PROVINCETOWN — The Select Board considered diverting more money to Harbor Hill to keep the market-rate housing project afloat, but held off on making a decision until after annual town meeting.

Assistant Town Manager David Gardner asked the board to think about putting some of the town’s inclusionary housing fees toward the Year-Round Market Rate Rental Housing Trust, which oversees the ongoing 28-unit Harbor Hill housing development.

The board’s current policy is to put the inclusionary fees toward the Affordable Housing Trust, but Gardner suggested splitting the fees evenly between the two trusts.

“Since we are continuing to struggle with budgetary concerns at Harbor Hill, I thought it was a good opportunity for the Select Board to weigh in on this issue,” Gardner told the Select Board last week.

But Select Board Member Louise Venden, who is also on the rental trust's board, was hesitant to put more money in the project before the town had more information.

“In my opinion we need to take off the rose-colored glasses,” she said.

Venden said there’s been lots of guessing on the cost and revenue possibilities for the housing project.

“We need to lower our risk going forward by making sure we have more complete information about the status of the property and the actual revenue stream we will have once the project is leased up,” she said.

The proposed policy change could provide more than $200,000 to the project, but it would not cover all of the project’s financial woes.

Gardner did not have an exact amount for the shortfall the project is facing.

“I would say that this funding source is not a funding source to solve the deficit, it’s just to provide relief to extend, perhaps, the life of the project,” Gardner said.

Harbor Hill is a community-run market-rate housing project, the first of its kind in the state. The development would help people who make too much money to qualify for affordable housing but not enough to keep up with the Cape tip’s high cost of living.

Before the town bought the property in the summer of 2018, it was the site of a timeshare that went bankrupt, leaving the town to sort through 1,300 deeds. Legal issues piled up, with the town having to go through Land Court and Bankruptcy Court on top of a legal challenge from another bidder at auction.

The project had to go out to bid for construction and management proposals twice, causing further delay on the project.

Last year, town meeting infused $492,000 into the project to pay off debt service.

Although some of the units have been filled, there is still work to be done on units and about $156,000 in change orders on the table. Meanwhile, the project is on the edge of running through it’s contingency funding, Venden said.

There was some hesitancy by the board to keep putting money toward Harbor Hill, and Board Chairman David Abramson struggled with diverting money away from the Affordable Housing Trust.

“For me, I’m just like, how much is it going to be? Is it going to be a never ending supply of money? When is enough, enough? I don’t know,” he said.

Follow Ethan Genter on Twitter: @EthanGenterCCT.