Housing and Climate 'All-Stars' Cover Cape's Bases

Mass HCIC, a new non-profit, is sending young minds to tackle key issues on the Cape Cod peninsula.

What is the Massachusetts Housing and Climate Innovation Center?

09 August 2024 - ORLEANS, MA - Though their work didn’t involve batting, pitching or catching, another group of young people covered Cape Cod’s bases this summer: the Massachusetts Housing and Climate Innovation Center (Mass HCIC) All-Star interns, as they tackled some of the key challenges facing the peninsula. 

“At first, I was like, ‘This is too good to be true,’” All-Star Adèle Giovanniello said. “I kind of thought it was a scam, because I thought, ‘Who would pay us money to do all these awesome things on Cape Cod?’”

Where is Mass HCIC working?

Like Cape League players, the All-Stars lived with host families across the Cape for the past eight weeks. The eight-person cohort split their time between cataloging assets of 5 different towns — Barnstable, Chatham, Eastham, Orleans and Sandwich — for an “Innovation Atlas,” thinking up independent project proposals, and hearing from various speakers and stakeholders. The program wrapped up Friday.

This is the first official initiative from Mass HCIC, a non-profit which lawyer Rob Brennan and a group of Cape Codders started last summer. Brennan said the Cape, with its challenging housing market and a landscape hit hard by climate issues, “provides a unique proving ground for promising innovations.”

“We’re going out to the rest of the state, the country and the world saying, ‘Cape Cod is and wants to be your landing spot to prove up your innovations,’” he said.

What are Mass HCIC All-Stars doing?

In cataloging town assets, All-Stars are finding places that could be well-suited for new housing and climate innovations, and some All-Stars have already started conversations with interested innovators. The group also visited Greentown Labs, a climate tech incubator in Somerville, to see some possibilities for climate innovation on the Cape.

All 15 towns have expressed interest in working with Mass HCIC, Brennan said, and he anticipates cataloging the remaining 10 towns, with a larger cohort of All-Stars, next summer. Olivia DiRenzo, an All-Star cataloging Sandwich and Orleans, said learning about the “sense of place” in each town has been meaningful.

“We’ve learned that each town has a different character,” she said. “That’s been really fun to see; it’s been very exciting getting to know the people in the town and the town’s individual problems.”

Where did the All-Stars come from?

The group of All-Stars, selected from around 50 applicants, have a variety of interests and paths of study, ranging from sociology to international relations to construction management, and each All-Star pursued an individual project in addition to their cataloging work. These included proposals for communal housing to promote neighborhood resiliency, a construction work training program at Barnstable County Correctional Facility and living shorelines research.

Maggie Grandsire, a recent psychology graduate of the University of Kansas, proposed an online community forum for climate emotions and discussion as her independent project. She said combining her interests with the issues on Cape Cod provided perspective on the scale of these problems.

“There are so many different disciplines that are all equally important when it comes to solving environmental problems and housing issues, and they’re all intertwined in a really messy and sticky way,” Grandsire said.

The All-Stars saw this in weekly presentations from local and national stakeholders, too. Some speakers included members of Cape Cod Commission and the National Association of Homebuilders. Grandsire said each speaker had different priorities, which shed light on the complexities of the All-Stars’ mission.

“Nothing is ever going to get done if you just do it with one perspective,” she said.

What’s next for Mass HCIC?

Mass HCIC raised around $100,000 for the All-Star program this year, and Brennan said they hope to expand their programming in future years, including pursuing more independent projects beyond the proposal stage and attracting more innovators to set up shop on the Cape.

Giovanniello said as a new organization, she sees many possibilities for the future of Mass HCIC and hopes it can become a “household name” in the world of housing and climate innovation.

“If Mass HCIC became something people immediately thought of when they wanted to develop, I think that would be a great success,” she said.