Orcas and Nantucket Islands are each roughly the same size and the same distance off their respective coasts. We share the same concerns about the high cost of living, lack of affordable housing, tourist management, ferry problems and environmental degradation. We are living on opposite ends of the country but many of the issues and opportunities are the same. Recently theOrcasonian and the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror decided to share articles of mutual interest with our readers.
||| FROM NANTUCKET INQUIRER & MIRROR |||
The Select Board on Wednesday unanimously approved a $450,000 grant for ACK•Now’s Lease to Locals program for the upcoming year.
Lease to Locals offers a cash stipend to homeowners willing to create new year-round housing. In its pilot year it was run by ACK•Now, and now in this second year it will be relaunched as a public-private partnership between the town’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund and nonprofit Housing Nantucket.
“I just want to say to my fellow board members that a lot of due diligence was done on this program and I think (housing director) Kristie Ferrantella and the town got it to a really good spot,” Select Board member Tom Dixon said.
ReMain Nantucket has also awarded the Lease to Locals program $100,000 to supplement the town’s funding directly toward homeowner incentives.
ACK•Now’s former executive director Julia Lindner said the pilot year was about proving the program was successful, so that the town, its Affordable Housing Trust or taxpayer money could facilitate year two.
Partnering with the town and Housing Nantucket was always the plan, she said.
The $450,000 grant the Select Board approved will not only go toward finding new rentals, but also keeping the pilot program tenants in their housing with an additional 50 percent subsidy in year two.
The Lease to Locals program is co-run by Placemate, which has similar rental-incentive programs in seven other luxury vacation communities including Vail, Colo., Sun Valley, Idaho and Lake Tahoe, Calif.
In the last year, during the Lease to Locals pilot program, 22 new housing opportunities for 54 tenants were created. Some were former short-term rentals, others were new rentals. The only qualifier was that the property could not have been a year-round rental in the last 12 months.
The 54 tenants worked for 23 different local employers, according to data provided by Lease to Locals. They included nine employees from Nantucket Cottage Hospital and three employees from the school system.
ACK•Now is helping Housing Nantucket raise the remaining $250,000 needed to operate and grow the program. This includes renewing the agreement with Placemate and growing the program.
Once the funds are raised, Housing Nantucket will take over the program.
