As private jets and superyachts arrive on Nantucket for the summer season, full-time residents and government officials are warning that the Massachusetts island must shake up the housing market so that the local work force can afford to live there.
Around 65 percent of the island’s nearly 12,000 housing units are occupied by seasonal residents. The median home price is around $2.5 million, according to data from the local housing agency and an island real estate brokerage.
That leaves little housing for workers on an island where a decades-long divide of the haves and have-nots has reached a tipping point, town leaders say.
The island town of charming cobblestone streets, lined with shops selling handmade $400 caftans and high-end restaurants offering $50 lobster rolls, is experiencing the same imbalance that has racked other vacation destinations. In Spain, seasonal workers live in tent cities on Ibiza. Day laborers in the Hamptons have formed encampments. In Frisco, Colo., ski instructors, E.R. nurses and others can live in their cars and vans in a parking lot, if they can show proof that they are working in the area.
“Nantucket has 10 years or less before the entire island is owned by island conservation entities or seasonal homeowners,” said Brian Sullivan, 50, who is a principal broker at Fisher Real Estate and has lived on Nantucket for 28 years. Even families living on the island, earning well into six-figures, are struggling to find affordable options.
Among Nantucket’s full-time work force are teachers, police officers, municipal workers, health care workers, firefighters and landscapers, many of whom commute by ferry, live in overcrowded or substandard conditions or are homeless.
Efforts to create housing that is attainable for households with lower incomes have included a program called Lease to Locals, which gives a stipend to property owners willing to turn their short-term rentals into year-round residences. But the initiatives have been slow-starting or are not large enough to meet the demand. And then, there’s opposition.
“The most frustrating phrase that I hear a lot is, ‘I’m not opposed to affordable housing, but,’” said Brooke Mohr, a member of Nantucket’s Select Board. “Generally, the but is not here near me. Not there. Not more in this location.”
On Nantucket, the problem is not evident, hidden behind ocean views and cottages. “Having your friends know that you are struggling can add a layer of stress on top of an already-challenging personal situation,” said Ms. Mohr, 64.
One solution could be the curbing of short-term rentals, which have been the subject of lengthy legal battles and town votes. But homeowners have pushed back, saying short-term rentals of stays 31 days or less are a way to afford the mortgage and benefit the island’s economy.
At a town meeting in May, Penny Dey, a real estate broker who has lived year-round on the island for 49 years, said, “It is a fundamental property ownership right to rent your home responsibly, and it’s reckless not to safeguard that right for future generations.”
Ms. Dey, who serves as the chair of the Nantucket Housing Authority and as vice-chair of the Town’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, said the local economy depends on tourism and vacationers depend on the seasonal housing because the island lacks large-scale hotels.
“Short-term rentals have been blamed for everything on Nantucket except erosion,” Ms. Dey, 66, said.
Life Is Not a Beach
For the local government, addressing the disparity is critical.
Marjani Williams, 47, works full time for the local Public Works Department, collecting trash, mowing town lawns and maintaining roadside cleanup. She moved to Nantucket from Mississippi in 2023 for what she called “a better living.” In Mississippi, the minimum wage is $7.25; on Nantucket, she’s making around $67,000 annually. She lived in a basement apartment for a year, without a lease, and had to leave in the summer of 2024.
“I had nowhere to go,” Ms. Williams said. “So I got all of my stuff, put it in my vehicle, and went to the beach.”
Then she heard a knock on her car window. The police told her that sleeping overnight on a Nantucket beach was prohibited. So she left that beach and went to another one, where she ran into a co-worker who, unbeknown to her, was also homeless.
Her co-worker was sleeping on a couch in the exercise room at the Public Works Department. Ms. Williams followed suit and slept on a love seat in the department’s storage unit, a few hundred feet from the town’s dump.
“I love my job,” Ms. Williams said. “Whether it is picking up a dead deer, patching potholes or cutting the grass. I have no family here. My co-workers are all just like my big brothers. They teach me and push me to get my different licenses, and I love them for that, but it’s very stressful.”
Ms. Williams and her co-worker did what locals call the “Nantucket shuffle,” moving monthly from one temporary solution to another. This year she found a year-round apartment rental after moving three times.
Andrew Patnode, 36, who heads the Public Works Department, was shocked to learn that Ms. Williams and one other employee were staying in the building and had been homeless. He is desperate to retain his employees. The high turnover rate is “costly and exhausting,” he said.
“A lot of turnover doesn’t exactly lead to day-to-day success.”
‘Thank God, the Ferries Were Running’
Last fall, Ed Augustus, the state’s secretary of Housing and Livable Communities, visited Nantucket to better understand its housing crisis. At the Chamber of Commerce’s conference room, he sat at a large table packed with local officials, leaders and affordable housing advocates.
“Massachusetts as a whole, the country as a whole, is facing a housing crisis. There is no question about it,” Mr. Augustus said at the meeting. “But the way it manifests itself is unique on the island.”
Nantucket has anywhere from 14,255 to 20,300 full-time residents, depending on the source, the U.S. census or a local study. In the summer, that number swells to anywhere from 65,000 to 100,000, depending on which official you ask. Whatever the number, the influx taxes the local work force.
Jody Kasper, the police chief, sat at the head of the conference room table. Ms. Kasper, 50, formerly the police chief in Northampton, Mass., moved to Nantucket in 2023. She earns over $200,000 a year and resides in a rental unit with her wife, who works for the Nantucket public school system. It’s Ms. Kasper’s third rental home on the island in less than two years because she took what she could find — short-term rentals.
