Lease To Locals Participation Falters In Third Year

The Affordable Housing Trust allocated $550,000 for the third year of its Lease to Locals program, which pays property owners on Nantucket to rent their homes to year-round tenants, last December. Six months later, Lease to Locals still hasn’t spent $448,000 of that money.

“We’re behind in where we expected to be,” said Isaac Landman, an associate market director for Placemate, the company that operates the program for the Affordable Housing Trust. “We're aware of that and actively discussing how to address it.”

The first two years of Lease to Locals were broadly characterized by town leaders as a success. The program has housed well over 100 people at a total of 48 properties, and saw a high renewal rate in its second year.

But so far this year, only 11 properties have renewed, and only two new properties have been added to the program. Placemate was expecting to add 22 new properties this year, and the decline in community interest has left the future of the program in doubt.

“We've been seeing a drop-off in the number of participating properties,” Landman said. “Depending on whether or not we see an uptick in interest versus if it's looking like maybe we've reached market saturation, then what happens to Lease to Locals is an active conversation.”

Lease to Locals was first operated on island by the political action group ACK Now, part of a broader advocacy campaign in favor of year-round housing and against short term rentals. The program was successful enough that when ACK Now stepped back, it was taken over by local housing non-profit Housing Nantucket. At the time, ACK Now said that Lease to Locals had converted 21 short term rentals into year-round homes. The Affordable Housing Trust then took the program from Housing Nantucket, first with funding from the charity Remain and later on its own.

Landman said that Placemate has made a strong advertising push this summer, and it’s still possible that new entrants into the program could surge in the second half of the year. If not, the Trust won’t necessarily be out any money: the funding is distributed on an as-needed basis, and the money that hasn’t been used remains with the Trust.

Landman said that the reasons certain property owners don’t renew their participation in the program are varied.

“For folks that decide not to, that's kind of a personal decision,” he said. “I want my home back, I want to sell my property, I want to use it for a portion of the year, I want to raise the rent. A lot of people make that decision for different reasons."