Urges Select Board To Preserve Our Island Home

To the editor: Voters made a clear and definitive choice at the Special Town Meeting last month, affirming a long-standing Nantucket tradition: the right to use our homes as short-term rentals.

But at the Annual Town Meeting in May, we witnessed the opposite — an unclear decision on another tradition just as central to Nantucket’s identity and wellbeing: Our Island Home. The article passed at the ballot but fell just 33 votes short of the required two-thirds majority. That is not a mandate to abandon Our Island Home. It is a razor-thin margin on an issue that touches every one of us, as someone said so powerfully that day: we are each “just one fall away” from needing skilled nursing care.

A skilled nursing facility on Nantucket is not optional. It is essential.

Given such a close vote, it is deeply concerning that the Select Board may unilaterally determine the fate of Our Island Home. Doing so would disregard the nearly two-thirds of voters who supported maintaining this critical part of our healthcare system. A decision of this magnitude—one that affects our elders, our families, and ultimately our own futures—deserves to be made not by five individuals, but by the voters of Nantucket.

Please email the Select Board and let them know that you care about preserving Our Island Home and keeping skilled nursing for residential and rehabilitation care on the island. With potential support from the Land Bank and private partners, we can substantially reduce the cost to taxpayers while upholding our responsibility to those who built this community.

Long before short-term rentals existed - back in 1822 - Nantucket residents took responsibility for caring for the “infirm,” those no longer strong in body or mind, especially in age or illness. That commitment is woven into our history. These are not the people we should be pushing off the island.

Let’s make sure Nantucket continues to care for its own.

Alison K. Forsgren