The Workforce Isn’t Just Serving Nantucket — It Is Nantucket.

To the editor: In response to Linda and Dennis Childs’ recent open letter to Nantucket’s working community: caretakers, hospitality staff, retail clerks, and seasonal service workers — those whose hands and hearts keep this island humming— I feel compelled to offer a broader perspective.

The Childs, longtime seasonal homeowners, frame their opposition to Articles 67, 68, and 69 as concern for your livelihood. They suggest that restricting short-term rentals might reduce demand for your services — and by extension, your income. It’s a familiar argument: that without an endless stream of transient visitors, the island’s workforce would suffer.

But here’s another truth: without year-round housing, many of you are already suffering.

The workforce isn’t just serving Nantucket — it is Nantucket. You coach our kids’ teams, plow our roads, check out our groceries, and reopen shuttered storefronts in spring. And many of you are being squeezed off-island, priced out by the very rental model being defended here.

When a home is rented 140 days a year and occupied by its owners for a mere 30, it is no longer a home—it’s a business. And that business, as currently structured, competes directly with working families for the most limited resource on Nantucket: housing.

Articles 68 and 69 don’t ban rentals. They aim to protect the fragile balance between visitation and habitation, between profit and preservation. They give us a chance to study impacts and restore community—not just commerce.

To the workers of Nantucket: your vote matters. Register by April 23rd. Show up on May 3rd. And vote not just for jobs—but for homes, neighborhoods, and a future on this island that you can still call your own.

Respectfully,

Charles Dundee