Hoping To End Vacation Rental Rancor

To the editor: Nantucket…it is long past time to settle the debate over vacation rentals.

The short-term rental (STR) mess began when a well-funded political action committee blamed myriad problems on Nantucket’s 150-year history of renting private homes to vacationers. Suddenly all sorts of nuisance problems (noise, lighting, parking, traffic) were blamed on short-term rentals. The pandemic caused concerns that STR growth would continue with corporations creating mini-hotels everywhere.

People newer to the island may not understand Nantucket’s unique brand of vacation rentals and the symbiotic relationship between our economy’s dependence on tourism and the huge proportion of tourists staying in private homes. We do not have resort hotel monstrosities spoiling our magnificent shorelines and vistas. I sure hope we keep it that way.

Everyone I know agrees registration and regulations of private home vacation rentals make sense, and corporations converting homes to full-time rentals is not our tradition.

Voters have addressed these issues! Why do I keep hearing that “we have to keep out corporations?” In the past four years, we’ve passed four general bylaws (Section 123) to register, regulate, address troublesome rentals, and ban corporate and REIT investor STR ownership. So why do we have more articles restricting STR at Town Meeting again? Why don’t we let the BOH implement their new system? The community doesn’t need more rules, we need to implement what we have.

Yet, some remain unsatisfied, stoking fears of an STR explosion. Let logic reassure you. Post-COVID housing prices and mortgage rates, make it financially non-viable for an “investor” to cover the mortgage, insurance, and maintenance on a $2.5 - $3 million home with summer rental revenue. Fewer than 900 of the 2,000 potential STRs have registered with the BOH (hardly an “explosion.”) What should worry us is Nantucket’s STR tax revenue was down -27 percent for high season 2024. Vacation rentals have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Regardless, once again ATM includes Articles #67, #68, and #69 seeking to place arbitrary, unconstitutional occupancy requirements or worse yet CAPS on homeowners dependent on vacation rentals to afford their homes. Two of these Articles (#67 & #68) treat ordinary citizens living side by side differently. Article #69 seeks to limit the number of homeowners doing vacation rentals to 1,350 when we know from the data that some 2,000-plus homeowners are currently or have in the past rented their homes. All of these articles will significantly reduce available lodging for summer vacationers, and consequently, tourism dollars spent. These articles were not recommended by Planning Board or Finance Committee and for good reason…they risk serious damage to Nantucket’s economy and jobs. This risk is high! And they should be voted “No."

A thought about zoning. When implementing zoning in 1972 officials recognized, but did not believe it necessary to include traditional Nantucket vacation rentals. They didn’t include long-term rentals either. But the town has recently been reminded this recognition went missing from updated 1991 zoning. And now, neighbor versus neighbor lawsuits, funded by activists, distress our community. More are on the horizon. We can fix this at the Annual Town Meeting. Article #66 creates a zoning category of Nantucket Vacation Rental (“NVR”) ending the lawsuits. And it won’t “open the floodgates.” STRs are already controlled through the already passed, new, and easily modified (simple majority) general bylaws. A “Yes” vote on Article 66 will end four-plus years of rancor.

Let’s get it done at Town Meeting, so the town can move on to the many more important issues we face.

Ron Kokot
Tom Nevers