Four Families Win Nantucket Affordable Housing Lottery

Dreams came true for four families on Nantucket Monday morning when they were notified that they had won the lottery for Habitat for Humanity’s latest affordable homes on Waitt Drive.

Habitat for Humanity’s “Waitt Drive Village” will include four single-family homes and a central two-unit duplex on three lots that were deeded to the non-profit by the town earlier this year.

Each family is required to volunteer 350 hours of “sweat equity” toward the completion of their home. The units are expected to be completed between December 2024 and February 2025.

The four winning families were among 40 applicants who entered Habitat for Humanity’s lottery, which was held on August 1, and was restricted to individuals and families making 80 percent or less of Nantucket's area median income. On Monday morning, they gathered at the Housing Nantucket office on Old South Road where Habitat for Humanity board member Joe Grause delivered the good news.

The lottery winners are:

• Milana Capan: 5A Waitt Drive, three-bedroom home
• David Cunningham and Natasha Levens: 5B Waitt Drive, two-bedroom home
• Yadira Fernandez: 9A Waitt Drive, three-bedroom home
• Andre and Camila Pereira: 9B Waitt Drive, two-bedroom home

Each lottery winner must come up with closing costs, but the mortgages will be secured and held by Habitat for Humanity. Each mortgage is financed with a 0 percent interest rate, allowing the new homeowners to pay a low monthly mortgage payment back to the non-profit for their home ($982 per month for the two-bedroom homes, and $1,113 for the three-bedroom homes).

Habitat’s Waitt Drive project is was made possible by a $4 million grant from the town which the Select Board voted to approve in February. The grant was the largest ever received by Habitat for Humanity's Nantucket chapter. The funding comes from previous Town Meeting spending authorizations for affordable housing initiatives approved by voters in 2019 (articles 28 and 32) and 2023 (article 10). Waitt Drive is the road that was recently constructed behind the Fairgrounds Road public safety facility and runs parallel to Amelia Drive.

The two duplex units will be offered to Nantucket families in a similar process in early 2025. All six homes will be included on Nantucket’s Subsidized Housing Inventory (SHI) list, helping the town stay in “safe harbor” from 40B developments.

Following their selection in the Lottery the applicants went through a final review by Habitat’s Family Selection Committee which included a site visit. Each of the selected families was then reviewed and certified by the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

The lottery winners were announced as Nantucket’s median single-family home sale price has surged to $3.55 million in 2024, an all-time high and a 29 percent increase over last year. The Waitt Drive development is one of numerous affordable housing projects the town is either funding or developing itself.