To the Editor:

Petitions are circulating to put on town meeting warrants an article to direct tax revenue from short-term rentals toward affordable housing. Like many others, I approve and support this. These funds would help support initiatives to build affordable housing units.

However, it is my strong belief that building more housing is not a solution. It does not address the real problem, and it pushes us toward complete buildout of the Island.

The real problem is that 80 percent of the housing stock on the Island is vacant in the winter. Some of these idle houses are summer homes for wealthy visitors. The majority are investment properties that are rented only for high rates in the summer.

The new tax presents some disincentive to this practice. However, for a great many who treat Island housing as an investment opportunity, it will simply be a cost of business. Passing it along to their customers will further divide those who can afford to vacation here from those who cannot.

For it to have significant effect on the divide between those who can afford to live here year-round and those who are forced to leave may require additional incentives for a more humane housing market.

We need more owners to rent year-round rather than maximizing summer income. We need creative solutions when old families are forced to sell because of divided inheritance by family members who have moved away because they couldn’t afford to live here.

We have genuine community here, and truth be told that is what draws people at least as much as the natural beauty. Humane relationships are the real measure of success in life. Need it be said yet again that money can’t buy that? Those who treat the Island as a money machine and then take their profits south with them are profoundly alien to us. They deserve a good, hard look. However golden the egg, we are not geese.

Bruce Nevin
Edgartown

8 replies on “More property owners need to rent year-round”

  1. It sounds great until you try it. Seasonal rentals are a lot less wear and tear on the property.My experience, owning a rental property, was that without exception, every tenant was problematic. In order to keep within the town bylaws, I only rented to no more than 4 unrelated people. With respect to seasonal rentals, they all seem to have ‘friends’ who were ‘visiting’. It is impossible to do a ‘head count’ and keep tabs on them. So you give them a fair deal based on 4 people and they ALWAYS managed to stuff a few more in to ‘reduce their costs’. My ‘competition’ was one of the well known Island slumlords who put ads in the paper for ‘roomates’ and would stuff a house with 15 adults for the same price that I charged 4. There was NO enforcement despite that slumlord having multiple properties in town doing the same thing. At least with summer tenants, they are usually gone after 3 months of headaches. They ALL would use the washing machine for their friends, and if I didn’t pump the septic every year it would have failed (as it did for the subsequent property owner who rented it as a year round and stuffed way too many people in there) I tried the ‘year round’ rental for a while. Same thing with the washer, despite a ‘no pets’ clause, there were always animals *not just dogs* around ‘visiting’, and that meant I had to get the place bombed for fleas before the next renter and hopefully the pets didn’t chew up too much of the interior, or have cat urine smell in the floors. Not once did a renter inform me about a water leak, until the floor under an appliance was rotted. Not once, did they bother to close the windows when it was raining thus damaging the hardwood floors and sheetrock walls. Not once, did they bother to secure garbage containers so the skunks and raccoons had a buffet there every night. Every tenant, year round or summer liked to smoke, and every one had burn cigarette or joint marks on the counters , tables and new linoleum floor in the kitchen. And EVERY tenant had the nerve to say ‘what a great tenant they were’. Its really unbelievable until you experience it. Fortunately I never had to go through the eviction process. The happiest day of my life was selling that place and I would NEVER again, in a thousand years, think about being a landlord. Here or anywhere else. After 10 years.. no thanks.

    1. Can’t say I blame you. The residence may belong to another, treat it better than you would if it were yours. I’d bring my cat on vacations. After one, the landlord thought I left the guy home.

  2. So a “genuine community” is your proposed “incentive” to rent to a year round renter? Ever been a victim of the old boy network that runs every town on this island? There’s no “genuine community” just those who have been fortunate enough to avoid issues with the “in crowd” and those who have not. Everything Notnewhere says is true. What if rental income on a property you have been fortunate enough to acquire (whether by smart investing or inheritance) is what allows you to live here? Why would you ask anyone to take 1/8th the income and 10 times the headache to survive here? The issues here are no different than any other highly seasonal location and are only solved by natural selection and are made worse by things like the land bank. Those who treat others property as if it is their own and act as if they should be able to decide whats best for how it should be handled are in actuality aliens. I’d suggest tending to your own business and letting others tend to theirs.

  3. As an owner of rental property on the Vineyard I agree completely with notnewhere and his recap of what renting to winter tenants is about.
    There is no “right” to live on the Vineyard. If you can’t afford to live here – move. The last thing we should be doing is building “affordable housing”.
    If a business can’t survive on the Island without paying appropriate wages – close.
    The biggest problem that most won’t admit is that the Vineyard does not have a year round economy. We are a seasonal – tourist based economy. It’s the marginal businesses and their associated workers who want to live on the Vineyard year round despite the lack of tourist dollars needed to keep them afloat during the off-season that have changed the Vineyard for the worse.

  4. 4 sensible posts in a row. Its a miracle. I now await the usual suspects who will accuse of white privilege, greediness and self sufficiency antithetical to ”humane relationships”. Yes this island has natural beauty but it is also home to freeloaders, misfits and con men personified by the Hinckley’s bankruptcy as just one example.

  5. The commenters are correct in that the fundamental problem is the extreme seasonal economy compounded by the limited supply of land. I also hear terrible stories about winter renters. I don’t think we should just give up but recognize that there is no magic solution. Using “AirBnb tax” money to build affordable units would help. Encouraging and supporting year around businesses such as The Barn, Offshore Ale, and the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival would help. Ironically, supporting landlords rights to have their tenants live by their leases would encourage empty homes on the margin to offered for winter rental. Its never going to be solved but it can be better.

  6. Bruce Nevin has obviously never rented to some of our community islanders.
    Notnewhere is exactly correct. This is not to even mention the eviction process, when people decide they are entitled to stay longer. It is absolutely not worth it – many bad apples have ruined the process for those who are honestly trying to seek housing, but I can tell you it’s not a small minority of these bad ones.

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