Barnstable Cracking Down On Long Term Motel Tenants

CapeCodTimes.com – The owners of the Craigville Motel on Shootflying Hill Road have a week before the Barnstable Board of Health decides whether to revoke, modify or suspend the motel’s license because of a long list of health and safety violations.

In the meantime the Health Board has asked Housing Assistance Corp. to work with the motel’s owners to find other housing for tenants living there for more than 30 days.

While Mckean and West Barnstable Deputy Fire Chief David Paananen said that the management had made significant strides in rectifying the sanitary and fire code violations, the main concern with the motel was the rental of rooms to long-term residents, according to health and fire district officials. The Board of Health held a prior show cause hearing for the motel in January, but board members raised concerns at the time about forcing residents out during cold weather, according to minutes from the meeting.

Ah… the time honored tradition of seedy motels renting rooms to long term tenants. It’s as Cape Cod as lighthouses and sand dunes. This article may be about the Craigville Motel, but everyone, everywhere on the Cape is picturing the motel just like it in their town, and they all look exactly alike.

What could we possibly do about a situation like this? I don’t know, maybe remember that Cape Cod is a resort? Maybe approve a few entertainment licenses, stop fighting tooth and nail to stop adventure parks, maybe create incentives for local businesses that attract (GASP!) tourists?

I wonder if the Craigville Motel would need to have long term tenants in rooms that aren’t equipped for them if they operated at full capacity during the tourist season? Maybe if we encouraged business and created more local jobs the tenants wouldn’t need to live in shitty motels in the first place?

Nah, fuck it. Let the Fun Police choke every bit of entertainment to death. Let local legislators deny licenses for anything that actually attracts people. Change zoning laws to strangle businesses. Let’s all just pretend that Cape Cod isn’t a vacation destination and never factor in what vacationers would want when we establish public policy. Let’s all bury our heads in the sand.

Let’s just make sure that when we poke our heads out and see that our motels are over run with long term tenants because the tenants can’t afford anything else and the motel needs the money, let’s make sure we don’t blame the motel or the tenants and force them to stop. Kicking people out of their homes and bankrupting local businesses is not a solution to the problem. It’s bad enough that our system isn’t providing opportunities for either of them to thrive, but it’s criminal to stop them from doing what they can to survive.