about Community Housing in Cape Elizabeth.

You have to wonder why the chairman of the Cape Elizabeth Housing Diversity Study Committee doesn’t want to know whether Community Housing is feasible.

“Community Housing” is a proposal to create affordable housing on 10 acres of public land called Gull Crest. Plan B is another name for Community Housing. The Housing Diversity Study Committee is charged with putting together a list of housing ideas it recommends for the town council and surveying levels of citizen support.

Whether Community Housing should be included in the HDSC survey and list of recommendations is one good reason to study its feasibility. Another reason is the chair of the HDSC is the author and publisher of a website that strongly suggests Community Housing is not feasible and that “the sponsor” is sinister.

Here is a taste of the fictional Q & A on his website:

Q: Is Plan B a legitimate proposal to create affordable housing in Cape Elizabeth?

A: This is a question everyone will have to answer for themselves; based on the very limited to non-existent information provided to date, it appears this proposal is not actually intended to create affordable housing, but simply is a way to obfuscate significant efforts to hinder real affordable housing solutions.

Q. I feel misled about the premise of the "Plan B" petition and signed it. I'd like to "un-sign". What can I do?

A: You can contact the sponsor directly and ask to be removed. If that is unsuccessful, you can also contact Debra Lane, Town Clerk, and ask to have your signature invalidated.

Do you recognize that flavor?

I do. It’s sour grapes.

The website was created when the chair was just a banker burning long hours whooing the developers of Dunham Court, the controversial housing project rejected by voters thanks to a petition I drafted. Now he’s chair of the HDSC and keeps the website live.

A website purporting to be objective and trustworthy about a housing idea published by the chair of the town’s housing committee rife with falsehoods and innuendo is his right as an American.

But what about the housing crisis? That was the reason the banker gave for his passion in support of Dunham Court, a publicly financed cash cow for bankers and investors.

Petty politics and sour grapes I can swallow. His free speech is cheap but legal. The problem is his votes. On March 6th the chair voted against a feasibility study of Community Housing. After giving me the run around, on May 15th he abstained from a vote on the same subject. Going forward nobody knows what to expect.

The website that the chair of the HDSC created says, “the purpose of this site is to present clear facts and provide conclusions based on those facts in a transparent way” and does the opposite. The proposed location of Community Housing is not wetlands or athletic fields, the project can be financed, and is walkable to schools. The “site maps” on the website are complete fiction. I challenge him to name one person who was “misled.”

Over and over there is reference to “the sponsor” but nowhere my name published or my record of public service noted. The HDSC chair says my motive is to “obfuscate” and hinder “real” affordable housing.

I obfuscate?

Obfuscation is peddling a website supposedly about “facts” and then voting against having real experts study the facts.

Obfuscation is the brawl of the 3+ hour HDSC meeting on April 3rd when June 5th was offered and accepted to be the day Community Housing would be on the HDSC agenda until this week’s meeting when he said it was not.

Really.

At 9:30 pm on April 3rd after my name and Plan B for Community Housing was dragged through the mud repeatedly, I literally ran to town hall to address the misconceptions being broadcast and eventually was invited to present Community Housing to the HDSC at the June 5th meeting (3:14:58).

In preparation of putting “meat on the bones” of the Community Housing proposal as requested by the HDSC, I interviewed the state’s leading expert on the feasibility and financing of Community Housing and guess what? The real expert supports the proposal fully and says financing is available on very favorable terms, contrary to the chair’s website and bombast.

Good news, right?

I thought so until this week’s HDSC meeting on 5/15/23 - that wasn’t recorded - when neither I nor Community Housing appeared on the upcoming June 5th agenda.

Then, later at the same 5/15 meeting, the committee took up another vote to put Community Housing on the June 26th agenda and the chair abstained from voting without saying why. The vote passed 4-2-1.

How’s that for transparency?

Community Housing deserves a fair and impartial review so citizens and town councilors can make informed decisions.

Either the chair of the Cape Elizabeth Housing Diversity Study Committee is conflicted about Community Housing and should not vote on it, or he is not. Enough cloak and dagger. Which is it?