TRURO
Truro /ˈtrɜːroʊ/ is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, comprising two villages: Truro and North Truro. Located slightly more than 100 miles (160 km) by road from Boston, it is a summer vacation community just south of the northern tip of Cape Cod, in an area known as the "Outer Cape".[1] English colonists named it after Truro in Cornwall, United Kingdom.
The historic Wampanoag Native American people called the area Pamet or Payomet. Their language was part of the large Algonquian family. This name was adopted for the Pamet River and the harbor area around the town center known as the Pamet Roads.[2] The population of Truro was 2,003 at the 2010 census.
Over half of the land area of the town is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore, established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, and administered by the U.S. National Park Service.
Truro 2021 Weekly Reports
Community Housing Needs Assessment
Prepared for: The Truro Housing Authority - By: John Ryan from Development Cycles
Truro is a Small, Rural Community. It is the consultant’s view that the real risk to Truro’s retaining its small town identity is a slow decline of the year- round population below the level that can sustain critical services such as municipal services, skilled trades, and health and home care workers.
The Local Economy is Seasonal with Relatively Few Year-round Jobs. A comprehensive plan to balance Truro’s year-round and seasonal population or balance its work-age and retired population must address job development as well as year-round housing availability. The challenge comes as Truro will increasingly need year round services for elders and others, but will struggle to retain its work-age population on the modest incomes those services provide due in large part to the high cost of housing
Truro’s Residents are not as Wealthy as their Housing Costs Suggest. The town’s distribution of very-low, low, and moderate-income residents differs little from that of the Barnstable County or Massachusetts generally. Largely, that can be explained by an average wage paid for jobs locally, which is just 61% of the statewide average as well as to fixed income seniors who become “house poor.”
High-Cost Seasonal Ownership Dominates the Housing Stock. By 2030, 75% of Truro’s housing stock will be owned by non-residents if current trends continue. The reason for this is simple: its appeal as a vacation destination derives in large part from its being less than a half-day’s drive from a half- million high net worth households who seek second home ownership or investment opportunity with high rental value potential and can afford to outbid the locals for housing at any price when it becomes available on the open market.
There is Virtually No Multi-family Rental Housing. Only 21 of Truro’s 203 renting households lived in buildings with as many as three attached units. The absence of infrastructure and zoning to allow for more multi-family developments, in addition to the relatively high cost of single family housing impacts Truro’s capacity to house its lower and even middle-income residents.
The Town’s Population is Getting Older—Fast! Based on population projections done by the State Data Center, by 2030 65% of all year-round households in Truro will be headed by someone 65 and over. And half of those senior households will be 75 and over! This raises significant questions of where Truro residents will go when their housing is no long accessible to their physical needs. Perhaps as significantly, it raises the issue of where the workers who will be needed to provide services to this aging cohort will live.
The Housing Challenges for Renters are High. While the problem of rent burden is endemic to Barnstable County, Truro’s level of Extreme Rent Burden with 90 of 200 renters paying at least 50% of their income for rent, is extremely uncommon.
To learn more about this study and its findings as it relates tRURO's need for housing. Please click on the link below.
