After reading your front-page July 12 article “Route 6A housing project gets support,” I found myself asking this question: Why is there such strong opposition to the pending affordable housing proposal in Dennis Village? After all, who doesn’t want affordable housing to be available to moderate-income families in our community?

The truth about Chapter 40B should concern us all, including those of us who believe strongly that ensuring access to affordable housing is an important goal on Cape Cod, but who also treasure the unique character of our community.

Little-known is that Chapter 40B developers are able to circumvent a community’s regulations and guidelines for development in the name of “affordable housing.” This is true despite the fact that in the 28-unit Chapter 40B development proposed for Dennis, 21 units will be “unaffordable,” expected to be offered at prices in excess of half a million dollars. Equally troubling, of the limited number of “affordable” units being built, only a percentage will be designated for town residents in need of affordable homes. The rest will be made available to families throughout the state based on a lottery system.

Further, a 40B builder is allowed to ignore local zoning ordinances and historic commission review – regulations and guidelines that a community spends decades writing and refining and that all other builders must abide by. No required setbacks, no density guidelines, no Old King’s Highway Historic Commission oversight, and no Cape Cod Commission review or input – yielding results in this Dennis project that feel more appropriate to Cape May, New Jersey, than to Cape Cod.

Perhaps most disturbing: If a community raises too many concerns or requests too many adjustments in a 40B proposal such that the adjustments eat into the builder’s profit margin, the builder can threaten to bypass the town and go directly to the state for approval, leaving local officials shut out of a process they have little input into anyway.

The Chapter 40B process is broken. Builders should not be allowed to control virtually all decisions about the construction of a housing development in our community, even if that development includes a small number of affordable units sprinkled into a subdivision of expensive houses. The goals of the Comprehensive Permit Act, which establishes the Chapter 40B process, should be supported. But the time has come for the law to be revised and updated to give local jurisdictions much more control over the builder and to require towns in the commonwealth to allow for waivers of local ordinances for the building of affordable homes – homes that are of high quality and fit into the character of the community.

There is no reason affordability and character cannot go hand in hand.

Linda DeRuvo-Keegan lives in East Dennis.