“The newest 20 police officers, myself included, don’t own a home here on the island, and the probability of them ever acquiring a home is almost zero,” Ms. Kasper said.
Like Mr. Patnode, Ms. Kasper described a frustrating churn of employees, which she attributed to the housing shortage.
“We invest a lot of time and energy, and of course, city money, into training new people, and then we get them here and they get a couple of years under their belt,” she said. “The hardest losses are when we are losing officers to other municipal departments.”
Michael Cranson, the fire chief, said around 10 percent of his department lives off island because they can’t afford housing. They commute by ferry from more affordable communities, like those in Cape Cod. “We try to adjust the firefighter’s schedule so that it will be more conducive to commuting,” Mr. Cranson, 53, said.
Despite creative and flexible scheduling, the department, which currently staffs 41 firefighters, can still fall short, the chief said.
In July 2022, the storied Veranda House hotel, an island landmark, was engulfed by flames.
“On the mainland, we would have had close to eight communities to help us fight that fire. We just don’t have that luxury here,” said Mr. Cranson, who spent 27 years working at a fire station in Rhode Island before moving to Nantucket in 2022.
“We ended up calling Hyannis and a couple of other towns on the Cape, and they came over, but it took them two hours to get here. Thank God, the ferries were running that day.”
In July, Mr. Cranson was permitted to hire two additional firefighters. The firehouse works in four shifts, with two of nine firefighters and two of 10. “We are certainly in a better place than we were three years ago,” Mr. Cranson said. “But if we have some type of large-scale event, we are still going to need to request help from off island.”
‘We Are Not Moving’
Under a state law that went into effect in 1969, at least 10 percent of Nantucket’s year-round housing stock must be affordable to people with limited incomes or those with 80 percent or less of the area median income — no more than $119,750 for a family of four living in Nantucket, for example. So far, 405 units that meet the requirements have been built. An additional 213 need to be developed.
Since 2019, Nantucket’s residents have voted to appropriate $90 million toward affordable housing.
But other efforts, such as a transfer tax on luxury homes to generate revenue to build affordable housing and a project for 156 condominiums with 39 designated for households with lower incomes, have been blocked. Some residents have voiced concerns about traffic, fire safety and environmental harm.
Many of the island’s year-round homeowners arrived in the 1980s and ’90s, Mr. Sullivan said at the fall meeting. “They bought homes for $285,000. They are entering retirement now and selling their homes for $2.8 million,” he said.
According to Anne Kuszpa, executive director of Housing Nantucket, an island-based nonprofit that develops and manages rental and homeownership opportunities for year-round residents, between 1,200 and 1,500 year-round residents are seeking stable housing.
And those full-time residents are more diverse: Over the last two decades, the island has attracted Latino people and immigrants from several countries. Over 43 percent of Nantucket’s public school student body is Hispanic. Eleven languages and 17 countries are represented in the four island schools.
Eillen Taveras, 46, moved to Nantucket in 2006 to work as a Spanish translator in the public school system and an interpreter for the hospital. Ms. Taveras also co-owns a cleaning business, is a justice of the peace, and has her real estate license. “Living here on a single salary would be very difficult,” she said, before adding that leaving is not an option.
Dominican-born and now a U.S. citizen, she got married on the island; she had two children who are native islanders; and she got divorced on the island. “My two kids, all they know is Nantucket,” said Ms. Taveras, who currently works as a human resource specialist for the public schools. “When I told them that we might have to move, they were like ‘No way. We are not moving. We are staying in our home.’ So, it’s just hard.”
Her family stayed afloat through the Nantucket Education Trust, a nonprofit that provides rental housing to a select crop of teachers. Currently, the Trust has 12 units that house 16 public school staff members. “Unfortunately, 12 units do not even make a dent in our housing need, with the school district employing a total of approximately 360 full-time employees,” said Elizabeth Hallett, the superintendent.
Joanna De La Paz, an administrative assistant of curriculum in the school system, rented a bedroom in a house with four other boarders, without assistance. They shared a kitchen and a bathroom.
“Most people renting out rooms won’t let you use the kitchen,” said Ms. De La Paz, 27. “You have to buy food every day. I got lucky.”
Even grocery shopping, however, is out of reach for many residents. About 21 percent of the island’s year-round population is food insecure, and 47 percent of public school students qualify for free or reduced lunch, according to data from the school system and a report funded through the state agriculture department.
Born in Puerto Rico, Ms. De La Paz moved to Nantucket from the Dominican Republic about three years ago, attracted by the nearly $65,000 annual salary she was offered. Eventually, her husband, a carpenter from the Dominican Republic, moved in with her.
She said many immigrants in the area are attracted to salaries that are higher than in other parts of the country. “Most of the immigrants here are working in landscaping or carpentry, and sometimes they are being paid $25 an hour, which is a lot for them,” she said.
But that wage cannot support a comfortable life on the island.
In the spring, Ms. De La Paz moved into a one-bedroom apartment in the recently constructed Wiggles Way rental development for income-qualified households
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In 2021, Ms. Taveras bought a four-bedroom home for $880,515 through Nantucket’s Covenant Program, which creates a stable housing option for year-round islanders earning less than 150 percent of the A.M.I.
“The housing authorities on Nantucket have been doing a great job and good things are happening,” said Ms. Taveras, “but more people keep coming and the island is so small and there is limited space to build more.”
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