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Teachers, police officers, firefighters and other workers live in overcrowded and substandard housing, or even in their cars on the beach.

||| FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES |||

The median home price in Nantucket is currently around $2.5 million, which is out of reach for many of the people who work on the island.

As private jets and superyachts arrive on Nantucket for the summer season, full-time residents and government officials are warning that the Massachusetts island must shake up the housing market so that the local work force can afford to live there.Around 65 percent of the island’s nearly 12,000 housing units are occupied by seasonal residents. The median home price is around $2.5 million, according to data from the local housing agency and an island real estate brokerage.That leaves little housing for workers on an island where a decades-long divide of the haves and have-nots has reached a tipping point, town leaders say.

A crowd of people stand in line for a ferry outside.

Workers depend on the ferry to commute to the island for their jobs.

The island town of charming cobblestone streets, lined with shops selling handmade $400 caftans and high-end restaurants offering $50 lobster rolls, is experiencing the same imbalance that has racked other vacation destinations. In Spain, seasonal workers live in tent cities on Ibiza. Day laborers in the Hamptons have formed encampments. In Frisco, Colo., ski instructors, E.R. nurses and others can live in their cars and vans in a parking lot,
Passengers sit on a ferry. Many look like they are sleeping.

Commuters take a morning ferry.

Among Nantucket’s full-time work force are teachers, police officers, municipal workers, health care workers, firefighters and landscapers, many of whom commute by ferry, live in overcrowded or substandard conditions or are homeless.Efforts to create housing that is attainable for households with lower incomes have included a program called Lease to Locals, which gives a stipend to property owners willing to turn their short-term rentals into year-round residences. But the initiatives have been slow-starting or are not large enough to meet the demand. And then, there’s opposition.

“The most frustrating phrase that I hear a lot is, ‘I’m not opposed to affordable housing, but,’” said Brooke Mohr, a member of Nantucket’s Select Board. “Generally, the but is not here near me. Not there. Not more in this location.”On Nantucket, the problem is not evident, hidden behind ocean views and cottages. “Having your friends know that you are struggling can add a layer of stress on top of an already-challenging personal situation,” said Ms. Mohr, 64.

A person bikes past a hillside of houses and cottages.

Nantucket is known for its charming streets.

One solution could be the curbing of short-term rentals, which have been the subject of lengthy legal battles and town votes. But homeowners have pushed back, saying short-term rentals of stays 31 days or less are a way to afford the mortgage and benefit the island’s economy.At a town meeting in May, Penny Dey, a real estate broker who has lived year-round on the island for 49 years, said, “It is a fundamental property ownership right to rent your home responsibly, and it’s reckless not to safeguard that right for future generations.”

Ms. Dey, who serves as the chair of the Nantucket Housing Authority and as vice-chair of the Town’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, said the local economy depends on tourism and vacationers depend on the seasonal housing because the island lacks large-scale hotels.“Short-term rentals have been blamed for everything on Nantucket except erosion,” Ms. Dey, 66, said.

A woman in a yellow high-visibility vest sitting behind the wheel of a pickup truck.

Marjani Williams, who works for the local Public Works Department, slept in her car at the beach and on a love seat in the department’s storage unit.

For the local government, addressing the disparity is critical.Marjani Williams, 47, works full time for the local Public Works Department, collecting trash, mowing town lawns and maintaining roadside cleanup. She moved to Nantucket from Mississippi in 2023 for what she called “a better living.” In Mississippi, the minimum wage is $7.25; on Nantucket, she’s making around $67,000 annually. She lived in a basement apartment for a year, without a lease, and had to leave in the summer of 2024.“I had nowhere to go,” Ms. Williams said. “So I got all of my stuff, put it in my vehicle, and went to the beach.”
Then she heard a knock on her car window. The police told her that sleeping overnight on a Nantucket beach was prohibited. So she left that beach and went to another one, where she ran into a co-worker who, unbeknown to her, was also homeless.Her co-worker was sleeping on a couch in the exercise room at the Public Works Department. Ms. Williams followed suit and slept on a love seat in the department’s storage unit, a few hundred feet from the town’s dump.“I love my job,” Ms. Williams said. “Whether it is picking up a dead deer, patching potholes or cutting the grass. I have no family here. My co-workers are all just like my big brothers. They teach me and push me to get my different licenses, and I love them for that, but it’s very stressful.”Ms. Williams and her co-worker did what locals call the “Nantucket shuffle,” moving monthly from one temporary solution to another. This year she found a year-round apartment rental after moving three times. Andrew Patnode, 36, who heads the Public Works Department, was shocked to learn that Ms. Williams and one other employee were staying in the building and had been homeless. He is desperate to retain his employees. The high turnover rate is “costly and exhausting,” he said.
“A lot of turnover doesn’t exactly lead to day-to-day success.”
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