Nantucket And Martha's Vineyard To Team Up To Study Housing Bank Bill

Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard will work together to fund a study on the potential impact of a real-estate transfer fee to fund affordable housing, an initiative that housing advocates on both islands have long championed. The new research could help bolster the case for the transfer fee, which has repeatedly stalled out in the legislature.

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission has committed $35,000 in funding, and Nantucket’s Affordable Housing Trust (AHT) voted at a recent meeting to add another $10,000 to the effort. The Nantucket Planning and Economic Development Commission (NP&EDC) will vote soon on whether to contribute a further $25,000.

“This is an incredibly great opportunity for us to support the two islands to get a transfer fee for housing, the seasonal communities to get a transfer fee for housing, never mind the whole state,” Select Board, AHT, and NP&EDC member Brooke Mohr said. “We are the smallest subset that has the most experience and potentially the most narrative impact on this argument up in Boston. This is really essential in my mind.”

Mohr pointed out that Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard are the only communities in Massachusetts with Land Banks, which are funded by a similar transfer fee.

The study, to be conducted by the UMass Donahue Institute, will assess how the transfer fee may impact housing on both islands.

“It seems like a no-brainer to me. Collaboration can only help us achieve our objectives, our goals, in a quicker fashion,” AHT member Forest Bell said. “I don't even see any potential downsides or drawbacks.”

At the same meeting, the AHT also voted to take over the Lease to Locals housing program currently operated by Housing Nantucket starting in 2026. Through Lease to Locals, local housing organizations work with Placemate, Inc., an online platform focused on solving the housing crisis in vacation towns, to pay property owners on Nantucket to rent their homes to year-round tenants.

“We feel that we're in a place now where we have the tools, we have the staff, we'd be well equipped, and we think that Housing Nantucket has done a really great job of setting up the program and keeping it afloat while we were kind of getting our ducks in a row,” Nantucket Housing Director Kristie Ferrentella said.

The AHT provided $450,000 for an expanded pilot of the program last year, supplemented by an additional $100,000 from local non-profit Remain. Now, Ferrentella thinks Lease to Locals is ready for its full launch.

“I wouldn't continue to call it a pilot program,” she said. “This would be the launch.”

Ferrentella said that bringing the program under the AHT will allow the Town to consolidate its housing efforts as it builds on the success Lease to Locals has already seen.

The payments offered by Lease to Locals decline each year a home participates in the program. Still, retention rates remain high: according to a presentation from Placemate, 18 of the 22 homes involved in the original pilot renewed for the expanded pilot, and an additional 13 homes were added to the program.

“What this does is it sets the stage for people to get comfortable with having year-round tenants, to [see] the value of participating in a year-round rental for the community,” Mohr said. “It's almost like a launching pad for people.”

The program was pioneered on Nantucket by the political action group ACK•Now, in part as an effort to convert short-term rentals on Nantucket to year-round rentals.

“We're talking about potentially a couple dozen families, a couple dozen islanders who are able to find something to live in year-round, and the investment on our end is relatively small, pennies on the dollar compared to what we're trying to do with year-round deed restriction properties or purchasing properties,” AHT member Meg Browers said. “I think as we work toward getting to a place where the Affordable Housing Trust and the Housing Department has a full arsenal of opportunities to enable people to live here affordably year-round this is a really amazing stop-gap program that's getting families and people in year-round housing.”