Town Launches Program To Pay Landlords Who Are Already Renting Homes On A Year-Round Basis

The town of Nantucket’s new year-round rental preservation program, known as Rooted Renters, has officially launched. It will pay homeowners who have been renting a housing unit year-round for at least a year up to $18,000 to continue doing so.

“The housing department is very excited to finally have this launched,” Nantucket’s deputy housing director Dylan Metsch Ampel told the Current. “We're really trying to take a holistic approach.”

Rooted Renters, which has been in the works since last winter, is unique in that it will pay homeowners who are already renting their homes to year-round tenants. Many other year-round housing initiatives on Nantucket focus on creating new affordable units and converting short-term units into year-round ones, but Rooted Renters addresses a gap the housing department has long recognized.

“We recognize that to address the challenges of Nantucket's housing environment, you have to take a multi-headed approach,” Metsch Ampel said. “This is a gap in the services that we provide.”

Funded by the Affordable Housing Trust and administered by Placemate, a company focused on local housing in vacation towns, Rooted Renters will pay $2,700 at sign-up, $2,700 after one year, $5,400 after two years, and $7,200 at the end of the third year. In total, the town has allocated $540,000 to the program, which is expected to enroll around 30 year-round housing units in the program. Applications, available here, are open now and will remain open until October 2nd. Placemate will prioritize funding to the most affordable rentals.

To qualify for the program, landlords must rent to a “qualifying household.” A qualifying household must be made up of at least half year-round residents and workers who are not related to the landlord. While there is no cap on rent for units covered by the program, landlords cannot increase rent during the first year and cannot raise rent more than 3 percent in the following years.

“Rooted Renters is about protecting the year-round rental housing we already have and recognizing the property owners who make that housing available to our community,” housing director Kristie Ferrantella said. “By helping landlords keep rents affordable and providing greater stability for existing tenants, this program is another important tool in our broader effort to ensure that the people who work in and contribute to Nantucket can continue to call the island home.”

Every year on Nantucket, some year-round housing units are converted to short-term rentals, reducing the housing supply available to island residents as homeowners pursue what they see as a more lucrative option. Rooted Renters aims to level the playing field and convince some of these homeowners to keep their homes in the year-round housing pool.

“We want people to understand homeowners are facing rising costs too,” Metsch Ampel said. “People who have been able to keep rents low are facing increasing challenges and are feeling the pressure to either raise rents or convert to short-term rentals, so this helps to bridge that gap.”

Rooted Renters is, in many ways, a counterpart to Lease to Locals, another collaboration between the Affordable Housing Trust and Placemate that pays people to start renting long-term who are not doing so already. Interest in Lease to Locals may be starting to flag in its third year, but Metsch Ampel is optimistic about the demand for Rooted Renters, which will start as a pilot program this year.

“All things in housing are moving targets, and it’s dynamic, and it’s work that we have to continue doing. This was really launched as a pilot program to get a sense of the market and what the demand is,” he said. “We know that there’s demand there; the question is, how significant is that demand?”